Microsoft Announces Breakthrough Quantum Computing Chip
Microsoft has unveiled its first quantum computing chip, the Majorana 1, marking a significant advance in the company’s quest to develop machines capable of tackling problems beyond the scope of conventional computers. The technology, representing nearly two decades of dedicated research, harnesses 8 qubits—the fundamental building blocks of quantum computing—on a device roughly the size of a sticky note. The company envisions that the technology could eventually accommodate up to 1 million qubits.
Quantum computing departs from the established logic of traditional digital computers. Instead of bits, which are encoded as either a one or a zero, quantum computers use qubits. Qubits can represent the probability of a one or a zero, and can exist in both states simultaneously. This property allows quantum computers to assess multiple possibilities at once, leading to the solution of problems that would take traditional computers unfathomable lengths of time.
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The Majorana 1 chip, Microsoft’s first quantum computing chip, is a significant step for the company.
Although the current chip can only solve math problems, engineers assert it’s a strong foundation for future quantum machines. Microsoft’s announcement demonstrates a method to utilize particles that make quantum computing feasible, which could soon power data centers and drive innovations in fields like chemistry and healthcare. Findings related to the operation of the so-called topoconductor are being published in the journal Nature.
“Scientists actually theorized this in 1937,” stated Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president in charge of bringing quantum and other promising technologies to market. “It’s taken us nearly a hundred years to prove it. Now we can harness it.” He added that quantum machines will be doing useful things in “years, not decades.”
The field of quantum computing, which had been predicted to arrive imminently for over a decade, has seen a burst of announcements. Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced in December that its new quantum chip took only five minutes to perform a calculation that would have taken a traditional computer longer than the age of the universe. However, quantum computing faces a significant challenge: error rates. Producing the particles that can be electronically controlled requires exceedingly low temperatures and absence of noise. In experiments, these particles blink in and out of existence in a fraction of a second. Microsoft, which launched its quantum work in 2004, took a different strategy than most by concentrating its efforts on limiting errors. The company is focused on Majorana, quasiparticles named for the Italian physicist who theorized them in the 1930s. Microsoft believes that Majorana qubits will be less prone to issues than qubits created by other methods.
To isolate and regulate Majorana, Microsoft assembled, atom-by-atom, indium-arsenide strips and joined aluminum nanowires in an H-shape. When chilled to near absolute zero and tuned precisely with a magnetic field, Majorana is induced at each of the letter’s four ends, creating a single qubit. These emit signals— the ones and zeroes—that engineers can read with microwaves. That structure can be repeated across a chip. Microsoft previously believed it had located the particles, but later retracted the paper that sought to prove it. The company eventually created and was able to measure Majorana a few years later.
