Microsoft redefines physics with a brand new quantum chip
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
- Google discovers the multiverse, Microsoft discover new physics
- Is all this quantum stuff building to something?
- Gerbils from space!
If that’s enough to get the physics changing, read on…
AI Collision 💥
Considering how bad Microsoft Teams is, it’s somewhat astounding Microsoft (MSFT) has managed to not just release a new quantum computing chip, but invent a new state of matter.
That’s right. New matter.
Can’t fix Teams, can defy physics.
That’s my kind of company!
But really, I’m not joking. As we all know, in observable physics there are four states that something can exist: solid, liquid, gas and plasma.
Well, not according to Microsoft. I’m not going to beat around the bush here: I’m not qualified to know exactly what the heck it’s done here. I will read the papers and the posts and do my best to understand it, but that’s going to take some time.
However, Microsoft has gone and explained it for us… good luck with this.
All of today’s announcements build on our team’s recent breakthrough: the world’s first topoconductor. This revolutionary class of materials enables us to create topological superconductivity, a new state of matter that previously existed only in theory.
The advance stems from Microsoft’s innovations in the design and fabrication of gate-defined devices that combine indium arsenide (a semiconductor) and aluminum (a superconductor). When cooled to near absolute zero and tuned with magnetic fields, these devices form topological superconducting nanowires with Majorana Zero Modes (MZMs) at the wires’ ends.
For nearly a century, these quasiparticles existed only in textbooks. Now, we can create and control them on demand in our topoconductors.
Rightio.
How about a tidy video explainer please, Microsoft?
That’s… better…?
So we’re not going to get all this right away. The announcement is only a day old. But it does raise an important question. With Google coming out with its new quantum chip recently, Willow, and now Microsoft releasing its quantum chip, Majorana, what does this mean for the likes of Nvidia who only recently said that practical quantum computing is decades away?
Are quantum chips a threat to Nvidia? Does it replace the GPU? Will AI be powered by the quantum realm inside the next five years? Ten? Our lifetime?
Or is it one of those situations where the Nvidia Blackwell chips today are like the IBM 700s of the 50s and it’s not for another 50 or 60 years that quantum computing really flies? To be honest, I’d say sooner rather than later. And the work from Google and Microsoft suggests so as well. As does comments from CEOs like Alan Baratz from D-Wave.
It’s also worth noting that at this year’s Nvidia GTC 2025 – the huge Nvidia conference which seems to send the AI market alight every year – Nvidia is hosting its first ever “quantum day”.
I suggest marking 20 March 2025 in the calendars, because maybe all this quantum-related news is building to something…
It feels like this quantum story is going to be one of the defining market stories for 2025. And that could mean some of the quantum computing plays in the market end up as some of the most exciting stocks in 2025 – I might have to change the name of this publication to Quantum Collision 💥.
😉
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Missed Nvidia? This could be your second chance…
A new technology could be about to change the global balance of power – for the next half-century. I’ve been tracking this story directly on the ground… I believe this is easily the biggest financial opportunity in Britain today.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
- Dell Technologies (NYSE:DELL) up 8%
- Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) up 8%
- Micron (NASDAQ:MU) up 8%
Bust 📉
- BigBear.ai (NYSE:BBAI) down 23%
- Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) down 10%
- Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) down 8%
From the hive mind 🧠
- You know, the answer to this probably isn’t AI, it’s social media. That is a reflection of modern society, so it’s probably just us making ourselves more stupid.
- More on this soon. But it is worth thinking about, how the gaming industry changes as AI becomes your own person in-house developer.
- A few hundred million here, a few billion there, plenty of cash still getting splashed about in the AI venture capital scene…
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️
Weirdest AI image of the day
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”
— Edsger W. Dijkstra
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
QUANTUM CHIPS SHOULD ULTIMATELY PROVE LESS ENERGY INTENSIVE THAN EXISTING CHIP ARCHITECTURES.
A new state of matter is stretching the definition of what they have done if I understand it correctly. It is very impressive as a lab experiment but essentially they are using the world’s smallest magnetically induced wi fi to connect every point simultaneously rather than using hardwired gateways. Many modern chips use nano stacking of transistors therefore they are topographical in their architecture but multi connected through their layers.
Cooling items close to absolute zero requires lots of energy and lots of highly sophisticated equipment. The problem with trying to use this at scale is you bump into those pesky thermodynamics laws that push everything towards equilibrium. Quantum physics is filled with examples of the normal everyday laws of physics we observe breaking down at this level but there is still a push towards equilibrium in pressure and temperature along with entropy.
I think Nvidia is quite safe for now.