Microsoft aims to win the race to build a new kind of computer
SEATTLE — The tech giants are locked in a race.
It might not end for another decade, and there might not be just one winner. But, at the finish line, the prize they promise is a speedy machine, a quantum computer, that will crack in minutes problems that can’t be solved at all today. Builders describe revolutionary increases in computing power that will accelerate the development of artificial intelligence, help design new drugs and offer new solutions to help fight climate change.
Ready. Set. Quantum.
Relying on principles of physics and computer science, researchers are working to build a quantum computer, a machine that will go beyond the capabilities of the computers we use today by moving through information faster. Unlike the laptop screen we’re used to, quantum computers display all their inner organs. Often cylindrical, the computers are an intimidating network of coils, plates, wires and bolts. And they’re huge.
“We’re talking about computing devices which are just unimaginable in terms of their power in what they can do,” said Peter Chapman, president and CEO of Ionq, a startup in the race alongside tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Intel and Honeywell.
The companies are riding a swell of interest that could grow to $9.1 billion in revenue by 2030, according to Tractica, a market intelligence firm that studies new technologies and how humans interact with tech advancements.
Right now, each company is deciding how to structure the building blocks needed to create a quantum computer. Some rely on semiconductors, others on light.
Still others, including Microsoft, have pinned their ambitions on previously unproven theories in physics.
“Bottom line, we are in very heavy experimentation mode in quantum computing, and it’s fairly early days,” said Chirag Dekate, who studies the industry for research firm Gartner. “We are in the 1950s state of classical computer hardware.”
There’s not likely to be a single moment when quantum computers start making the world-changing calculations technologists are looking forward to, said Peter Mcmahon, an engineering professor at Cornell University. Rather, “there’s going to be a succession of milestones.”
At each one, the company leading the race could change.
In October 2019, Google said it had reached “quantum supremacy,” a milestone where one of its machines completed a calculation that would have taken today’s most advanced computers 10,000 years.
In October last year, startup Ionq went public with an initial public offering that valued the company at $2 billion. In November, IBM said it had also created a quantum processor big enough to bypass today’s machines.
In March, it was Microsoft’s turn.
After a false start that saw Microsoft retract some research, it said this spring it had proved the physics principles it needed to show that its theory for building a quantum computer was, in fact, possible.
“We expect to capitalize on this to do the almost unthinkable,” Krysta Svore, an engineer who leads Microsoft’s quantum program, said in a company post announcing the discovery. “It’s never been done before. ... [Now] here’s this ultimate validation that we’re on the right path.”
As envisioned by designers, a quantum computer uses subatomic particles like electrons instead of the streams of ones and zeros used by computers today. In doing so, a quantum computer can examine an unimaginable number of combinations of ones and zeros at once.
A quantum computer’s big selling points are speed and multitasking, enabling it to solve complex problems that would trip up today’s technology.