Google’s recent announcement of the arrival of Willow, a quantum chip that has reduced the error tendencies of some of its predecessors, is a milestone in the effort to bring quantum computing into the real world, and in the years ahead, it could change the way we think about the risk in cryptocurrencies.
Willow’s speed is almost incomprehensible — according to Google, it’s able to perform a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to solve. Ten septillion is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
Qubits and bitcoin can coexist, for now
If you don’t understand (not many people do) what makes up quantum computing — qubits — security company DigiCert’s industry technology strategist, Tim Hollebeek, has a simplified way of thinking about the breakthrough. He says imagine a maze and how a classical computer would try to find its way through the maze from start to finish. It would try one potential path at a time. “A quantum computer would be able to try each path at the same time, resulting in a much faster solution,” Hollebeek said.
While Willow may not be ready for real-world applications yet, Willow’s speed and accuracy will help pave the way for larger-scale quantum computers.
A decade-long lead for crypto
A Google spokesman told CNBC that Willow and crypto can coexist. “The Willow chip is incapable of breaking modern cryptography,” he said, adding that it is also the view of Google that quantum technology with that capability is still years off.
In fact, according to Park Feierbach, an expert in decentralized finance technology who is CEO of Radiant Commons, even if Willow can drastically increase the speed at which crypto could be broken, it would still take several times the age of the universe for the quantum chip to do it. According to NASA, the universe is 13.7 billion years old.
“There’s almost no reason to deploy Willow on this technology in a way that could make tractable progress. It would simply still take too long,” Feierbach said.
‘Quantum-safe’ algorithms
The Google spokesman stressed that the timeline for quantum breakthroughs has been widely shared and Willow has not changed it.
“Google is on track with our planned roadmap,” he said. “The security community has long been aware of the projected timeline to break asymmetric encryption, and has been working on defining standards and collaboratively implementing new algorithms that will resist attacks by both classical and quantum computers,” the spokesman added.
Indeed, Hollebeek says that the crypto industry is working on “quantum-safe” crypto.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released several quantum-safe algorithms that are resistant to attacks by future quantum computers, Hollebeek said, and NIST has a timeline for governments and industry to deploy these algorithms to ensure the safety of the nation’s and businesses secrets.
“Google and other industry leaders have supported standardization and experimented with the algorithms in their draft form,” the Google spokesman said.
Read the full article by Kevin Williams here / Courtesy of CNBC
