Technology AI, Science and New Things
Microsoft claims to have made an historic breakthrough in quantum computing which could enable it to build a practical quantum computer in five years.
Only last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said this achievement would take two decades.
It’s the culmination of 17 years of research into the Majorana particle, described as a fourth state of matter – not solid, liquid or gas.
By harnessing this particle, Microsoft has created a new type of chip (the basic building block of a computer) which it calls Majorana 1 and which it says is more stable and easier to scale up than other quantum computing efforts.
In plain English: quantum technologies could allow computers to solve problems exponentially faster and revolutionise fields like medicine and materials science.
This development is cause for optimism – but it’s still unclear if it will work at scale.
