Nadella claims 'entirely new state of matter' with new quantum chip

Commercial quantum computers coming 'in years, not decades'

A new chip brings mainstream quantum computing closer than ever before, claims Microsoft.

Microsoft has unveiled its new Majorana 1 Quantum Processing Unit (QPU), a device CEO Satya Nadella claims could be powering commercially produced quantum computers in a matter of years.

The QPU is powered by what Microsoft calls a Topological Core architecture based on a topoconductor, and is made from indium arsenide and aluminium.

The company describes this as a “breakthrough type of material that can observe and control Majorana particles to produce more reliable and scalable qubits, the building blocks for quantum computers”.

If you’re wondering what Majorana particles are, Microsoft handily notes they “help protect quantum information from random disturbance.”

In addition to the new materials stack, Microsoft claims the device was designed and fabricated atom by atom.

Indeed, the company admits that the manufacturing process was somewhat challenging, but will be refined if it is to be taken into production.

“We are literally spraying atom by atom,” said Krysta Svore, Microsoft technical fellow. “Those materials have to line up perfectly. If there are too many defects in the material stack, it just kills your qubit.”

The Majorana 1 QPU’s architecture and underlying technology offers a path to developing a device that can fit one million qubits on a single chip, no bigger than the palm of the human hand.

The one million qubits benchmark is required to make quantum computing worthwhile, said Microsoft technical fellow Chetan Nayak:

“Whatever you’re doing in the quantum space needs to have a path to a million qubits. If it doesn’t, you’re going to hit a wall before you get to the scale at which you can solve the really important problems that motivate us.”

In operation, the topoconductor can create “an entirely new state of matter – not a solid, liquid or gas but a topological state” capable of producing a stable quibit that is both small and fast, and can be digitally controlled.

However, the need to chill the devices close to absolute zero – -273.15 degrees Celsius or zero degrees Kelvin – means that they won’t be energy efficient. Superconducting quantum computers must be kept at low temperatures so the thermal environment cannot induce fluctuations in the qubits’ energies. Such fluctuations would be noise/errors in the qubits.

Another challenge to overcome is size, which also limits the size of the QPU. If qubits are too small, they become hard to control, but the larger the qubit, the more machinery is required to control them.

The quantum chip doesn’t work in isolation. It needs to run in an ecosystem with control logic, a dilution refrigerator that keeps qubits at temperatures close to zero degrees Kelvin – the closer, the better to minimise distortions – and a software stack that can integrate with AI and classical computers.

All those elements already exist, said Svore, either built or modified in-house.

Microsoft has published a research paper to explain in full technical detail a device roadmap towards a fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture based on the technology.

Microsoft is just one of a number of tech companies pursuing the development of viable quantum computers that could be commercially produced and installed. In addition, companies like IBM are developing what they claim is a quantum software stack so that meaningful applications can be developed and run on such devices.

In the UK, meanwhile, a National Quantum Computing Centre was opened in October last year, offering open access to 12 quantum computing platforms to industry and academia.