Some background for the unfamiliar. This is a new type of quantum computing platform that Microsoft has been pursuing almost independently. Most major research groups focus on superconducting qubits (IBM, Google) or trapped atoms/ions, (or photonics, or a lot of other things) while Microsoft has been developing topological qubits. These qubits are particularly interesting because they exhibit a natural resilience to noise that all other qubit systems lack. However, creating them has been a major challenge.In the summer of 2022, Microsoft claimed for the first time to have created a such qubit, though their results were met with some skepticism.
Now, it seems there is no longer any debate. Microsoft has successfully created and controlled topological qubits. Is this a big deal? Yes but its a far cry from a million qubits. Fair warning, this is not my area of research, so I'm unsure what developments occurred between their 2022 results and now. The relevant papers from Microsoft can be found here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08445-2https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12252
edit:
I read the nature paper more carefully, it looks like it is still up for debate whether they have made a topological qubit, but the evidence today is considerably stronger than previous results. Anyways don't start worrying about microsoft hacking your bank account just yet.
Oh also to clarify: What exactly is the device they have made? Well it's pretty complicated but one handwavey explanation is that they have created a device that splits an electron into two quasiparticles and does computations by physically moving these quasiparticles around each other. This is what they refer to as braiding.
“A Majorana fermion (/maɪəˈrɑːnə/[1]) or Majorana particle is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. They were hypothesised by Ettore Majorana in 1937. The term is sometimes used in opposition to Dirac fermion, which describes fermions that are not their own antiparticles.”
> Fermions have a half-odd-integer spin (spin 1/2 , spin 3/2 , etc.) and obey the Pauli exclusion principle.
> These particles include all quarks and leptons and all composite particles made of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei
I this it's a way to describe a set of particles or "objects" with certain properties.
The NYTimes article says "the company built multiple topological qubits inside a new kind of computer chip" but the Nature paper says they're only making "substantial progress towards the realization of a topological qubit", i.e., not even a singular qubit.
I can’t really understand this quantum stuff. What does this mean for Microsoft? Is it something that is unique to them? Or is it something that others like Google or Chinese companies can easily replicate? Does it change anything for encryption or cybersecurity?
Sounds more like a bid for funding than a real product. Looks to me like there is not any suggestion at all in these articles that this thing can today do anything.
Now, it seems there is no longer any debate. Microsoft has successfully created and controlled topological qubits. Is this a big deal? Yes but its a far cry from a million qubits. Fair warning, this is not my area of research, so I'm unsure what developments occurred between their 2022 results and now. The relevant papers from Microsoft can be found here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08445-2 https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12252
edit:
I read the nature paper more carefully, it looks like it is still up for debate whether they have made a topological qubit, but the evidence today is considerably stronger than previous results. Anyways don't start worrying about microsoft hacking your bank account just yet.