Microsoft’s Majorana 1 Chip

Craig: you're excited.

Jon: i am so pumped.

Craig: so microsoft is claiming they're the new king of quantum. what's going on?

Jon: yeah. so apparently this is like sixteen years of development is what they're claiming. i think maybe thirteen, sixteen, i can't remember the number. they've unveiled mayorama one or majorana one, however you want to pronounce it, which is a quantum computing chip that leverages topological qubits, which is built on mayorana fermions. so the mayorana fermions were particles that were theorized, i can't remember nineteen thirty something. so the particles are their own antiparticles, if that makes sense. and they exist as quasi particles in certain materials under specific conditions. so unlike traditional supercomputing bits, which are highly sensitive to environmental noise like we talked about with errors and things like that, majorana based qubits use a unique topological property of materials to achieve this stability and error resistance, which is one of the major key things to achieving a workable usable quantum computer. so this could actually pave the way for a scalable fault tolerant quantum computer, which is capable of solving problems way beyond classical computing's reach. just to put this into perspective, this one chip, if they could, if they get it working, if everything works, has more computing power than all of the current computing power in the world. how crazy is that?

Craig: that's not true.

Jon: that's what they were saying.

Craig: well, i because other quantum chips exist. because willow exists and other things, like, you can't say it's more than all of them combined.

Jon: currents. like like, with not taking into account quantum computer, like the current

Craig: that's all i'm saying. i agree with everything else, but yes. sorry.

Jon: sorry. let's let's clarify. all of the current non quantum computing power.

Craig: yeah. and i don't know if it's a may mayurana or majorana or majorana or majorana, fair fermions. named are after etor majorana. these particles are quirky and they're extensionally half electrons that only exist under extreme conditions, like near absolute zero temperatures. when paired, they create cubics that's topologically protected, you mentioned, meaning it's less likely to lose its quantum state during environmental noise. microsoft is focusing on error rate and stability over speed. they think they're going to lead the way with this.

Jon: yeah. the other thing that's cool about this chip is it employs specifically designed nanowires, and you talked about superconducting materials to create the conditions where the majorana zero modes can exist, if that makes sense. so it's about manipulating existing matter into a specific quantum configuration, which is really cool. i know they were claiming the new state of matter, but it's not really that it's a specific quantum configuration, a matter into a specific quantum configuration rather than a new state of matter, if that makes sense. i don't know if you read that anywhere.

Craig: yeah, i did. yeah. and i'm looking at this stuff. it's pretty good. i mean, the information is great because we've always talked about the error rate is the big issue, right? yes. so stability is getting close to eliminating error rates, which means we can finally do something with these things.

Jon: yeah. and so just for those of you who haven't been listening, don't tune in regularly. traditional qubits that we're talking about that are not part of this, they're fragile. so heat vibration or electromagnetic interference can disrupt computations. but topological qubits exploit the unique physics of majorana fermions which encode information in their spatial arrangement rather than charge or spin, which is traditional qubits. so it makes them inherently more resistant to local noise, which drastically reduce error rates. i wish we could find the value of the error rates that it reduces, anyways. to put it, imagine building a quantum computer where qubits self correct errors by their very structure, which is what topological computing is promising to do, if that makes sense.

Craig: yes. we got a quick chart here on the article that this podcast is linked to on torontostarts dot com that compares the willow chip versus this chip, talking about topological versus superconducting loops, theoretically, ultra low error rates versus google's, which is improved, but still very error prone. scalability, the majorana is easier to scale where the willow requires complex cooling systems. current cubic count is about ten on the prototype for the majorana with about seventy on the willow chip with plans to go to a thousand. and the key advantage is stability on the majorana chip versus speed and existing infrastructure on the willow chip.

Jon: yeah. i would take stability over speed any day, especially with the computational power because you're, if you have stability and you scale that stability over scaling speed and error prone, you've got a better chance of scaling properly, right?

Craig: well, and they're finicky and they require near zero temperatures and still make mistakes. with this stability, they could let quantum systems run longer calculations without crashing. you know, we are hearing all this stuff. now they crash after a certain period of time because they become unstable. more, the longer they can run, the more calculations they can run, the more complex problems they can solve. yeah. so that'd be a game changer for drug discovery and climate modeling among other things. everything.

Jon: oh, this is super cool. again, and just for those of you, i don't know if we touched on this, but this is a prototype. this is a prototype chip that they've developed that they're experimenting with. so nothing that is commercially available yet or close to commercially available.

Craig: scalability, microsoft claims that topological qubits can be braided, linked physically to scale seamlessly and make that you know, scale scalability happen. where google's willow meanwhile uses software tricks to connect the qubits, which works, but demands a lot more power. yeah. so i'm really excited because quantum is the future medicine, climate science, cybersecurity, logistics. again, you start combining chips that can actually run for a long period of time in the quantum realm with some of the ai stuff we have running that is solving years worth of problem in days, if not minutes. you put those two together and i think the world changes overnight.

Jon: yeah. but yeah. and and like you said, the road ahead is gonna be steep. it's gonna be difficult because and you touched on this, mehron and fermions. they require exotic material. so it requires indium antimonide nanowires, and like you said, near zero kelvin temperatures, not zero degrees celsius or fahrenheit, near zero kelvin guys. i think they're in the right direction.

Craig: yeah, i'll be excited to see in the end whether we get some combined of the technologies where we get faster, more qubits at a stable rate. we'll have to see because we're saying that microsoft commercially available have these ships within five-ten years.

Jon: yeah.

Craig: and so i'm looking forward to watching the quantum race continue as we see these companies race down the quantum pathway. let us know what you think is quantum the future? are they still spending billions of dollars and it's gonna take us nowhere? we'd love to hear your thoughts.