Google announces Quantum Computing Algorithm with Potential to Transform Drug Discovery

Image Credit: rawpixel

For years, the promise of quantum computing lingered idly in the future, spending decades being “just five years away” from commercial use. 

However, on the 22nd of October, Google announced that researchers – among them, recent Nobel Laureate Dr. Michel Devoret – successfully ran an algorithm capable of advancing drug discovery and material research. This new algorithm, Quantum Echoes, ran molecular simulations on Google’s Willow chip that was 13,000 times faster than one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, reigniting the company’s claim of ‘verifiable quantum advantage’. 

The Willow chip, unveiled late last year, was a breakthrough in Google’s hardware, as the physical quantum processor achieved quantum error correction below threshold, meaning that quantum computers can now fix their own mistakes faster than they make them. 

On Willow, Google researchers ran the algorithm named Quantum Echoes. The algorithm performs a quantum sonar scan, sending a signal into an array of qubits, perturbing one, then reversing the process to capture the returning ‘echo’. The results subsequently revealed with accuracy how information spreads in a quantum system, offering a valuable tool into the nature of quantum systems.

In describing the experiment as ‘verifiable’, Google asserts that the algorithm could be reproduced on another quantum computer, or in nature, and yield the same results. The reproducibility of the algorithm is crucial, as earlier milestones in the field (including Google’s own 2019 “quantum supremacy” claim) were criticised for solving contrived problems that could not be independently verified.

This also points toward what could be the first practical use of quantum computing in advancing drug discovery and material research. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (MNR)  Spectroscopy is a powerful tool used to determine the shape and structure of molecules. This information is crucial to scientific research as the shape of molecules is critical in determining how they behave. To design more efficient medicines or superconductors, scientists must work to model molecular structure with greater accuracy than current methods allow. 

Google’s Quantum Echoes algorithm offers a way to augment traditional NMR, revealing long-range interactions that conventional spectroscopy struggle to capture with similar accuracy. 

To test the approach, Google’s team, working with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, ran the Quantum Echoes algorithm on its Willow chip to predict the structure of two molecules, one with 15 atoms and another with 28. They then confirmed the results using a standard NMR spectrometer. The findings matched; validating both the accuracy of the quantum computation and its potential to extend the reach of NMR techniques.