Google is causing a stir with the announcement of its new quantum chip called Willow – including the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.

In a blog post Monday, Hartmut Neven, founder and head of Google Quantum AI, said the Willow chip paves the way for a full-fledged quantum computer that can “benefit society by advancing scientific discoveries, developing helpful applications, and some societal ones.” biggest challenges.”

After Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced Willow on social media, Elon Musk, CEO, responded

“That will probably happen,” Musk replied.

Why is Willow so special?

To break Willow down in simple terms, a quantum chip like the one developed here by Google can perform calculations that would take normal computers longer than the age of the universe to complete. For those who don’t know, benchmarks are challenges that all computers try to solve to help us humans understand which computer is fastest or best able to solve a given problem.

What sets Willow apart is his ability to learn from his mistakes. While regular computers often make mistakes when solving problems, Google claims that Willow will actually become smarter as it uses more qubits, the computing units in quantum computers. It’s like building an impossibly tall tower, but instead of wobbling more as it gets higher, it becomes even more stable – or at least that’s what Google claims about Willow. This is a challenge that has existed in quantum error correction for almost 30 years, says Hartmut, who insists that Willow reduces errors “exponentially” as it scales up.

Neven says Willow can fix his mistakes in real time: like having an eraser that works faster than you can color outside the lines. The result is essentially a computer that can solve calculations perfectly while eliminating errors.

“This is the most compelling prototype of a scalable logic qubit to date,” he said. “It’s a strong sign that useful, very large quantum computers can actually be built.”

One of Willow’s biggest achievements to date, according to Neven, is solving a math puzzle in five minutes. At first glance, this doesn’t sound like a big deal until you consider that Google claims that it would require a regular computer 10 septillion years to solve the same puzzle. It’s this kind of functionality that leads Google to believe that Willow can help people discover new medicines, design next-generation batteries, and ultimately help our planet conserve energy.

Be that as it may, many technology companies, including Google, have a history of making exaggerated claims about so-called “breakthroughs” in quantum computing. But Google, Musk and others seem very excited about Willow – to the extent that the company has decided to make open source software and a new Coursera course available to help developers, researchers and engineers , “Creating algorithms that…” can solve the problems of the future.”

This story was originally published on Fortune.com