Microsoft's Quantum search for the "Next Transistor" !!
Now,
After a successful journey till now, Microsoft is viewing further to invest in a project to make a whole new kind of computer using the concepts of Quantum Physics.
Peter Lee announced that Microsoft will make investment to create the basic component needed for a quantum computer. He appreciated the efforts of Bell Labs, who made silicon transistor which is the base for all computing today. Microsoft has a dedicated quantum computing research lab, known as Station Q, on the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara.
A quantum computer should be able to complete calculations that are effectively impossible for any conventional machine today. None has ever been built. Although the Canadian company D-Wave Systems has sold several machines it says are quantum computers, experts say there is still no definitive proof that they exploit quantum principles and can beat conventional machines.
Its research effort is aimed at developing a reliable version of the qubit, the key building block of a quantum computer. Just like a transistor in a conventional computer, a qubit can switch between states that represent either a 1 or 0 of digital data. But a qubit can also exploit quantum effects to reach a “superposition state” that is both 1 and 0 at the same time. That would allow a quantum computer to process data many times faster than any conventional computer.
Microsoft’s research focuses on a type of qubit known as a topological qubit that theory suggests would encode data in a much more robust way.
Work is now underway to actually build a working topological qubit. To support that effort, Microsoft has developed specialized tools for quantum experiments and given them to the academic community. Those tools range from cloud simulation platforms for theoretical work to new types of electronics for use in the super-cooled temperatures of quantum hardware experiments.
