The new chip is seen as a breakthrough for quantum computing.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has introduced a chip that could usher in a new era of quantum computing faster than previously imagined.
The Majorana 1 chip is the culmination of some 20 years of research by Microsoft scientists and it could be a building block for large scale quantum computing.
What is quantum computing?
According to Microsoft, quantum refers to properties of atomic or subatomic particles that are used to calculate outputs. Quantum computing uses qubits as the basic unit of information as opposed to bits, which are used in classical computing.
“Qubits play a similar role in quantum computing as bits play in classical computing, but they behave very differently. Classical bits are binary and can hold only a position of 0 or 1, but qubits can hold a superposition of all possible states,” according to Microsoft.
The new Majorana 1 chip uses qubits, powered by what it calls a Topological Core, which is designed to scale to a million qubits on a single chip. Microsoft hails it as the world’s first Quantum Processing Unit (QPU). One of the big challenges with creating qubit chips is that because they are processing information so fast, they are prone to errors. Microsoft says its design is more reliable as it enables quantum error correction.
For a more detailed explanation of the chip, read Microsoft’s entry in the scientific journal, Nature, on February 19. Or peruse an article on the chip published in the MIT Technology Review.
Years, not decades, away
Quantum computing has not evolved yet to the point where is useful or practical, but when it is ready for large-scale deployment, experts say it will change computing and society.
“Even today’s most powerful supercomputers cannot accurately predict the quantum processes that determine the properties of the materials essential to our future. But quantum computing at this scale could lead to innovations like self-healing materials that repair cracks in bridges, sustainable agriculture, and safer chemical discovery. What today requires billions of dollars in exhaustive experimental searches and wet-lab experiments could be found, instead, through calculation on a quantum computer,” Chetan Nayak, technical fellow and corporate vice president of quantum hardware at Microsoft wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft was selected recently by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to advance quantum computing. With this breakthrough, Nayak says Microsoft is on track to build a scalable, fault-tolerant quantum computer in “years not decades.”
Microsoft is not the only player in the quantum computing space. There are major companies like IBM and Alphabet developing their own models, along with smaller players like Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ:RGTI), Quantum Computing (NASDAQ:QUBT), and D-Wave Quantum (NYSE:QBTS).
While the news didn’t move the needle much for the larger companies, the small pure-play quantum computing stocks were all up more than 5% on Thursday.
Any real impact is still years away, but it is important for investors to keep an eye on these quantum computing stocks, because like AI, it could be the next transformative technology. It will also bear watching how it impacts the current semiconductor AI chips, made by NVIDIA and others.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently said quantum computing was likely decades away.
