Microsoft unveils quantum supercomputer roadmap

Recently, Microsoft unveiled its roadmap for quantum supercomputers. Chetan Nayak, the Vice President of Advanced Quantum Computing Development, expressed that the development team anticipates constructing and completing the first quantum supercomputer within a decade, with the goal of achieving one million quantum operations per second.

Currently, Microsoft has achieved the first milestone by producing a topological superconducting phase and its associated Majorana zero modes. The company states that independent experts have validated the provided data and have begun designing the world’s first topological qubits. This is the only known design with the potential to meet the scalability requirements for quantum computing, surpassing the stability of any other engineered qubit thus far.

Previously, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had expressed during relevant events that Microsoft intends to combine artificial intelligence and quantum computing through Azure Quantum, ushering in a new era of scientific discovery. The objective is to compress 250 years of progress in chemistry and material science into 25 years.

In pursuit of this goal, Microsoft has made three significant announcements:

• Azure Quantum Elements integrates breakthroughs in high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence, and quantum computing, enabling researchers to make significant advancements in scale, speed, and accuracy in chemistry and material science, thereby accelerating scientific discovery.
• Copilot in Azure Quantum assists scientists in using natural language to reason complex problems in chemistry and material science. It can accomplish intricate tasks such as generating foundational computations and simulations, querying and visualizing data, and obtaining guided answers to complex concepts.
• Microsoft’s roadmap to a quantum supercomputer includes three levels: Level One – Foundations, operating on noisy physical qubits; Level Two – Elasticity, running on reliable logical qubits; Level Three – Scalability, where a quantum supercomputer can tackle important problems that even the most powerful classical supercomputers cannot solve.

Chetan Nayak stated that Microsoft believes its roadmap and the path to a quantum supercomputer will take years rather than decades.