This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Researchers at Microsoft have announced the creation of the first “topological qubits” in a device that stores information in an exotic state of matter, in what may be a significant breakthrough for quantum computing.
At the same time, the researchers also published a paper in Nature and a “road map” for further work. The design of the Majorana 1 processor is supposed to fit up to a million qubits, which may be enough to realize many significant goals of quantum computing—such as cracking cryptographic codes and designing new drugs and materials faster.
If Microsoft’s claims pan out, the company may have leapfrogged competitors such as IBM and Google, who currently appear to be leading the race to build a quantum computer.
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