Earlier this month, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) selected Microsoft’s topoconductor as one of two pathways to quantum computing it is exploring as part of a programme intended to determine whether it is possible to build an industrially useful quantum computer by 2033, much faster than most predictions.
Microsoft claims that the topoconductor offers a path to developing quantum systems that can scale to a million qubits – the delicate building blocks of quantum computers that are analogous to the ones and zeros computers currently use.
Paul Stevenson, a professor of physics at the University of Surrey, said Microsoft could be “very serious competitors” in the race to build the first reliable quantum computers if the company successfully built on this research.
Quantum computers could be built within years rather than decades, according to Microsoft, which has unveiled a breakthrough that it said could pave the way for faster development.
Booth said that although Microsoft’s progress had been slow relative to some other companies, it had instead “focused on the long game by working on a system which is inherently more resilient to noise and interference” than the fragile basic quantum computers that competitors have been building for a few years.
