[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Now the Google
Quantum AI campus in California gives us a glimpse
into the future. It houses the kind
of quantum computers that can perform a
calculation in 200 seconds that the team measured
would take 10,000 years on a classical supercomputer. The aim is to give
us a tool that can do entirely new kinds of
computation to serve humanity. Here's its engineer,
Erik Lucero, to give us an exclusive
tour of the lab. [MUSIC PLAYING] ERIK LUCERO: Hi everyone. My name is Erik Lucero. I'm pleased to have you here
at the Quantum AI campus. I'm going to walk you
around, show you a bit about not only the history
of how we got here, show you a little bit more
about the space in the lab and where we're headed. So I love to start with our
Sycamore quantum processors. Behind this piece
of metal right here, on this circuit
board and all these connectors that we have is
the actual quantum processor. This system gets mounted
into our cryostat, and that system we're going
to see in full scale-- just a moment-- inside the lab. So it's also a
pleasure to have you here for all the reasons we can
show some of the collaborations that we've had, from our 9
qubit systems that have now scaled up to, say, beyond 54. Here's a nice example
of one of our systems that we have that was 22 qubits. And it's really cool
because all of these will be put together in the
lab that you're about to see. So I'm going to take you there. So come with me. Now I'm going to show you
where we take those Sycamore processors that I
showed you earlier and install them
into the cryostat. So we're going to walk over
to one of my favorite systems here. This little cryostat is what we
use to cool those systems down to really a couple orders of
magnitude colder than space. Basically, each
one of these metal stages that you see here, from
this edge all the way down, kind of in this layer cake,
the very bottom of that is what we call the mixing chamber. At that point there is where
we mount the quantum processor, that Sycamore system that
I showed you earlier, and it thermalizes
to that plate. That plate gets
to 10 millikelvin. That's really cold. That's some of the coldest
places in the universe. That's two orders of magnitude
colder than between two galaxies. All of that system
runs all the way up the top where we have
wires that come out. And you can see over here
on our control system, those are custom
control electronics that our team, engineers
here at Google, have done and
designed specifically to control the quantum
processor inside. I like to think of
them as a music player, playing music to the qubits. There's some analog
pulses that come down and that musical score gets
played through those wires all the way down
to those qubits. There's a lot of different
skill sets all over the world that these people are
coming from to join the team and think about, what is a
quantum computer actually going to serve everyone? And how do we do that
responsibly for the world and make this a
tool for humanity? All right, so now I'm going
to tell you a little bit more about what the space
is going to look like as we scale in the future. Today, we are here
right now at this point where we've just gotten past
the beyond classical experiment. And we're headed towards
these next milestones to build an error-corrected
logical qubit, and finally to an
error-corrected quantum computer. Now this space will
grow and we've really designed it to be
the kind of place where we can land a number of
these milestones along the way. Each one of these
cryostats are systems that our team has spent
many, many hours in design and customizations to make some
of the most powerful quantum computers in the world. We can do the impossible. And we look at quantum
computing, something that we look at as maybe
it's a 10-year investment. And at the other end of that
will be this tool for humanity. And I think it's an
important part of that style of creativity that is not just
to a scientist's creativity or just an artist's. It's actually that
combination of both that gives this the ability
to be inventing the future. So it's been a pleasure to
share with you all this space. I can't wait to show
it to you in person and to see this
place come together for an error-corrected
logical qubit. Until then, take care. I'll see you all later. SPEAKER: And Erik, our very
own Q from the quantum lab, joins us live. Hi, Erik. ERIK LUCERO: How you doing? Good to be here. SPEAKER: Good to see you. Now this sounds like
a kind of computer that will usher in developments
that we only dreamed were possibilities. ERIK LUCERO: Yes, I
would agree with you. And I'd also say that it's--
the kind of thing that I get excited about is the
developments that we maybe even haven't dreamt of yet, as a
new tool begets new ideas. So it's not just that these
quantum computers are faster at particular problems. It's that they're fundamentally
computing in a whole new way. And it's closer to
how nature works. It's actually tapping into the
world of quantum mechanics. SPEAKER: And how does a
quantum computer work? And how is it different
from classical computing? ERIK LUCERO: Yeah,
that's a great question. In classical computing, we
have the fundamental building blocks are bits. And these can be either
0 or 1, like a switch. So 0 or 1. In quantum computing, we
use these quantum bits, or qubits for short. Qubits can be in a
superposition of state, so they can be actually
a combination of 0 and 1 at the same time. So, say, anywhere on this
sphere, 0 is pointing up. 1 is pointing down. I could be in a
superposition of states. And this superposition, it
invites us into, I'd say, a richer computational
space, where we can perform more
complex computations. SPEAKER: So what
kind of computations are we talking about? So for what? ERIK LUCERO: Yeah, right. That's a great question. Well, let me start with
emphasizing that nature-- fundamentally, the
physical world-- is quantum mechanical. So if we want to
predict, say, molecules or some amazing
new materials, we can actually use
a quantum computer because it's actually mapping
to how Mother Nature works. It's fundamentally working
with the quantum mechanics underneath. So, for example,
these new materials may be lighter batteries,
more efficient batteries, lower ways of reducing
the carbon output from, say, making fertilizer
to feed the world. So these are all ways that we
can model Mother Nature much better when we use the
quantum computer that we're building here at Google. SPEAKER: So nature seems
to be incredibly complex. But is the idea that you
actually string together lots of qubits, and that allows
you to do these incredibly complex computations? ERIK LUCERO: Yes, but it's
not just quite that easy. What we actually need
to do is, at first, we have to show that we
can show that quantum error correction works. So then we will scale up the
number of physical qubits. So ultimately, we want to
show that we can create what's called a logical qubit. We create that by basically
stringing together a fabric of these physical
qubits with enough, I'd say, exquisite
control of those systems so that we can actually
show that this error correction works. And then once we've
shown that, we can then scale up all
these logical qubits to create a full error-corrected
quantum computer. SPEAKER: It's fascinating stuff. What made you want to
become an inventor? ERIK LUCERO: Wow. I would say that it was, at
the very beginning of my life, being able to work on
projects with my hands. I remember my father getting
me up early in the mornings to even do big projects
around the house. And then I think
mentor after mentor-- I had a really amazing mentor
in college who brought me into the lab and we
started to actually make experiments for the
cryogenic dark matter search, which then
led to my introduction to quantum computing. And ever since, I've been
able to actually bring things into existence
from the atom scale all the way up to a
building and campus scale. It's something I love to
do, is invent the future. SPEAKER: Well, it's
amazing to meet you, Erik. Thank you so much for explaining
something that's so complex, and keep up the
extraordinary work. Thank you. ERIK LUCERO: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
