Majorana 1

The first computer I used was an Apple II at my elementary school in rural Minnesota.? I was immediately hooked.? When not playing Oregon Trail, I tore through every piece of documentation I could get my hands on and taught myself how to write code.? We didn’t have our own PC at home, so I stayed after school every night until they kicked me out.? I knew then what I wanted to do with the rest of my life!

Fast forward four decades and I still love computers.? I consider myself an old-school systems programmer, the type who loves to work from the silicon up.? I’ve been fortunate in my career at Microsoft to have a front row seat, having roles from dev tools to Windows core OS to building out the Azure cloud.?

More than ever the world runs on software and that software constantly demands more compute.? AI infrastructure has started to approach the exotic.? We have built out the world’s largest supercomputers and yet there are still problems they cannot solve.? It’s why at Microsoft we have spent nearly 20 years designing the next generation of acceleration, Quantum computing.?

Today we announced Majorana 1, the first quantum processing unit built on a new phase of matter enabled by a topological core.? This technology brings our time for useful quantum computing down to years, not decades thanks to:

• Topological qubits fit into 1/100th of a millimeter meaning we can fit one million qubits in the palm of your hand
• Topological qubits are error resistant by design
• Built in digital control, meaning we can keep things small, fast, and accurate

Going after a topological qubit has definitely been a high-risk high reward strategy.? You cannot ask your favorite AI assistant to summarize how to build one because there is no textbook that will tell you how.? The Majorana fermion (a fermion that is its own antiparticle) was originally theorized back in 1937.? ?Building a computer required us to first prove its existence, then to introduce a design with control and readout to create a reliable qubit.

With a chip that can realistically scale to one million qubits, we will be able to solve problems that are simply impractical, if not impossible, on even the largest super computers of today.? We will be able to create hybrid applications composed of advanced high-performance computing, AI, and quantum algorithms. ??I’m especially eager for what we can achieve in chemistry and materials science. Imagine creating self-healing materials, catalysts that safely break down microplastics, and getting rid of forever chemicals.

I want to congratulate the Microsoft Quantum team on what I believe is a generational achievement.? It has taken a lot of dedication and collaborative work by physicists, mathematicians, electrical engineers, computer scientists and so many more to get us here.? Amazing work lies ahead as we start to turn our attention to engineering for scale building on the foundational physics that have been established.

You can read more about the announcement and background on the technology at https://aka.ms/MSQuantumAQBlog. ?I am greatly looking forward to the future of #QuantumComputing – how #QuantumReady are you?