Google Bristlecone quantum processor has 72 qubits

Google's Quantum AI Lab reveals the development of Bristlecone, the search giant's own next-generation quantum processor. Presented at the annual American Physical Society meeting, Google's Bristlecone is a quantum processor that features 72 qubits. The company says they developed Bristlecone to demonstrate quantum supremacy in the future, to illustrate that these devices are superior at solving certain kind of problems versus traditional computers. This should provide a testbed for research about system error rates and scalability of the Google qubit technology. Full detail at Google's Research blog.

We are looking to achieve similar performance to the best error rates of the 9-qubit device, but now across all 72 qubits of Bristlecone. We believe Bristlecone would then be a compelling proof-of-principle for building larger scale quantum computers. Operating a device such as Bristlecone at low system error requires harmony between a full stack of technology ranging from software and control electronics to the processor itself. Getting this right requires careful systems engineering over several iterations.