The company claims to have worked on a new architecture for quantum computing
Microsoft officials say they believe they have taken an important step in the race for quantum computing. And they have done so with a radically different approach to the one we have seen so far.
The Majorana fermion. Italian physicist Ettore Majorana theorized about the existence of this particle in 1937, and researchers have been trying to discover it ever since. It has a unique characteristic: it is both a particle and its own anti-particle. Or, in other words, a sweetener for quantum computing.
17 years working on it. Those responsible for this development at Microsoft said in the official announcement that they had been involved in a research project to create a new material and a new architecture for quantum computing for 17 years. Zulfi Alam, head of the division, emphasized how “after 17 years, we are showing results that are not only incredible, but real. They will fundamentally redefine how the next stage of the quantum journey unfolds.”
Majorana 1. The result of this work, published in Nature, is Majorana 1, the first quantum processor based on this architecture. Microsoft does not use electrons in its chip, as is the case in traditional processors, but rather the aforementioned Majorana particle. To achieve this, the company’s researchers have created “the world’s first topoconductor”, a new type of semiconductor that also operates as a superconductor and can observe and control Majorana particles with a key objective: to create more reliable and more noise-resistant qubits, the great challenges of quantum computing.
Up to a million qubits. According to the researchers, this topoconductor makes it possible to create so-called topological superconductivity, a new state of matter that had previously only been predicted in theory. Indium aluminium arsenide has been used to create the material, and eight topological qubits have been placed on the chip. This is just the beginning: he hopes to be able to increase that number to a million over time.
Accurate simulations. Thanks to these future chips with a million qubits, much more accurate simulations — and error correction — will be possible, helping us to understand our world and with the potential to make revolutionary discoveries in fields such as medicine and materials science. “It will solve problems that are currently unsolvable with the combined global computing power,” said Microsoft officials in the video explaining this technology.
“There will be no need to experiment”. Alam explained how quantum computing excels when it comes to performing these simulations, “especially in chemistry and materials, which are extremely precise, as much as a real laboratory experiment. You can imagine a world in which a scientist computes the material he wants, and computes it with such precision that it is correct the first time, so when you arrive at a laboratory, you no longer need to experiment.”
Scalable. As the Microsoft researchers explain, this is just the beginning. “The underlying technology is proven and we believe our architecture is scalable.” In fact, Microsoft has already reached an agreement with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and will soon create a prototype of a fault-tolerant quantum computer based on these topological qubits. And as they say, they will achieve this “in years, not decades.”
