The Majorana fermion, a sub-atomic particle, has properties that reduce vulnerability to errors that plague quantum computers. The firm’s 8 topological qubits built into the Majorana 1 chip are reliable in design with hardware-based error resistance built-in and are controlled digitally.
Microsoft claims that while the chip has far fewer qubits than competitor chips from Google and IBM, fewer of its Majorana-based qubits would be required for useful computers given their lower error rates.
Despite being a nascent technology, Microsoft’s topoconductor approach has been selected by the United States’ Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to pave the way for the nation to develop utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Microsoft has not announced their plans of when the chip would be utilised to create quantum computers which will outstrip today’s machines, but has put out a blog post stating that the point is “years, not decades” away.
