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Microsoft has managed to harness the new state of matter to create the basic components of quantum computers, closing its 20-year struggle on the frontier of physics that many of the quantum world dismiss as infeasible. I stated.
The US technology giant said it believes that the development will allow the company to build practical quantum computers by the end of the decade and ultimately jump over others in the field.
This claim adds a new twist to the race, drawing out in some of the largest high-tech companies in the US and creates a new form of advanced computing that will be central to the high-tech leadership struggle between the US and China .
Microsoft’s alleged breakthrough follows years of research into particles of the type that constitute a fourth state of matter, which differs from solids, liquids and gases. The existence of a particle known as the Majolana Fermion was first theorized in 1937, but scientists struggle to demonstrate that it actually exists.
Microsoft Chief Satya Nadella said eight years ago that research into the technology placed it in the “cusp” of the “quantum revolution.” However, it wasn’t until 2022 that the company’s scientists were even able to document the effects they believed were caused by particles.
Microsoft says it built its first processor using Majorana particles called Majorana 1.
The US high-tech group has placed a bet on the theoretical particles after determining that it provided the best route to overcome the biggest obstacles to building practical quantum machines. While the bits in a traditional computer represent one or zeros, Qubits used in quantum computers can represent both at once or in between.
However, most types of Qubits only retain quantum states for small fractions of 1 second. This means that any information you hold will be lost immediately. To compensate for this, a fully functional quantum computer requires a lot of extra qubits to run the software needed to fix the error.
In comparison, the so-called topological Qubits Microsoft is trying to use majorana particles. Information is kept throughout Qubit, according to Sankar Das Sarma, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland.
This greater stability is likely to require only about 100 extra qubits to fix all errors in operational qubits, and Microsoft’s strategic mission and technology. said Jason Zander, Executive Vice President. This is almost a tenth of what is expected to be required on qubit machines based on other materials.
The latest data released by Microsoft, including a paper published in Nature on Wednesday, represents a key breakthrough in creating viable topological qubits, says Das Sarma. But he said there is still a slight possibility that the company’s findings could be explained by something other than successful exploiting elusive particles.
Microsoft’s long-term research efforts have been plagued by the problems of creating components that can produce particles and control them. The company published joint research with many universities in 2018, claiming it had observed particles, but later retracted the paper after acknowledging a contradiction in the data.
Before the latest announcement, one longtime quantum computing investor compared its ambitious research to a cold fusion pursuit. This has made an effort to generate nuclear reactions at room temperature, which has become the word for supplementing scientific excess.
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It will also be a few weeks after Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang predicted that useful quantum computers are still 20 years away.
One sign of the US official interest in ambitious technology, DARPA, the US Department of Defense agency responsible for developing advanced technology, selected Microsoft this month to make large quantum computers I tried to demonstrate that it could be built.
The only other company DARPA’s choice, US startup Psiquantum, uses qubits based on photons, and last year launched a $620 million project to build a full-fledged quantum system in Australia. did.
In addition to the latest research and data supporting the claim that it mastered the Majorana particles, Microsoft said it used technology to build its first processor.
Called Majorana 1, this tip is based on eight topological millet. The small size of each component means that each chip can ultimately narrow down qubits of up to 1mn, creating a full-scale quantum computer, the company said.
