On Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled Majorana 1, a classical device powered by an amazing state of matter that’s both liquid, solid, nor oil, called geometric super.
The breakthrough, detailed in the medical journal Nature, uses a custom-built material known as a topoconductor to create and manage Majorana particles, probably expanding quantum computing to solve recently difficult problems.
In fact, a topconductor is a semiconductor—material that you do energy—that also acts as a crystal that conducts power with minimal energy loss, usually at extremely low temperatures.
In light of all the advantages, creating such a substance required supercooling to 400 degrees below zero and nuclear engineering precision, but Microsoft argued that the effort was worthwhile given the cost.
” With this material, we can create a whole new basic architecture for our quantum computers, a geometrical core, allowing us to scale to no tens or hundreds of packets on a chip, but million, all in the palm of your hand”, Krysta Svore, professional fellow at Microsoft said in a company video.
The project, which dates back to the beginning of this century when Bill Gates was CEO, is the longest in the company’s history.
A million-qubit quantum computer built using the Majorana architecture’s controllable qubits could solve issues that are beyond the capabilities of the most potent supercomputers today.
That includes designing self-healing materials, creating catalysts to break down microplastics, developing enzymes to boost food production in harsh climates, or exposing private Bitcoin keys.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted shortly after the announcement that “imagine a chip that fits in the palm of your hand yet is able to solve problems that even all the computers on Earth today combined could not.” ” It’s not about hyping tech, it’s about building technology that truly serves the world”.
Microsoft claims the architecture could support one million qubits on a single chip palm, despite the chip’s current eight topological versions having eight.
This would essentially eliminate the current limitations in quantum computing.
” Majorana ( is ) the world’s first Quantum Processing Unit powered by a topological core, designed to scale to a million qubits on a single chip”, Chetan Nayak, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Quantum Hardware Division, said. ” Microsoft is on track to build an FTP ( fault-tolerant prototype ) of a scalable quantum computer—in years, not decades”.
Solving the quantum problem?
The chip’s formula is to coax exotic Majorana particles into a special kind of material made of aluminum and indium arsenide.
When cooled to near absolute zero and tuned with magnetic fields, this material enters a topological superconducting state–not a solid, liquid, or gas, but something fundamentally different.
One of the biggest challenges quantum computing has faced is that the Majorana project, according to Microsoft, is a breakthrough in making qubits less unpredictable.
” Majorana 1 enables us to build a topological qubit. A topological qubit is reliable, small, and controllable. This addresses the noise issue that causes qubit errors, Svore said. ” Every single atom in this chip is placed purposefully. It was built from the ground up, and it represents entirely a new state of matter.
For the past ten years, scientists have been getting closer and closer to this point.
Microsoft’s topological qubits are naturally shielded from environmental noise, which typically disrupts quantum states, in contrast to other quantum computing techniques.
The software and technology giant claims that its new measurement method is able to detect minute variations in electron counts, a key prerequisite for reliable quant state recognition.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which included Microsoft in its program to assess whether cutting-edge quantum technology could create commercially relevant systems more quickly than conventionally believed possible, was interested in the company’s approach.
Microsoft is now one of the two businesses that has been invited to the final stage of DARPA’s Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing program.
The company uses voltage pulses like flipping light switches to reduce control requirements, which is a significant improvement over competitors like Google and IBM, which use different qubit technologies.
The Majorana 1 chip was created to fit into a quantum system created for use in Azure data centers.
Before making the technology commercially available, Microsoft intends to keep improving it through research partnerships.
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