Microsoft Claims New Quantum Chip 1,000 Times Better Than Before (bbc.com) 64
Microsoft says its new Majorana 2 quantum chip is 1,000 times more reliable than its predecessor, with qubits lasting about 20 seconds instead of milliseconds, and claims it could have a commercially useful quantum machine by 2029. The BBC reports: "We will have a quantum machine in 2029 that can solve commercially viable, reasonable problems," said Zulfi Alam, corporate vice president of Microsoft Quantum. That would still require huge further advances as such a device would require millions of qubits - the current chip, Alam said, has 12. Assessing the firm's claims are difficult because it does not release the full details of what it has discovered publicly, citing commercial confidentiality.
Microsoft has spent 20 years pursuing an approach to quantum computing known as "topological." The firm's approach to this is based on exploiting the properties of a so-called quasi-particle, which had existed only in theory, since it was first predicted in the 1930s by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana. To do this it had to exploit a novel state of matter - different from the three familiar states of liquid, solid or gas.
Paul Stevenson, a physics professor at the University of Surrey, said the tech giant's timeline sounded plausible - if its research lived up to its claims. "Microsoft appears to have made a leap in their attempt to produce viable topological qubits," he said. "If they succeed, they will leap from being a player with no production quantum computer, to being a serious player in the race to make the next generation of fault-tolerant machines."
Microsoft has spent 20 years pursuing an approach to quantum computing known as "topological." The firm's approach to this is based on exploiting the properties of a so-called quasi-particle, which had existed only in theory, since it was first predicted in the 1930s by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana. To do this it had to exploit a novel state of matter - different from the three familiar states of liquid, solid or gas.
Paul Stevenson, a physics professor at the University of Surrey, said the tech giant's timeline sounded plausible - if its research lived up to its claims. "Microsoft appears to have made a leap in their attempt to produce viable topological qubits," he said. "If they succeed, they will leap from being a player with no production quantum computer, to being a serious player in the race to make the next generation of fault-tolerant machines."
When you scale this... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Pretty sure Nvidia is working on the OS - agnostic to types of quantum bits and able to tie multiple kinds together to solve problems as a gestalt. I agree - interesting times.
"By 2029..." This sounds familiar... (Score:3)
I feel like there's this other technology that's just been a few years away for the last 50+ years... Any day now...
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Hey it will be here in time for my flying car. Just you wait.
and your Mr Fusion
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In particular, isn't Majorana the one where MS had to invent a new type of physics in order to make it look good? Or extend things into seven demensions [*], or some similar trickery?
[*] Yes, that's a deliberate spelling.
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Which will come first?:
1. Practical flying cars
2. Practical fusion energy
3. Robot that do can dishes
4. Useful quantum computer
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Do you mean fusion power? If so, it is worth recognizing that we've made major progress on fusion power with the average predicted time to fusion power going down over time. For example, the triple product, which is an important measure of how effective a fusion system is, has been growing since the 1950s. with a brief pause slowed down in the early 2000s when almost all fusion research money went into ITER and is now increasing again https://www.fusionenergybase.c... [fusionenergybase.com] . Additionally, usion research has be
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Microsoft has been making wildly optimistic claims with respect to Quantum for maybe five years now, nothing has panned out so far. Their breakthroughs have turned out not to be.
No, It Won't. (Score:4, Insightful)
No company will release a commercial quantum computer by 2029. No company is ever going to release a commercial quantum computer of any kind. If there is any actual utility to quantum computers beneath the hype, it will be a niche matter at best.
Anyone who wants to disagree with me can do so by betting against me in Kalshi. I will gladly take your money. If you are unwilling to put your money where oyur mouth is, I'm just going to ignore you.
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No company is ever going to release a commercial quantum computer of any kind.
Anyone who wants to disagree with me can do so by betting against me in Kalshi. I will gladly take your money. If you are unwilling to put your money where oyur mouth is, I'm just going to ignore you.
How does one resolve the bolded-text as a bet though? I'll happily make a few dollars on your side of the coin for the 2029 prediction, but you can't realistically make the second statement then tell people who disagree to "just go bet against me on Kalshi".
Re:No, It Won't. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you certain that this hasn't happened already?
And now, the game is: Go to the government and say, "Look here. We are developing this keen technology that you don't want in the public's hands. We could be persuaded to stop our R&D for a fee. A very large fee."
Re: No, It Won't. (Score:1)
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There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
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That's not how that works. There are laws about how the US government can go about seizing technologies for national defense concerns. That's not in anyway how that works.
That's before you get to the fact that no quantum algorithm ha sbeen shown to be faster than optimized conventional algorithms. Most theoretical uses for quantum computers don't even have any proposed algorithms at all. The technology is mostly wild speculation and vaporware. Quantum computers should be tossed in the sack with GPTs, NFTs
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Doing simple arithmetic quickly and with high fidelity was instantly useful and valuable. There were many other early use cases for digital electronic computers that weren't valuable. You don't know about them because, since they couldn't turn a profit, they don't exist right now. You should read up on early Soviet computers and Soviet cybernetic theory to get a sense of other things that were possible, though ultimately not profitable.
My issue with quantum computing is that there's no real evidence it can
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My objection is that the technology works as advertised at all. There's no evidence that any quantum algorithm offers any speed or processing advantage over conventional computers. There's no proposed quantum algorithms for breaking strong traditional encryption at all. I'm saying the technology will be niche at best and mostlly vaporware.
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Even before ENIAC, computers were doing arithmetic faster and with higher fidelity than human computers. While the best human computers could outperform early computers, they mostly worked on highly critical calculations. Everyone saw the utility of electronic computers for bulk calculations.
Re:No, It Won't. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, there is some potential that the tech could work, but a) no proof and b) the scaling is so abysmally bad so it will _never_ get to any useful size. Classical computers scaled exponentially for a while, even though that has topped about 10 years ago or so. QCs scale _inverse_ exponentially and that means there is a pretty low number of QBits and calculation lengths you cannot, ever, reach. This universe is too small for that to ever happen.
But, yes. The still current factoring record for a QC is 29 or so and this was not done with the general algorithm, because that failed. It was done with an algorithm specialized for the number, i.e. is meaningless. But this _is_ the largest actual QC calculation ever done, except for some simulated annealing stuff that does not scale at all and is meaningless compared to classical approaches. Now, what does factoring 29 prove? Nothing at all. It is far, far, far too small a problem to be sure it was actual quantum effects that could (theoretically) scale up.
Re: No, It Won't. (Score:1)
Re:No, It Won't. Wait... (Score:2)
Except there are quantum algorithms just waiting for hardware:
The primary quantum algorithms proposed for breaking strong traditional encryption are Shor’s algorithm, which exponentially dismantles asymmetric (public-key) cryptography, and Grover’s algorithm, which quadratically degrades symmetric-key security.
Shor's Algorithm (The Threat to Asymmetric Encryption) Developed by Peter Shor in 1994, this algorithm solves difficult mathematical problems exponentially faster than any classical comput
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The decoherence problem of qubits is fatal at lengths needed to factor primes of the size currently used for encryption. Noise and decoherence increase eponentially with the number of qubits. Which is my point. There's currently no reason to think you can make a quantum computer that can meaningfully outperform a classical computer. It's like nuclear fusion or, more specifically in this case, quantum encryption. While the theory is straight forward enough, making a practical system is functionally impossibl
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No company is ever
Ever? How long shall we wait to see if the bet is settled?
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It's already been a quarter century. How much longer do you want to give it? Stimulated emmisions were demonstrated in the 60s. By the late 80s there were already consumer uses for the technology.
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Re:No, It Won't. (Score:4, Informative)
There's nothing that can be done on a Quantum Computer that can't be done on a traditional computer (except you need a lot of RAM to represent increasing numbers of qbits).
This is true only if "can be done" includes the fine print "maybe within the lifetime of the universe" and "a lot of RAM" means "more bytes than there are atoms in the universe".
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This is true only if "can be done" includes the fine print "maybe within the lifetime of the universe"
At this rate, that's still going to be before someone makes a practical quantum computer. These clowns are dicking around with a handful of qubits with which they can't do anything useful and claiming they're going to have a working and useful solution in three years? Absolute nonsense.
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What are you talking about? You can buy quantum computers from a number of vendors today! You can buy one from IonQ, from Rigetti, IBM, Quantum Motion, and others. Do you mean a "utility scale" quantum computer? You should be more precise with your language.
So when are you sending me the money?
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You can buy a quantum computer with a dozen qubits and no algorithms that can outperform conventional computers. There are a few university labs that were interested in buying them, and fewer private labs. Those companies were just black holes for VC money looking for moonshot returns because interest raates were so low. They don't do anything! They just let executives say they have a quantum computer when they do another funding round!
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No company is ever going to release a commercial quantum computer of any kind.
Anyone who wants to disagree with me can do so by betting against me in Kalshi.
Take out "ever", change "release" to "market", and append a specific date more than five years away but within a decade or so and you might get a few takers. But you might also want to qualify what you mean by "commercial", because it is certainly possible to market a product with a price so high that the only organizations able to afford it are governments. Or Elon Musk.
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"No quantum algorithm will be proven (in the meaning of mathematics technical argot) to factor large primes significantly faster (greater than 30% improvement in average processing time) than conventional algorithms by the year 2035."
Is that precise enough for you?
Re: No, It Won't. (Score:2)
Almost. What's your definition of "larger primes"? Larger than what?
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Prime numbers of sufficient length to be used for modern asymetric encryption algorithms.
Re: No, It Won't. (Score:2)
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Quantum computers haven't factored primes larger than 29. Not 29-digits. The number 29.
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There are already commercial quantum computers from DWave https://www.dwavequantum.com/ [dwavequantum.com] . They're rather limited, but they exist. But I don't expect them to be general purpose turing complete by 2029 with very many qbits. Possibly by 2035. And I don't expect them to be personal computers until they stop needing to be cooled with liquid gasses (i.e. supercooled). But I wouldn't bet that this will never be possible.
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Why do so many people seem to confuse the terms "commercial" with "retail"? If a system is large and complex and expensive and thus limited to enterprise level assets, it's still a commercial product! Why do people keep bringing up personal computers? I never said anything about having one sitting on your desk.
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You can bet against QCs in Kalshi for long-term things? Nice. I think I need to have a look at it.
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You can bet on basically anything on Kalshi. It's really quite terrible. A definite sign of a collapsing civilization.
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I do one 'better' (hah! see what I did there.) I disagree with you and I've invested in several QC companies instead. One is down about 20% overall, one is up over 75%, and one is up over 130%. And I'm not cashing any of them in for quite a long time - I believe they will go 5-10x over time. I'm pretty sure I'll come out just fine without betting against you on Kalshi. Quit the bush leagues - get into the real Market.
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You say that like a market can't be entirely irrational for a prolonged period of time. Those stocks aren't up because the fundamentals of those companies are good and they have surging revenue and profit. Those stocks are up because of wild speculation from non-experts like you.
Re: No, It Won't. (Score:2)
Yes, the market can be irrational for long periods of time. None of the QC stocks I invested in are close to making any money yet. And I invested in several, each with different approaches to making QC work. Iâ(TM)ve been working in hardware and software development for decades, and I believe that the breakthrough in QC is coming much sooner than later, based on the progress Iâ(TM)m seeing. So I put some of my money where my mouth is. By 2030, I estimate, one or more of the companies will be m
A thousand times zero... (Score:1)
3 states of matter? (Score:2)
When did we lose a state?
Re:3 states? When did we lose a state? (Score:1)
California joined Canada. The orange thing is now all yours!
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MS claims discovery of new particle? (Score:5, Funny)
...the Higgs BSOD
Q-Day (Score:2)
Good Move! (Score:2)
Good move Microsoft. That stock price isn't going to inflate itself you know!
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It may even be true. But the article I read didn't say how many qbits they had on the chip, or what the error rate was.
Oh my! (Score:2)
Hahahaha, no (Score:2)
How long qbits last when you do not run computations with them is completely irrelevant for a QC. It has no use or application. And no, they will not have anything by 2029 that is more powerful than my 40 year old programmable pocket calculator.
quantum isn't all to be expected via performance (Score:1)
Really, MS? (Score:2)
Powered by Cold Fusion! (Score:1)
1000 x 0 = 0 (Score:1)