Microsoft presented on Wednesday a new chip that, according to the company, shows that quantum computing is years, not decades to become a reality.
With this announcement, the company joins Google and IBM in the prediction that a fundamental change in computer technology is much closer to what was recently believed.
Quantum computing promises to carry out calculations that would take millions of years to current systems and could unlock advances in medicine, chemistry and many other disciplines where the huge possible combinations of molecules confuse classic computers.
However, quantum computers also represent a risk to cybersecurity, since most current encryption systems depend on the premise that it would take too much time deciphering them by gross force.
One of the greatest challenges of quantum computing is that its fundamental unit, called Qbit (similar to a bit in classical computing), is incredibly fast but extremely difficult to control and prone to errors.
Microsoft said that his Majorana 1 chip is less prone to these errors compared to those of their competitors, and supported his statement with a scientific article that will be published in the Nature academic magazine.
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The question about when functional quantum computers will arrive has become an issue of debate in the high circles of the technological industry. Last month, the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, said that this technology is two decades to overcome the chips of their company, which are currently essential for artificial intelligence. These statements reflect generalized skepticism about quantum computing.
Given this, Google, which last year presented its own quantum chip, replied that the commercial applications of this technology could be ready in just five years. IBM, meanwhile, has said that he hopes that large -scale quantum computers are operational by 2033.
The Majorana 1 of Microsoft has been in development for almost two decades and is based on a subatomic particle called Fermión de Majorana, whose existence was theorized for the first time in the 1930s. This particle has properties that make it less prone to errors that affect quantum computers, but it has been difficult to detect and control for physicists.
Microsoft explained that he created the Majorana 1 chip using Indian and aluminum arseniuro. The device uses a nanocable superconductive to observe the particles and can be controlled with standard computer equipment.
The chip presented by Microsoft has significantly less qubits than those of Google and IBM, but the company believes that it will need a much smaller amount of Majorana -based qubits to build functional computers, due to its lower error rates.
Microsoft did not provide a schedule for the scalability of the chip and its conversion into quantum computers that exceed the current ones, but in a blog post, the company reiterated that this moment is “years, not decades” away.
Jason Zander, Executive Vice President of Microsoft in charge of the company’s long -term strategic bets, described the Majorana 1 as a “high risk, high reward” strategy.
The chip was manufactured in the Microsoft laboratories in the state of Washington and Denmark.
Zander commented in an interview with Reuters that the greatest challenge has been to solve the physical problems of this technology. “There is no textbook for this, we had to invent it,” he said. “We have literally invented the ability to create this, atom per atom, layer per cape.”
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Philip Kim, a professor of Physics at Harvard University and did not participate in Microsoft’s research, said that Majorana’s fermions have been a topic of interest among physicists for decades and described Microsoft’s work as an “exciting development” that places the company at the forefront of quantum research.
Kim also pointed out that the use of Microsoft of a combination between traditional semiconductors and exotic superconductors seems a promising approach to the creation of scalable quantum chips.
“Although it has not yet been shown that you can climb, what they are doing is really successful,” Kim concluded.
With Reuters information
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