Majorana

2025: Microsoft unveils 8-qubit Majorana 1 quantum processor

In February 2025, Microsoft introduced the Majorana 1 quantum processor, which, according to the company, is able to shorten the path to creating commercially viable quantum computers with millions of qubits "from decades to several years."

This is an early prototype, the next stage is a working prototype where laboratory experiments can be carried out, then a few years later - a prototype that will have characteristics before commercial implementation and many more years later - the final commercial chip, if everything goes well.

Reservations at once: at least 10 years will pass before the commercial introduction of quantum computers. Despite Microsoft's optimism, the scientific community expects the publication of complete data and independent verification of the declared characteristics, so Microsoft's optimism should be taken with skepticism, Spydell Finance wrote.

The main innovations are concentrated in new materials and packaging methods at the atomic level. The process of spraying materials "atom by atom" required exceptional accuracy. Even minor defects destroyed qubits.

Majorana 1 uses topconductors - unique materials that form a new type of state of matter (topological superconducting state). A topographic conductor, or topological superconductor, is a special category of materials capable of creating a completely new state of matter - not a solid, liquid or gaseous, but a topological state.

Thanks to this approach, qubits are protected at the hardware level, which reduces the likelihood of errors and allows you to maintain coherence for longer.

For the manufacture of Majorana 1, high-precision technologies are used using materials such as indium arsenide and aluminum, which makes it possible to create structures with atomic accuracy.

According to the company, "until recently, the exotic particles that Microsoft sought to use, called majoranas, were never seen or created. They do not exist in nature and can only be induced by magnetic fields and superconductors. The difficulty of developing the right materials to create exotic particles and the associated topological state of matter is why most quantum efforts have focused on other qubit species. " This is the main scientific discovery in the context of a quantum chip.

Although the prototype contains only eight qubits, the architecture is designed in such a way that in the future it can scale to a million qubits on one compact chip.

Despite Google's Willow already showing significant progress in error correction, traditional superconducting qubits remain more prone to external interference.

Topological qubits in Majorana 1, due to their nature, can provide longer coherence periods and may require fewer excess qubits for error correction.

Unlike traditional qubits, topological nature provides increased stability, which is critical for practical application.

Microsoft's strategy is focused on scaling the architecture to a million qubits through a fundamentally new approach (each qubit is 1/100 mm in size), while Willow already works with a large number of qubits, but faces problems improving reliability while increasing their number.

In theory, all the world's current computers working together cannot do what a one million qubit quantum computer can do because of the fundamentally different methods of functioning of chip architecture.

This is still a theory, commercial chips are still very far away.