I honestly cannot wait to find out more about this as the National Labs fall under my Committees jurisdiction and I have a meeting with two of them tomorrow to discuss their AI programs. Microsoft now joins Google, IBM, and Quantum stocks in now having a chip.
Microsoft’s quantum chip employs eight topological qubits using indium arsenide, which is a semiconductor, and aluminum, which is a superconductor. While this chip wont be for commercial use (wont be used in the company's Azure public cloud and they have a new custom AI chip Maia 100 for that) this chip is a huge step for Microsoft that is 20 years in the making.
I was surprised to learn that Microsoft will be building these inhouse as opposed to using Taiwan Semiconductor or another chip manufacturing but given that they are only going to be made on a small scale it does make sense.
They'll all jump in as it's the next big thing after AI.
We shall see. Interesting for sure, how usable it will be is another matter. No one has a home fridge with zero Kelvin temp to run this puppy in...lol
So, it will be "in the cloud" so, you don't really know for sure what you getting.... Can't wait for the hype :-)
This isnt going into the cloud though this is going to the US National Labs and that is a huge deal. Microsoft giving the US government access to these chips is a huge coup for the US research space.
DARPA definitely won't use it to discover molecules. They will be breaking RSA.
DARPA doesnt operate out of the Nat Labs. Just the NNSA besides the Nat Labs themselves. They could do something with research institutions but that would have to be disclosed which they likely wouldnt do. Best bet would be Microsoft work directly with DARPA with Microsoft paying for everything so it doesnt have to be public but thats a huge huge if.
I found this article helpful in understanding how the chip works.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/02/microsoft-builds-its-first-qubits-lays-out-roadmap-for-quantum-computing/