Microsoft unveils new chip that could make quantum computing go mainstream in just few years
Microsoft unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum
computing is "years, not decades" away, joining Google and IBM in
predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer
than recently believed.
Quantum computing holds the promise of carrying out
calculations that would take today's systems millions of years and could unlock
discoveries in medicine, chemistry and many other fields where near-infinite
seas of possible combinations of molecules confound classical computers.
Quantum computers also hold the danger of upending today's
cybersecurity systems, where most encryption relies on the assumption that it
would take too long to brute force gain access.
The biggest challenge of quantum computers is that a
fundamental building block called a qubit, which is similar to a bit in
classical computing, is incredibly fast but also extremely difficult to control
and prone to errors.
According to Microsoft, the Majorana 1 chip it has developed
is less prone to those errors than rivals and provided as evidence a scientific
paper set to be published in academic journal Nature.
Microsoft's 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.
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