Creating a Reliable Quantum Supercomputer: Microsoft Quantum Achieves First Milestone
Key Highlights :
A team of researchers at Microsoft Quantum has achieved an important milestone in the quest to create a reliable and practical quantum computer. The team’s paper, published in the journal Physical Review B, describes the milestone and their plans to build a reliable quantum computer over the next 25 years.
The development of quantum computers has been hampered by error rates. To overcome this obstacle, the team at Microsoft suggests that quantum computer development is following a trajectory similar to that of traditional computers. They suggest that while current approaches used to represent logical qubits, such as a spin transmon, or a gatemon, have been useful as learning devices, none of them are scalable.
The team has now engineered a new way to represent a logical qubit with hardware stability. The device can reportedly induce a phase of matter characterized by Majorana zero modes—types of fermions. They also report that such devices have demonstrated low enough disorder to pass the topological gap protocol, proving the technology is viable. This represents a first step toward the creation of not just a quantum computer, but a quantum supercomputer.
Microsoft has also created a new measure to gauge the performance of a quantum supercomputer: reliable quantum operations per second (rQOPS), a figure that describes how many reliable operations a computer can execute in a single second. To qualify as a quantum supercomputer, its rQOPS needs to be at least 1 million. Machines with a billion rQOPS or more could be truly useful.
The team at Microsoft Quantum is optimistic that their milestone is a sign of progress toward creating a reliable quantum computer. They believe that their new approach will allow for the scaling of quantum computers, and that they will be able to create a quantum supercomputer within the next 25 years.
The research team is confident that their work will open up new possibilities in the field of quantum computing. They hope that their efforts will help to bring about a new era of computing, one that is faster, more powerful, and more reliable than ever before.
