Microsoft said they created a computer chip that uses a new state of matter that will be capable of running the most powerful computers ever — a potential breakthrough for quantum computing that many believed was decades away.
The revolutionary “Majorana 1” chip employs a topological superconductor — a material that isn’t solid, liquid or gas — . that helps build more reliable and powerful qubits, building blocks that can be scaled up into powerful quantum computers, the company said Wednesday.
The company said the superconductor offers a path to fitting a million qubits on a single chip small enough to fit in the palm of the hand as it revealed its findings in the science research journal Nature.
All the computers in the world operating together today can’t do what a single one-million-qubit quantum computer will be able to do, Microsoft said.
“Whatever you’re doing in the quantum space needs to have a path to a million qubits. If it doesn’t, you’re going to hit a wall before you get to the scale at which you can solve the really important problems that motivate us,” Microsoft technical fellow Chetan Nayak said in a statement.
More advanced quantum computing systems could encrypt data, discover new drugs and tackle complex issues in healthcare or manufacturing, according to experts.
The Majorana 1 has been in the works for nearly two decades and relies on a subatomic particle called the Majorana fermion, whose existence was first theorized in the 1930s.
That particle has properties that make it less prone to the errors that plague quantum computers, but it has been hard for physicists to find and control.
Microsoft said it created the Majorana 1 chip with indium arsenide and aluminum. The device uses a superconducting nanowire to observe the particles and can be controlled with standard computing equipment.
The chip Microsoft revealed Wednesday has far fewer qubits than rival chips from Google and IBM, but Microsoft believes that far fewer of its Majorana-based qubits will be needed to make useful computers because the error rates are lower.
Microsoft did not give a timeline for when the chip would be scaled up to create quantum computers that can outstrip today’s machines, but the company said in a blog post that point was “years, not decades” away.
The power of quantum computing, however, poses serious security risks because its could easily break through the encryption technology currently in use to protect data, including national secrets.
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 fabricated at Microsoft labs 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 professor of physics at Harvard University who was not involved in Microsoft’s research, said that Majorana fermions have been a hot topic among physicists for decades and called Microsoft’s work an “exciting development” that put the company at the forefront of quantum research.
He also said that Microsoft’s use of a hybrid between traditional semiconductors and exotic superconductors appeared to be a good route toward chips that can be scaled up into more powerful chips.
“Although there’s no demonstration (of this scaling up) yet, what they are doing is really successful,” Kim said.
Rivals in the tech industry have invested heavily in quantum computing. IBM has committed $100 million to quantum research, and Google has invested at least $50 million.
The Chinese government has said it is investing $15.2 billion in quantum technology, and the European Union has committed $7.2 billion.
Microsoft did not reveal how much it has spent to develop the new technology.
In December, Google boasted that its own quantum computing advancement – a chip called Willow.
The chip was able to perform a complex calculation in just five minutes that would take a traditional supercomputer nearly an eternity to complete, Google said.
With Post wires
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