Microsoft has unveiled the Majorana 1 chip, a new development in the race to achieve practical quantum computing. The company claims this advancement brings the technology closer than previously anticipated, estimating it to be “years, not decades” away.
Microsoft’s announcement follows similar predictions from Google and IBM, signaling a shared belief that a fundamental shift in computing technology is imminent. Quantum computing holds the potential to perform calculations that would take today’s systems millions of years. This could unlock crucial discoveries in medicine, chemistry, and various other domains that current computers struggle with. These new computers could also potentially undermine the security of current cybersecurity systems, however.
A major challenge in quantum computing is the qubit—a fundamental building block. Similar to a bit in classical computing, qubits are incredibly fast. But they are also hard to control and prone to errors. Microsoft asserts that the Majorana 1 chip is less susceptible to these errors than competing technologies. To support this claim, the company is set to publish a scientific paper in the academic journal Nature.
The timeline for the arrival of useful quantum computers has become a subject of debate within the tech industry. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang expressed skepticism recently. He suggested that quantum computing was still two decades away from surpassing his company’s chips, which are the workhorses of artificial intelligence. However, Google has stated that commercial quantum computing applications are only five years away, and IBM anticipates large-scale quantum computers will be available by 2033. Microsoft’s Majorana 1 has been in development for nearly two decades. It relies on a subatomic particle called the Majorana fermion. The existence of this particle was first theorized in the 1930s. The particle possesses properties that make the chip less prone to errors.
Microsoft created the Majorana 1 chip using indium arsenide and aluminum. The device uses a superconducting nanowire to observe the particles and can be controlled with standard computing equipment. The chip has fewer qubits than rival chips from Google and IBM. Despite this, Microsoft believes that it will need far fewer of its Majorana-based qubits to make useful computers because the error rates are lower. Microsoft did not provide a specific timeline for scaling up the chip to create quantum computers. However, the company said in a blog post that progress was “years, not decades” away. Jason Zander, the Microsoft executive vice president who oversees the company’s long-term strategic bets, described Majorana 1 as a “high risk, high reward” strategy.
The chip was manufactured at Microsoft facilities in Washington state and Denmark. “The hardest part has been solving the physics. There is no textbook for this, and we had to invent it,” Zander said in an interview with Reuters. “We literally have invented the ability to go create this thing, atom by atom, layer by layer.” Philip Kim, a physics professor at Harvard University who was not involved in Microsoft’s research, called Microsoft’s work an “exciting development.” He also said that Microsoft’s use of a hybrid between traditional semiconductors and exotic superconductors appears to be a good route toward more powerful chips.
