TL;DR: Google’s Quantum AI team has demonstrated Quantum Echoes, the first-ever verifiable quantum algorithm running on real hardware and performing a complex molecular computation 13,000 times faster than leading classical supercomputers.
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What’s new: Using its Willow quantum chip, Google has achieved the first verifiable quantum advantage, where a quantum algorithm produces repeatable, beyond-classical results on real hardware.
Technical details: The breakthrough centers on Quantum Echoes, an algorithm that uses quantum interference to study how disturbances spread across quantum systems. Running on Google’s 105-qubit Willow chip, it computes the “out-of-order time correlator” (OTOC), a mathematical tool for probing complex systems such as molecules, magnets, and even black holes.
What makes this result unprecedented is verifiability. Quantum Echoes can be repeated on any comparable quantum computer to produce identical results, confirming that the outcome isn’t random noise. The Willow chip’s error suppression and stability, which were major challenges in quantum research for decades have made this possible. The algorithm ran roughly 13,000 times faster than the best-known classical simulation on one of the world’s top supercomputers, marking the first real-world case where quantum computation beats classical performance in a verifiable way.
In a parallel proof-of-concept study with UC Berkeley, Google used Quantum Echoes as a kind of “molecular ruler.” It simulated two molecules (15 and 28 atoms respectively) and matched Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) measurements while uncovering new structural details that NMR alone could not resolve.
Practical impact: This experiment pushes quantum computing from demonstration to application. Modeling molecular geometry is central to fields such as drug design, materials science, and clean energy research. By improving the precision and scale of molecular simulations, quantum-enhanced NMR could accelerate the discovery of new medicines, batteries, and superconducting materials. The team likens the advance to building a “quantum-scope” - an instrument capable of revealing previously invisible aspects of the natural world.
Availability: The full results appear today in Nature, alongside Google’s supporting research paper Quantum computation of molecular geometry via many-body nuclear spin echoes (to be posted on arXiv). The Quantum Echoes algorithm runs on the Willow chip, which is part of Google’s roadmap toward Milestone 3: creating a long-lived, error-corrected logical qubit for scalable quantum computing.
Our take: After years of theoretical promise, Google’s Quantum Echoes experiment finally delivers a tangible, verifiable quantum advantage. It’s a move from can it work to it does work and a clear signal that quantum computing is edging into practical territory.