What technological breakthrough did Microsoft achieve with the Majorana 1 chip in 2025?
In February 2025, Microsoft announced a significant advancement in quantum computing with the introduction of Majorana 1, the world's first quantum chip powered by a topological core architecture.
This chip utilizes topological qubits based on Majorana zero modes, which are theorized quasiparticles acting as their own antiparticles. These qubits are designed to be more stable and less prone to errors compared to traditional qubits, potentially enabling more reliable and scalable quantum computations.
Majorana 1 currently operates with eight topological qubits, but its architecture is designed to scale up to one million qubits, a threshold considered necessary for practical and impactful quantum computing applications.
The development of Majorana 1 represents a culmination of over two decades of research and positions Microsoft at the forefront of the race to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.
