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Category: computing – Page 36

Intel’s 18A is said to report an SRAM density equal to that of TSMC’s N2 process, signaling a massive breakthrough for the IFS and its semiconductor ambitions.

Intel’s 18A Process Is a “Special” One, Credits To Implementations Such As BSPDN Along With Years of R&D Behind It

Well, it seems like now might be the time to be bullish on the future of Intel’s chip plans, since the latest reports are clearly indicating that the momentum is shifting towards Team Blue. Following the political backing of the Trump administration, it is now disclosed via ISSCC sessions (via Ian Cutress) that both TSMC and Intel’s cutting-edge processes are rivaling each other in SRAM densities, showing that the gap has been narrowed down significantly, at least in one of the important aspects.

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As the fundamental flaw of today’s quantum computers, improving qubit stability remains the focus of much research in this field. One such stability attempt involves so-called topological quantum computing with the use of anyons, which are two-dimensional quasiparticles. Such an approach has been claimed by Microsoft in a recent paper in Nature. This comes a few years after an earlier claim by Microsoft for much the same feat, which was found to be based on faulty science and hence retracted.

The claimed creation of anyons here involves Majorana fermions, which differ from the much more typical Dirac fermions. These Majorana fermions are bound with other such fermions as a Majorana zero mode (MZM), forming anyons that are intertwined (braided) to form what are in effect logic gates. In the Nature paper the Microsoft researchers demonstrate a superconducting indium-arsenide (InAs) nanowire-based device featuring a read-out circuit (quantum dot interferometer) with the capacitance of one of the quantum dots said to vary in a way that suggests that the nanowire device-under-test demonstrates the presence of MZMs at either end of the wire.

Microsoft has a dedicated website to their quantum computing efforts, though it remains essential to stress that this is not a confirmation until their research is replicated by independent researchers. If confirmed, MZMs could provide a way to create more reliable quantum computing circuitry that does not have to lean so heavily on error correction to get any usable output. Other, competing efforts here include such things as hybrid mechanical qubits and antimony-based qubits that should be more stable owing to their eight spin configurations.

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Astronomers might find life in the unlikeliest of places.

Could white dwarf stars host habitable exoplanets that might support life as we know it? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the surface temperatures of exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs and compared them to exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars. White dwarfs are smaller, denser remnants after a Sun-like star dies, stops nuclear fusion (converting hydrogen to helium), and sheds its outer layers, thus implying they could be inhospitable for life-giving exoplanets.

For the study, the researchers used computer models to compare Earth-like exoplanets each orbiting a white dwarf star and the main-sequence K-dwarf star, Kepler-62, both of which exhibit temperatures of approximately 5,000 Kelvin (8,540 degrees Fahrenheit/4,727 degrees Celsius). For context, our Sun’s temperature is 5,772 Kelvin (9,930 degrees Fahrenheit/5,499 degrees Celsius).

Kepler-62 currently hosts five known exoplanets, with two of them orbiting within its star’s habitable zone. Additionally, while Kepler-62 is still demonstrating nuclear fusion, like our Sun, white dwarfs don’t, as noted above. In the end, the computer models made some remarkable findings regarding the habitable potential for exoplanets orbiting white dwarf stars. The models revealed the white dwarf exoplanet’s surface temperature was approximately 25 Kelvin hotter than the exoplanet orbiting Kepler-62, which the team attributes to the former’s faster rotation and orbital period, resulting in reduced cloud cover and higher surface temperatures.

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The achievement comes after the company spent nearly two decades of research in the field, but Microsoft claims that building Majorana 1 required that it create an entirely new state of matter, which it is referring to as a topological state.

Microsoft’s quantum chip employs eight topological qubits using indium arsenide, which is a semiconductor, and aluminum, which is a superconductor.

“The difficulty of developing the right materials to create the exotic particles and their associated topological state of matter is why most quantum efforts have focused on other kinds of qubits,” the company said in a blog Wednesday.

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The US, Europe, and China have all contributed significantly to BCI advancements. Companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink focus on invasive brain implants, whereas Chinese researchers have made major strides in developing non-invasive and adaptive BCIs.

This latest breakthrough underscores China’s commitment to making BCIs more efficient and user-friendly. By enabling a two-way interaction between brain and machine, the new system takes a significant step toward integrating BCIs into everyday life, from medical rehabilitation to consumer electronics.

The study was published in the journal Nature Electronics.

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Tech giant Microsoft unveiled a new computer chip on Wednesday that it says could transform everything from fighting pollution to developing new medicines, joining Google and IBM in arguing that the promise of quantum computing is closer to reality.

The US-made , called Majorana 1, can fit in the palm of a hand but packs a revolutionary design that Microsoft believes will solve one of the biggest challenges in quantum computing—making these super-powerful machines reliable enough for real-world use.

“We took a fresh approach and basically reinvented how quantum computers could work,” said Chetan Nayak, a senior scientist at Microsoft.

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Introducing a breakthrough in quantum computing. The Majorana 1 chip. An approach that ignores the limitations of current models to unleash the power of millions of potential qubits all working together to solve unsolvable challenges in creating new medicines, entirely new materials, and helping our natural world. All on a single chip.

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Microsoft announced a major milestone in its quantum computing efforts on Wednesday, unveiling its first quantum computing chip, called Majorana 1. Jason Zander, Microsoft’s executive VP of strategic missions and technologies explains this breakthrough and how it gets quantum computing technology closer to real world applications. Zander speaks to Bloomberg Technology’s Jackie Davalos.
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Hear from the Microsoft team behind the recent breakthrough in physics and quantum computing demonstrated by the new Majorana 1 chip, engineered from an entirely new material that has the potential to scale to millions of qubits on a single chip. Find out what is possible…

Chapters:
0:00 — Introducing Majorana 1
1:26 — Why does quantum computing matter?
2:47 — Qubits, the building blocks of quantum computing.
5:05 — Understanding the topological state.
7:00 — How the Majorana 1 chip works.
9:10 — How quantum and classical computing work together.
10:13 — The Quantum Age.

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For more about Microsoft, our technology, and our mission, visit https://aka.ms/microsoftstories

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When superconductors were discovered in 1911, they astounded researchers with their ability to conduct electricity with no resistance. However, they could only do so at temperatures close to absolute zero. But in 1986, scientists discovered that cuprates (a class of copper oxides) were superconductive at a relatively warm −225°F (above liquid nitrogen)—a step toward the ultimate goal of a superconductor that could operate at close to room temperature.

Applications of such a superconductor include compact and portable MRI machines, levitating trains, long-range electrical transmission without power loss, and more resilient quantum bits for quantum computers. Unfortunately, cuprates are a type of ceramic material which makes their application at industrial scales difficult—their brittleness, for example, would pose problems.

However, if researchers could understand what makes them superconduct at such high temperatures, they could recreate such processes in other materials. Despite a great deal of research, though, there is still a lack of consensus on the microscopic mechanism leading to their unusual superconductivity, making it difficult to take advantage of their unusual properties.

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