Microsoft and Quantinuum announced on Wednesday that they have improved the dependability of quantum computers, which is a critical step toward making them commercially viable.
The action is the most recent in a race to perfect quantum computing, in which tech companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Alphabet’s Google, are vying with rivals and national governments to develop devices that promise speeds significantly faster than those of traditional silicon-based computers by utilizing quantum mechanics.
Scientific calculations that would ordinarily take millions of years to complete using today’s classical computers could be made practical by those quantum machines.
Laptops 1000In that area, Microsoft and Quantinuum declared themselves to have made progress. After applying an error-correction technique that it created, Microsoft extracted roughly four dependable qubits from a total of thirty physical qubits.
According to Microsoft’s executive vice president for strategic missions and technologies Jason Zander, it’s the finest ratio of dependable qubits from a quantum semiconductor that has ever been demonstrated. “Without a single mistake, we conducted almost 14,000 separate experiments.
Zander stated in an interview that “that’s up to 800 times better than anything on record.” In the next few months, Microsoft will make the technology available to its cloud computing clients.
Researchers studying quantum computing, both at Quantinuum and its competitors, frequently state that a conventional supercomputer can only be defeated with roughly 100 trustworthy qubits.
On Wednesday, neither Microsoft nor Quantinuum disclosed how long it will take them to reach 100 dependable qubits using the new method.
However, Quantinuum’s chief product officer, Ilyas Khan, stated, “At least two years, if not more, have been lopped off.”
