Microsoft has made a major announcement surrounding quantum computing. It has just unveiled Majorana 1, a chip capable of holding 1 million error-resistant topological qubits. The Redmond giant said it had to develop a new material to enable this breakthrough. This development shows it can "engineer a radically different type of qubit that is small, fast, and digitally controlled."
In 2023, Microsoft published a roadmap that outlined several milestones towards the development of a quantum supercomputer. With today's news, Microsoft says it has reached its second milestone of demonstrating the world's first topological qubit. The company laid out six milestones altogether, they are:
MILESTONE 01: Create & control Majoranas
For the first time in history, Microsoft engineered devices allow us to induce and control the topological phase of matter bookended by Majorana Zero Modes. This breakthrough enables the engineering of a new type of qubit.
MILESTONE 02: Hardware Protected Qubit
Our protected qubit, with built-in error protection, extends our first breakthrough by changing qubit technology from analog to digital control.
MILESTONE 03: High Quality Hardware Protected Qubits
To scale operations and reduce errors, digitally controlled hardware-protected qubits can be entangled and braided with a series of quality advances.
MILESTONE 04: Multi-qubit System
A variety of quantum algorithms can be executed when multiple qubits operate together as a programmable Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) in a full stack Quantum Machine.
MILESTONE 05: Resilient Quantum System
A Quantum Machine, when operating on true logical qubits, demonstrates higher quality operations than the underlying physical qubits. This breakthrough enables the first reliable quantum operations and opens the gates to quantum supercomputing.
MILESTONE 06: Quantum Supercomputer
The Quantum Supercomputer solves scientific or commercial problems faster than classical computers, starting at 1 million reliable rQOPS/sec with an error rate below 1 in a trillion, scaling to 100 million rQOPS/sec for advanced chemistry and materials science challenges.
The leap from the first to the second milestone took Microsoft just 18 months. The company said it's now in a position to remove any doubt about the timeline for achieving a quantum supercomputer; it said that it believes the goal will be achieved in years, rather than decades - so before 2035. If we assume each goal will be met at the same speed, with an 18-month interval for each, we could hit the last milestone in 72 months, that's just six years away in 2031.
Microsoft's new Majorana 1 chip currently hosts 8 qubits but can hold up to 1 million. When Microsoft manages to scale the qubits up to a million, it will enable quantum computers to do what classical supercomputers cannot. One of the benefits Microsoft outlined was the potential ability of quantum computers to help discover innovations in self-healing materials, agriculture, and safer chemical discovery. It could also reduce costs related to experimental searches and wet-lab experiments by arriving at findings via a quantum computer instead.
Microsoft said that it believes its foundational technology in this area is scalable. If the firm is right, it will ultimately culminate in the development of a super quantum computer that can help with scientific discoveries and solving issues that matter.
The Majorana 1 chip fits in the palm of a hand and can be fit inside quantum computers neatly, Microsoft said. This development was made possible thanks to the decision to focus on topological qubits which have a size considered to be in the goldilocks zone. If qubits are too small, they can be too difficult to run control lines to, and if they're too big, you would need a computer the size of an airplane hanger.
Microsoft has published a corresponding research paper in Nature and arXiv if you would like to delve into the very technical aspects of this new chip. Let us know in the comments when you think Microsoft will achieve all of its milestones, do you think it'll get this done closer to 2031 or 2035?
Source: Microsoft