What was the name of this chip?

Willow is the name of the quantum chip Google unveiled in December 2024, notable for demonstrating that its error rate actually fell as more physical qubits were added, a milestone known as going 'below threshold.' This mattered because quantum computers are famously fragile and error-prone, so proving that scaling up qubits can exponentially reduce errors, rather than making things worse, is a critical step toward a truly useful, error-corrected quantum computer.

Sycamore was Willow's own predecessor chip from 2019, known at the time for a different milestone involving a calculation performed faster than a classical supercomputer could manage, but it did not show this error-reduction-with-scale result. Bristlecone was an even earlier Google quantum processor from 2018.

Quantum error correction has long been one of the biggest obstacles to practical quantum computing, since qubits are extremely sensitive to their environment, making Willow's demonstration a closely watched sign the field may be nearing a genuine turning point.