Microsoft Announces Breakthrough With Quantum Chip

[00:00] Microsoft has a new quantum chip. It  is called Majorana 2, and according to   Microsoft it is a big step towards a useful  quantum computer. If this sounds familiar,   that’s because Microsoft said the same thing  already last year, when they announced Majorana  

[00:14] 1. That announcement was controversial because  many physicists, including myself, said the   evidence does not support their claims. But now  Microsoft is doubling down. Let’s have a look.

[00:26] In the new press release, Microsoft says that  they have a “topological quantum chip” that was,   of course “developed with the help of  Microsoft’s agentic AI” and which has   a “mean qubit lifetime of 20 seconds” and “a  1,000-fold improvement in reliability.” They  

[00:44] also say they now expect to build a scalable  quantum computer by twenty twenty nine, whereas   just last year they put that at 2033. So  they now say they can do it twice as fast!

[00:56] That sounds amazing. It  also sounds somewhat vague,   shall we say, microsofty. How  big of a deal is this really? If it’s right it is a big deal indeed. Most  companies which work on quantum computing,  

[01:11] Google, Amazon, IBM, and others, use  superconducting circuits as quantum bits,   or qubits, that are the logical units  that a quantum computer computes with. Microsoft instead works on  topological quantum computing,  

[01:26] which is the method with the highest risk  but also the highest potential payoff. For topological quantum computing one  tries to create qubits whose states are  

[01:38] protected by conservation laws. The conserved  quantities are certain topological invariants,   knots or boundary conditions, hence  the name topological quantum computing. Because the topological qubits  have this extra protection,  

[01:53] they are less susceptible to noise. And this  is a great advantage because noise is the   major obstacle on the way to building quantum  computers which are large enough to be useful.

[02:05] Microsoft has been working on this for  more than a decade. Last year, then,   they announced Majorana 1, a computing platform  that allegedly uses topological qubits, and that,  

[02:17] according to their press release, can “realize  quantum computers capable of solving meaningful,   industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.” But the paper which they had to go along with the  press release last year didn’t even present data  

[02:32] for even a single qubit. Microsoft was widely  criticized for the misleading press release. A few months later, the Microsoft team  published a pre-print In which they claimed  

[02:47] that they’ve successfully created a qubit  with four Majorana modes. Again, though,   the paper was widely criticized. Other researchers  who work on topological quantum computing said,   if we leave aside the academic jargon,  the data is crap and they have nothing.

[03:04] The new announcement is now somewhat of a déjà vu.  Again the press release speaks of qubits. Again,   the paper that goes with the press  release doesn’t support the claim. The paper speaks of topological phases  and parity states and that these might  

[03:20] one day be used for topological  qubits. But it doesn’t present   any data that demonstrate they  have actual topological qubits. You see the problem is not the qubits  themselves. And the problem is not the  

[03:34] topological states either. The problem is that  Microsoft needs both: qubits from topological   states. And this very thing, which they need,  is the thing that they have not demonstrated.

[03:48] What they actually do present is that they  have changed the material which they used   from aluminium to lead and that has  dramatically increased the lifetime   of the quantum effects. This is basically  because lead has a larger superconducting gap,  

[04:03] so the superconducting phase is better  protected. This is nice. But not what they need. Again, scientists are not convinced. The condensed  matter physicist Henry Legg told Science News:  

[04:16] “Nothing in this preprint resolves  the fundamental issues.” Marin Ivecic,   who works in quantum computing, wrote in a  Linkedin Post that smells like it was written   by ChatGPT that it's “strong marketing, contested  evidence.” And the physicist Sergey Frolov,  

[04:33] told Scientific American “This new preprint  is not based on a research track record that   can be considered a solid foundation.” and  “When Microsoft is mentioned these days,   physicists and quantum computing specialists  just chuckle or raise their eyebrows.”

[04:48] I give the paper a 2 out of 10 on the bullshit  meter, but the press release an 8 out of 10. Why   not a 10? Because I think they are doing serious  research and interesting research and hearing that  

[05:01] everyone just laughs about it seems rather unfair. But that is the story. Microsoft hasn’t backed   Or, in Microsoft terms: the progress  bar says ninety nine percent. But it  

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