Microsoft Expects to Construct a Quantum Supercomputer Within a Decade

[T0@st]

Earlier this week Microsoft revealed its roadmap for the building of a proprietary quantum supercomputer. The company's research department has been making progress with the elusive building blocks of topological qubits over a number of years. Microsoft's VP of advanced quantum development - Krysta Svore - has informed TechCrunch that their team anticipates it taking under ten years to construct and complete a quantum supercomputer utilizing qubits, with a view to perform a reliable one million quantum operations per second. Svore stated: "We think about our roadmap and the time to the quantum supercomputer in terms of years rather than decades."

Majorana-based qubits are extremely difficult to create, but worth the effort due to being inherently stable. Microsoft's quantum team has dedicated itself to hitting a first milestone, with more devices developed and data collected since last year's major breakthrough. Svore reiterates: "Today, we're really at this foundational implementation level...We have noisy intermediate-scale quantum machines. They're built around physical qubits and they're not yet reliable enough to do something practical and advantageous in terms of something useful. For science or for the commercial industry. The next level we need to get to as an industry is the resilient level. We need to be able to operate not just with physical qubits but we need to take those physical qubits and put them into an error-correcting code and use them as a unit to serve as a logical qubit." Svore's team is focusing more on the building of hardware-protected qubits, that are tiny - "smaller than 10 microns on a side" with performance of one qubit operation in less than a microsecond.



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[TumbleGeorge]

I'm inclined to guess that by sticking with their outdated and low-reliability methods, requiring huge numbers of qubits to eliminate noise and special air conditioning, Microsoft will be overtaken by companies that are less conservative and much more flexible, so they already work with discoveries and inventions related to quantum computers, which Microsoft did not even bother to learn existed.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Majorana-based qubits are extremely difficult to create, but worth the effort due to being inherently.

You're leaving me hanging here.

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Also, was I the only one who read this as Marijuana the first time I skimmed over the article?

 

[T0@st]

You're leaving me hanging here.

---

Also, was I the only one who read this as Marijuana the first time I skimmed over the article?

Whoops, UI must have glitched during writing. I swear that I wrote "stable" at the end.

 

[Wirko]

It's 2033, Windows of course runs on the Microsoft quantum computer and is already half-stable, but the bloat prevents it from running UI animations at more than 30 fps, and everything else is similarly fast.

 

[Daven]

It's 2033, Windows of course runs on the Microsoft quantum computer and is already half-stable, but the bloat prevents it from running UI animations at more than 30 fps, and everything else is similarly fast.

Don’t forget the overhead for the ads.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Maybe in a decade we also have a better OS than Windows 11.

 

[QUANTUMPHYSICS]

Promises, Promises.

I say it won't happen.

In the next 10 years, processing power will more than quadruple and AI will get better, but quantum computing probably won't happen till 2100AD.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

I'm not sure whether quantum computing is all that useful compared to traditional computing.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I'm not sure whether quantum computing is all that useful compared to traditional computing.

Definitely! A decade ago, or even sooner, we might still have doubted it. But quantum technologies have evolved quite a bit since then. Although Wikipedia has not yet edited from people who are abreast of developments have happened in the meantime. Of course, it is not easy for an individual to keep track of all the developments. Many companies and university teams of scientists and practitioners are involved in this niche.

Something relatively new.

 

[kondamin]

Maybe in a decade we also have a better OS than Windows 11.

We already do it’s called windows 10.

 

[Frick]

I'm not sure whether quantum computing is all that useful compared to traditional computing.

It absolutely could be, for certain workloads. They will never be general purpose processors though.

 

[TheDeeGee]

We already do it’s called windows 10.

Sadly won't last forever with driver support.

And i bet we won't see a Windows 12 before 2028.

 

[Vayra86]

Whoops, UI must have glitched during writing. I swear that I wrote "stable" at the end.

That was the marijuana then

Or maybe the word is there, but at the same time its not...

 

[lexluthermiester]

Of all the companies that should NOT be doing quantum computing....

 

[WhippetAlpha]

I'm not sure whether quantum computing is all that useful compared to traditional computing.

Quantum supercomputers have the potential to provide significant benefits to our society in various ways. Here's a concrete example of a practical use:

One area where quantum supercomputers can make a big difference is in the field of drug discovery. Developing new medicines can be a long and expensive process. Scientists need to analyze large amounts of data and simulate how different chemicals interact with our bodies. This process often takes a lot of time and resources using traditional computers.

With a quantum supercomputer, researchers could perform complex simulations and calculations much faster. They could better understand how different molecules behave and interact, leading to the discovery of new drugs more efficiently. This could potentially accelerate the development of life-saving medications, helping people with diseases and improving healthcare overall.

For instance, imagine a scientist working on finding a cure for cancer. They could use a quantum supercomputer to simulate the interactions between thousands of different molecules and cancer cells. This would allow them to identify potential drug candidates that are more likely to be effective. With the speed and computational power of a quantum supercomputer, the scientist could make progress in a matter of weeks or months instead of years.

In summary, quantum supercomputers have the potential to revolutionize fields such as drug discovery, materials science, optimization problems, cryptography, and more. They could help us solve complex problems faster, leading to advancements that benefit society as a whole.

At the same time complex to get there.

 

[bonehead123]

Ah, alot of good things could potentially happen, but on the downside, they could also help develop even moar, faster ways to:

A) Track even moar browsing history of even moar people and use that data to push even moar ads to moar people from moar advertisers
B) Develop even moar sophisticated hacking schemes, email scams, phishing and DOS attacks
C) Drain your data stores and bank accounts faster

 

[Wirko]

Of all the companies that should NOT be doing quantum computing....

..., Microsoft is but one.

 

[bobsled]

Hahaha, just not possible. Microsoft can’t even provide a well designed, stable, and responsive start menu in their OS. With each progressing year I see them make increasingly stupid decisions.

 

[Leavenfish]

All fine and well, but they could probably buy or rent one from....China within 2 yrs.

 

[Lord Romulus]

But I think not. Just as it was not possible to conceive electric light bulbs in the 17th and 18th centuries, since science about the electrical phenomenon remained in simple misunderstanding with the real facts of nature. The physics of quantum mechanics is not plausibly on par with subatomic phenomena yet, so one cannot conceive of a machine that does calculations without additional cost; it's what everyone currently achieves in their work, at most they set new parameters in the field of analog computing, nothing more. Furthermore, a descriptive convention that defines what an atomic-level computation is has not even received a draft and seems far from having a mutual consensus, that is, it is worth any claim to be said. Quantum physics remains in the state of mystique even after a hundred years.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

Quantum physics remains in the state of mystique even after a hundred years.

There is no mystique except that which the yellow media gives to bewitch their readers, most of whom are poorly educated in mainstream schools, just like me.

 

[Lord Romulus]

There is no mystique except that which the yellow media gives to bewitch their readers, most of whom are poorly educated in mainstream schools, just like me.

In Astronomy, when a distant star is dimmed under observation, nobody claims that it "disappeared" and then "reappeared". Naturally, the human experience with the Sun helps to avoid falling into the mystical. But since we don't have a counterpoint in quantum study, everything that emerges from it is said to be fact. By the term MYSTIC I refer to the way science itself defines its observations on subatomic events:

it is wave or particle depending on whether it observes or not; it can measure speed or location but never both, one or the other; sometimes it's here and sometimes it's there, probabilistically. Etc, etc, etc!

Oh dear! You see, the intoxication of quantum scientists lies in the tendency to never want to refute the data with a very simple question: the acuity of the tools in the measurements of quantum events are sufficiently refined not to present distorted results due to an inadequacy to the demand of precision that the fundamental elements impose? And here is the reason why the alleged "quantum computers" from D-Wave, IBM, Google, among others, are always associated with a constant struggle by engineers to make the produced data stable and without errors; they implement a colossal myriad of algorithmic corrections and structural redesigns to get around the errors in the calculations, but they never manage to eliminate them. The quantum computing practiced until today is, in my view, an analogical computation on the margins of the quantum scale but that never safely enters it.

 

[eidairaman1]

You're leaving me hanging here.

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Also, was I the only one who read this as Marijuana the first time I skimmed over the article?

Ms is definitely smoking weed with their releases of W8-W11.

All fine and well, but they could probably buy or rent one from....Japan within 2 yrs.

Fixed

 

[lexluthermiester]

With each progressing year I see them make increasingly stupid decisions.

Can't argue with that..