{"id":207043,"date":"2025-02-23T13:10:24","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T19:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/new-state-of-matter-powers-microsoft-quantum-computing-chip"},"modified":"2025-02-23T13:10:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T19:10:24","slug":"new-state-of-matter-powers-microsoft-quantum-computing-chip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/new-state-of-matter-powers-microsoft-quantum-computing-chip","title":{"rendered":"New state of matter powers Microsoft quantum computing chip"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Since their invention, traditional computers have almost always relied on semiconductor chips that use binary \u201cbits\u201d of information represented as strings of 1\u2019s and 0\u2019s. While these chips have become increasingly powerful and simultaneously smaller, there is a physical limit to the amount of information that can be stored on this hardware. Quantum computers<\/a>, by comparison, utilize \u201cqubits\u201d (quantum bits) to exploit the strange properties exhibited by subatomic particles, often at extremely cold temperatures.<\/p>\n

Two qubits can hold four values at any given time, with more qubits translating to an exponential increase in calculating capabilities. This allows a quantum computer to process information at speeds and scales that make today\u2019s supercomputers seem almost antiquated. Last December, for example, Google unveiled an experimental quantum computer system that researchers say takes just five minutes to finish a calculation that would take most supercomputers over 10 septillion years to complete\u2014longer than the age of the universe as we understand it.<\/p>\n

But Google\u2019s Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) is based on different technology than Microsoft\u2019s Majorana 1 design, detailed in a paper published on February 19 in the journal Nature<\/em><\/a>. The result of over 17 years of design and research, Majorana 1 relies on what the company calls \u201ctopological qubits\u201d through the creation of topological superconductivity, a state of matter previously conceptualized but never documented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since their invention, traditional computers have almost always relied on semiconductor chips that use binary \u201cbits\u201d of information represented as strings of 1\u2019s and 0\u2019s. While these chips have become increasingly powerful and simultaneously smaller, there is a physical limit to the amount of information that can be stored on this hardware. Quantum computers, by [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics","category-supercomputing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}