Fuss About...
Majorana 1
What’s All the
Microsoft claims it’s a computing breakthrough, but experts aren’t convinced
What is it?
A new processor (pictured right) from Microsoft that it claims is a “transformative leap toward practical quantum computing”. It’s caused a stir because the company says it’s the first processor to use topological qubits.
Topological
what
?
This might take some explaining. Let’s start with bits – these are the basic units of information in computing, and can be 0 or 1 depending on the data being processed. But you probably knew that already. Qubits are quantum bits that can be 0, 1 or both at the same time, thanks to a weird property in quantum physics called superposition. This allows quantum computers to handle much more data and perform complex calculations thousands of times faster than regular computers. Yet they have a fundamental flaw.