Microsoft’s next-gen quantum chip cuts timeline to useful quantum computing

微软下一代量子芯片缩短了实现实用量子计算的时间表

Microsoft claimed last year that it had made a key breakthrough in quantum computing with Majorana 1, the company’s first quantum processor. While physicists were immediately skeptical of Microsoft’s claims, the software giant is announcing Majorana 2 today, the next generation of its topological quantum chip.

微软去年声称，其首款量子处理器 Majorana 1 在量子计算领域取得了关键性突破。尽管物理学家们当时对微软的说法持怀疑态度，但这家软件巨头今日正式发布了其下一代拓扑量子芯片——Majorana 2。

Majorana 2 contains qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today, that are 1,000 times more reliable, according to Microsoft. It’s a milestone that helps make quantum computing more reliable, thanks to the use of a new material stack and some help from Microsoft Discovery’s agentic AI.

据微软称，Majorana 2 所包含的量子比特（量子计算中的信息单位，类似于当今计算机使用的二进制位）可靠性提升了 1000 倍。得益于全新的材料堆叠技术以及 Microsoft Discovery 智能体 AI 的辅助，这一里程碑式的进展使量子计算变得更加可靠。

“To create Majorana 2, the Microsoft Quantum team improved Majorana 1’s material stack to create a more stable topological phase,” explains Chetan Nayak, Microsoft technical fellow and corporate vice president of quantum hardware. “Majorana 2 replaces Majorana 1’s superconductor, aluminum, with lead, and also updates the semiconductor active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide antimonide.”

“为了打造 Majorana 2，微软量子团队改进了 Majorana 1 的材料堆叠，从而创造出更稳定的拓扑相，”微软技术院士兼量子硬件企业副总裁 Chetan Nayak 解释道，“Majorana 2 将 Majorana 1 中的超导体铝替换为铅，并将半导体有源区更新为砷化铟与砷锑化铟的组合。”

The improved materials mean better performance of qubits, according to Microsoft. “In the aluminum-based Majorana 1, qubit lifetimes were between one and 12 milliseconds, whereas in Majorana 2, the lifetimes exceed 20 seconds, representing more than 1,000x improvement in stability,” says Nayak. Some qubit lifetimes now exceed a minute, enough to convince Microsoft that it has made enough significant progress to promise useful quantum computing much sooner.

微软表示，材料的改进意味着量子比特性能的提升。Nayak 说道：“在基于铝的 Majorana 1 中，量子比特的寿命在 1 到 12 毫秒之间；而在 Majorana 2 中，寿命超过了 20 秒，这意味着稳定性提升了 1000 倍以上。”目前，部分量子比特的寿命甚至超过了一分钟，这足以让微软确信其已取得重大进展，并承诺将更快实现实用的量子计算。

“Based on this rapid progress, we are accelerating our roadmap to a scalable, practical quantum computer,” says Nayak. “We have cut our timeline in half and now aim to reach this target by 2029.” Microsoft is working toward building a fault-tolerant prototype quantum computer based on topological qubits, with an aim of quantum computing solving some of the world’s most difficult problems.

“基于这一快速进展，我们正在加速实现可扩展、实用型量子计算机的路线图，”Nayak 表示，“我们将时间表缩短了一半，现在的目标是在 2029 年前实现这一目标。”微软正致力于构建基于拓扑量子比特的容错量子计算机原型，旨在利用量子计算解决世界上一些最棘手的难题。

Microsoft is now releasing Discovery, the platform that helped improve its Majorana chips, to its customers today. Microsoft Discovery is designed to help apply agentic workflows to research and development programs. A local app version of Microsoft Discovery is now available on GitHub, and researchers can use a GitHub Copilot account to access it.

微软今日正式向客户发布了曾助力 Majorana 芯片改进的平台——Discovery。Microsoft Discovery 旨在帮助将智能体工作流应用于研发项目。目前，Microsoft Discovery 的本地应用版本已在 GitHub 上线，研究人员可以使用 GitHub Copilot 账户进行访问。