Microsoft Reaches Milestone in Quantum Supercomputer Development
Microsoft is taking steps to “accelerate scientific discoveries” and has already reached the first milestone in its plans to create a quantum supercomputer in the coming years. The development of the supercomputer is based on work Microsoft completed last year with topological Majorana quantum bits (qubits).
These Majorana qubits form the basis of Microsoft’s approach to building a quantum computer. The company expects it to be more stable than machines built with other types of known qubits. This week, the Azure Quantum team is publishing a new peer-reviewed paper (in the American Physical Society’s Physical Review B) showing that Microsoft has reached this first milestone on the road to a quantum supercomputer.
The next step is to achieve resiliency in the logical qubits that Microsoft has developed. The final milestone is achieving scale. Microsoft believes that the stability of its Majorana qubits will make it easier to reach the resiliency level, and that stability will also help to achieve scale.
Microsoft’s Ten-Year Plan for Quantum Supercomputer
Krysta Svore, VP of advanced quantum development, tells TechCrunch that Microsoft believes it will take less than 10 years to build a quantum supercomputer using their Majorana qubits. By then, they should be able to “reliably” perform one million quantum operations per second. The timeline is similar to the 10-year plan IBM announced earlier this month.
Today, Microsoft has noisy intermediate-scale quantum machines, Svore explains. To define what is useful, Svore specified: “For science whether v for the commercial industry”. Microsoft is confident that its Majorana qubits will make it easier to reach the resiliency level and achieve scale.
The development of a quantum supercomputer is a major step forward in the field of science and technology. Microsoft’s milestone is a testament to the company’s commitment to advancing scientific discoveries and its ability to develop innovative solutions. With the help of its Majorana qubits, Microsoft is well on its way to achieving its goal of creating a quantum supercomputer in the next decade.