Microsoft has announced that it plans to design a custom quantum supercomputer. On Wednesday, the company’s plans were made public. Microsoft makes claims that quantum supercomputers can revolutionize chemistry, fight climate change and reduce food shortages. The company claims that once quantum computing achieves its numerous milestones, it can be used to solve the most complex problems facing our society.
According to Microsoft, the path to quantum computing is the same as today’s supercomputers. The company has chosen three milestones to reach after which programmable quantum supercomputers can solve problems that are beyond the scope of existing quantum technology.
Currently, test machines are designed with “noisy” physical qubits. These are not useful enough to solve real problems. Current development is at a basic level.
Microsoft has combined machines like IonQ, Quantinuum, Rigetti, Pasqqal and QCI together with Azure Quantum Elements. Azure Quantum Elements is a new service that accelerates scientific discovery by integrating the latest breakthroughs in HPC.
The moment the reliability of individual qubits is improved, quantum computing developments will move towards flexibility. This stage is reached when it becomes possible to combine thousands of physical qubits into a single fairly logical qubit.
Finally, the third level is reached when it is possible to build a scalable, programmable quantum supercomputer that is capable of performing classical supercomputers in problem solving.
There is certainly a lot more work to be done before quantum computers can truly reach the final level. The first quantum computer will be required to provide an error rate of one in a trillion operations.
Microsoft certainly has a lot of competitors in the quantum computing race. IonQ and IBM to name a few. These competitors share a common vision. However, Microsoft may have a slight edge thanks to the major breakthroughs it experienced in the previous year. Microsoft demonstrated the possibility of creating more stable qubits on the basis of Majorana particles, using topological insulators to protect themselves from environmental noise.
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Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: pagasa.edu.vn