BUSINESS-ECONOMY
Quantum computing has emerged as the next frontier in the technological race, with major tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and IBM investing heavily in its development. Microsoft and Quantinuum announced a major collaboration aimed towards enhancing the reliability of quantum computers on Wednesday. Quantum computing has emerged as the next frontier in the technological race, with major tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and IBM investing heavily in its development. These quantum machines, harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics, promise computational speeds far beyond what conventional computers can achieve. Tasks that would take millions of years with classical computers could become feasible with quantum computing technology. The issue with quantum computers lies in their fundamental unit, the "qubit." Qubits are exceptionally fast but notoriously sensitive, prone to errors even with minor disturbances. To tackle this challenge, researchers often construct more physical qubits than necessary and employ error-correction techniques to obtain a smaller pool of reliable qubits. Microsoft and Quantinuum's breakthrough centres on enhancing the reliability of qubits. By applying a proprietary error-correction algorithm developed by Microsoft to Quantinuum's physical qubits, the collaboration has achieved a significant milestone. From 30 physical qubits, they were able to yield approximately four reliable qubits. This ratio marks a hugeimprovement, with Microsoft's executive vice president for strategic missions and technologies, Jason Zander, claiming it to be the best ever recorded. "We ran more than 14,000 individual experiments without a single error. That's up to 800 times better than anything on record," Reuters quoted Zander as saying. This level of reliability is crucial for the practical implementation of quantum computing. Microsoft plans to make this technology accessible to its cloud computing customers in the coming months, signalling a tangible step towards commercialisation. Quantum researchers have long targeted achieving around 100 reliable qubits, a benchmark believed necessary to surpass the computational power of conventional supercomputers. While neither Microsoft nor Quantinuum disclosed a specific timeline for reaching this milestone, there is optimism surrounding the accelerated progress facilitated by their new technique. Ilyas Khan, the chief product officer of Quantinuum, said that the breakthrough could potentially shorten the timeline by at least two years. (With inputs from Reuters) None
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