eevBLAB 124 - Microsoft Majorana 1 Quantum Computer

[EEVblog]

Can you Muntz the new Microsoft Majorana 1 Quantum  Computer chip announced today?
https://news.microsoft.com/azure-quantum/
https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2025/01/quantum-computing-schroedingers-cat-silicon-chip

[SiliconWizard]

Well, MS has significant experience in quantum software already (software that's in several states at the same time without anyone knowing what's happening under the hood until we observe it).

Jokes aside, let's see where it leads.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorana_1#Controversy

[bitwelder]

Sooo... all those components are actually immersed in a cryogenic bath?

[EEVblog]

Sooo... all those components are actually immersed in a cryogenic bath?

Yep.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes, still no go at room temperature.

They seem pretty happy about this technology:

Any company that makes anything could just design it perfectly the first time out. It would just give you the answer,” Troyer said. “The quantum computer teaches the AI the language of nature so the AI can just tell you the recipe for what you want to make.

Source: https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/microsofts-majorana-1-chip-carves-new-path-for-quantum-computing/

[coppercone2]

is there some simulation or graph or something made with quantum computers that can be represented on a normal computer like the solution to some flow problem or field strength or whatever in the form of a graph, video, drawn path, figure.. something that we can see that would not be possible to solve with a normal computer?

i.e. something with atoms, photons, antimater, neutrinos, muons, humming birds or maybe even a math graph?

[SiliconWizard]

Google has qsim, a quantum circuit simulator:
https://quantumai.google/qsim

Not sure it really does what you'd expect though and it requires a pretty beefy computer, although if you limit it to a couple qubits, it should be usable on a modest desktop computer.

[coppercone2]

I know you  can simulate a quantum circuit but I mean I want to see what these quantum computers solved.

Whenever sandia gets a new super computer they publish some simulations done on it (like golf ball aerodynamics). I want to see something that a quantum computer developed, solved, rendered, graphed, determined, etc

[coppercone2]

I don't know if thats a quantum computer, its a quantum communicator. I thought they were supposed to solve some kind of problems/simulations faster, i.e. for a 1 second long simulation of a _____ (quantum simulatable thing, I can guess : quark, anti electron, exotic phase of matter, black hole) with a 1ms time interval, a conventional super computer takes 50 years but a quantum computer finished in 5 minutes.


isent that the whole point?

I thought it was supposed to do some math function faster, kind of like how we have a DSP processor for efficient division? but its some other math operation for a QC?

[Bud]

It is not even "communication", it is secure key exchange using quantum principles (QKD-Quantum Key Distribution). It exists today and has nothing to do with quantum computers.

[Langdon]

All supercomputers run either Linux or some other Unix-like OS.

[coppercone2]

this is what I imagine a quantum computer might be used to simulate. if its related to the capabilities I don't know but it sure seems like it might?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-maps-of-the-bizarre-chaotic-space-time-inside-black-holes-20250224

[Simmed]

2  majorana researcher
Sergey Frolov and Vincent Mourik
came out to talk about this
they think that microsoft is bullshitting, again

this is reflected by another report

https://physicsworld.com/a/experts-weigh-in-on-microsofts-topological-qubit-claim/

“The peer-reviewed publication is quite clear [that it contains] no proof for topological qubits,” says Winfried Hensinger, a physicist at the University of Sussex who works on quantum computing using trapped ions

maybe they will retract the paper again?
yep this is not the first time



so many hyped research


the 2022 paper was revised 4 times
and on first glance i spotted a diagram error

[Langdon]

Microsoft does not exacly have a reputation as a "gold standard" of integrity.

For example: Bill Gates had an affair with a Microsoft employee, which they covered up.

They then gave him "the boot" for "different reasons".


Plus, they are supposed to make software!

Not hardware!

It's in the name!

Microsoft!

[Simmed]

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8669#comment-2003328

pages of back and forth
a group of what appears to be scientists exchanging notes
and enter the microsoft star
and nayak tries to "explain"

 

so then at #77
Zulfi alam (also microsoft) says
it is a different type of qubit
hmm ? what ?

if that is true
is it a new quantum particle ?

but if to take the nayak group research as it is
and it is not a fermion-boson  ? not really a qubit ?
then what did they measure ?

 

i hope i did not fry my brain trying to understand this 

[SiliconWizard]

Well, if the quote I gave earlier was not a pile of BS already, I don't know what is.
Sure, you may have thought it was just marketing talk and did not reflect the actual technology.
Turns out that it very likely does.