Microsoft\u00a0on Wednesday announced Majorana 1, its first quantum computing chip.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The achievement comes after the company has spent nearly two decades of research in the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Technologists believe quantum computers could one day efficiently solve problems that would be taxing if not impossible for classical computers. Today\u2019s computers use bits that can be either on or off while quantum computers employ quantum bits, or qubits, that can operate in both states simultaneously.<\/p>\n
Google\u00a0and\u00a0IBM\u00a0have also\u00a0<\/strong>developed quantum processors, as have smaller companies\u00a0IonQ\u00a0and\u00a0Rigetti Computing. Microsoft\u2019s quantum chip employs eight topological qubits using indium arsenide, which is a semiconductor, and aluminum, which is a superconductor. A new paper in the journal Nature describes the chip in detail.<\/p>\n Microsoft won\u2019t be allowing clients to use its Majorana 1 chip through the company\u2019s Azure public cloud, as it plans to do with its custom artificial intelligence chip,\u00a0Maia 100. Instead, Majorana 1 is a step toward a goal of a million qubits on a chip, following extensive physics research.<\/p>\n Rather than rely on\u00a0Taiwan Semiconductor\u00a0or another company for fabrication, Microsoft is manufacturing the components of Majorana 1 itself in the U.S. That\u2019s possible because the work is unfolding at a small scale.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to get to a few hundred qubits before we start talking about commercial reliability,\u201d Jason Zander, a Microsoft executive vice president, told CNBC.<\/p>\n In the meantime, the company will engage with national laboratories and universities on research using Majorana 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the focus on research, investors are fascinated by quantum.<\/p>\n IonQ shares went up 237% in 2024, and Rigetti gained nearly 1,500%. The two generated a combined $14.8 million in third-quarter revenue. Further gains\u00a0came in January, after Microsoft issued a\u00a0blog post\u00a0declaring that 2025 is \u201cthe year to become quantum-ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Microsoft\u2019s Azure Quantum cloud service, which lets developers experiment with programs and algorithms, offers access to chips from IonQ and Rigetti. It\u2019s possible that a Microsoft quantum chip might become available through Azure before 2030, Zander said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of speculation that we\u2019re decades off from this,\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe it\u2019s more like years.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than exist as a stand-alone category, quantum computing might end up boosting other parts of Microsoft. For example, there\u2019s Microsoft\u2019s AI business, which has an annualized revenue run rate that\u00a0exceeds $13 billion. Quantum computers could be used to build data used to train AI models, Zander said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNow you can ask it to invent some new molecule, invent some new drug, something that really would have been impossible to do before,\u201d Zander said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Microsoft\u00a0on Wednesday announced Majorana 1, its first quantum computing chip.\u00a0 The achievement comes after the company has spent nearly two decades of research in the field.\u00a0 Technologists believe quantum computers could one day efficiently solve problems that would be taxing if not impossible for classical computers. Today\u2019s computers use bits that can be either on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}