Trigger warning: we’re about to geek-out over some pretty obscure tech here. Stop reading now in case you don’t have the stomach for that type of stuff.
Still here? Alright, let’s dive in.
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about Microsoft’s new quantum chip, Majorana. Scepticism aside, it’s being marketed as the most promising step yet toward a million-qubit machine. Whether that’s credible or not isn’t my concern. What I’m interested in is figuring out what kind of animal we’re actually dealing with here.
Readers of posts like these will know I’ve got an unquenchable thirst for understanding the lay of the quantum land. I don’t need every last technical detail—I neither want to nor could keep up—I’m just after the big picture, the what’s-what.
The problem with quantum, however, is that even aiming for a high-level overview tends to turn into a wild goose chase, since concepts bleed into each other.
Take the Majorana chip, for instance: at first blush it seems like it’s introducing yet another qubit modality. But look a little closer, and it goes deeper than that. In fact, if we’re splitting hairs, it doesn’t really have qubits at all. What it has are modes—specifically, topologically braided modes.
It also doesn’t have gates. And that, to me, is what’s truly interesting—though it’s not what makes the headlines. Microsoft’s move here isn’t just about hardware; it’s a step toward a radically different quantum computing paradigm. Not the mainstream gate-based (or circuit-based) model, but something stranger.
By this point, I suspect even the geeks have zoned out. But I’m still here, typing away—because this gets personal. I happen to be working with another non-gate-based quantum paradigm, one just as exotic as the braiding logic of Majorana fermions. It’s called Measurement-Based Quantum Computing, or MBQC. And there aren’t many teams pursuing it.
Unless, of course, you count Microsoft. I recently heard a very sharp industry insider suggest that Majorana-based computing belongs to the MBQC family.
That sent me right back down the quantum rabbit hole. And here’s what I found: what Microsoft’s doing is computationally analogous to MBQC—it’s just that the logic is topological rather than entanglement-based.
At this point, I feel like I’m zoning out.
Quantum. Nobody said it was supposed to be straightforward.