Microsoft's Quantum Computing Chip Could Be a Game Changer
There's a type of particle called a Majorana fermion that was hypothesized in 1937. This particle has some unique properties, and it's long been theorized that Majorana particles could prove useful for quantum computing. In a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) unveiled a quantum-computing chip, Majorana 1, that successfully harnesses a small number of exotic Majorana particles to encode quantum information.Microsoft started going down this road nearly 20 years ago, and that research has now yielded what looks like a significant quantum-computing breakthrough. The Majorana 1 chip contains eight qubits, or quantum bits, far fewer than top-tier quantum computers currently in operation.However, Microsoft sees a path to scale up the number of qubits to 1 million. At that scale, quantum computing would likely be useful for solving real-world problems.Continue reading
There's a type of particle called a Majorana fermion that was hypothesized in 1937. This particle has some unique properties, and it's long been theorized that Majorana particles could prove useful for quantum computing. In a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) unveiled a quantum-computing chip, Majorana 1, that successfully harnesses a small number of exotic Majorana particles to encode quantum information.
Microsoft started going down this road nearly 20 years ago, and that research has now yielded what looks like a significant quantum-computing breakthrough. The Majorana 1 chip contains eight qubits, or quantum bits, far fewer than top-tier quantum computers currently in operation.
However, Microsoft sees a path to scale up the number of qubits to 1 million. At that scale, quantum computing would likely be useful for solving real-world problems.
