I’ve never been a fan of overly hyped up claims about technology.
Amara’s law says we tend to over-egg technologies impact in the short term but under-estimate it in the long term.
And if you believe Microsoft today they have created a chipset using a type of theoretical particle (Majorana thermion) that hasn’t yet been directly observed.
Thats quite some punching power, especially considering Microsoft doesn’t really work on my computer without having to reboot every 20 minutes.
However today, I found out something most people don’t know 💡, something even more impressive than the New Microsoft Majorana chip you will be hearing about for the next few days on LinkedIn.
I learned that the true pace of development of quantum chips on silicon is far, far, far ahead of where people think it is, it was far in advance of where I thought it was, until today.
So lets be positive.
Microsoft’s Majorana project is just the very start.
I promised I wouldn’t name-drop, but I did have explicit permission to share my excitement.
Apologies to my physics-minded friends, who will likely cringe at my dramatic oversimplifications and detachment from scientific purity—please, feel free to exit here and bury your heads in non-Abelian anyons, while I try to explain to the rest of us why we should care about these new quantum developments like Microsofts big golden chip and those that will follow.
A Recap Of Quantum For Dullards Like Me
So if you have not heard about Quantum Computing or have just started to let me give you the 10,000 foot overview.
Quantum computing has the potential to solve certain types of math problems with unprecedented speed.
This is because quantum bits (qubits) can exist in multiple states at once (a phenomenon called superposition), and can be entangled with one another, allowing for computations that grow exponentially more powerful as more Qubits are added.
This makes quantum computers especially good at problems where you need to try many possibilities fast—like searching for the best route on a map with tons of roads, solving certain kinds of math problems that have a huge number of possible answers, or quickly finding patterns in massive sets of data.
The marketing hyper-spin used is that these chips do calculations that would take existing computers gazillions of years to execute.
True. This benchmarking exists.
Of course Quantum chips are not always faster for every problem, for some types of calculations they are rubbish.
But for certain problems with an enormous number of possible answers, they have a special “superpower” that can tackle certain computations much faster than an ordinary computer.
Currently, one of the biggest challenges with quantum computers is that they look a bit like massive upside-down wedding cakes.
Much of the surrounding equipment is dedicated to cooling and control systems, which keep the actual chip performing its calculations at extremely cold temperatures.
The actual chip or main computational core, similar to Microsoft’s new quantum chip, is typically located at the very bottom of the machine, where it’s blasted with ultra-cold gases.
Explaining Decoherence In A Nutshell
This cold gases reduce the rate which the qubits inside the chip bump into each other and lose their delicate quantum state.
At the quantum level (think Ant-Man), hot atoms bumping into each other really messes up your ability to perform these kinds of computational calculations.
This phenomenon is called decoherence.
If you think of trying to catch a dollar bill in a wind tunnel, something similar is happening with the atoms, photons, or ions inside these chips: they bounce around, making it very difficult to maintain “stable” qubits that can be used for computational processing.
Its a lot more sensitive than that of course.
Some noise, a vibration, a simple whiff of the scientists tea in the lab, all have the potential to make your computational qubit as useless as a chocolate teapot.
It is more ultra sensitive than a billionaire tech bro, on a Ketamine downer.
That’s why quantum computers are cooled to temperatures of around 15 millikelvin (0.015 K)—colder than outer space (about 2.7 K).
At cold temperatures mean less bouncing around and less decoherence and that means you can better control the Qubits for computation.
Thats colder than a Yeti’s walk-in freezer.
The pipes, cables and hardware you see clustered around one of those “upside-down wedding cake computers” are all in the main about cooling and control.
Low Qubit To Footprint Ratio
One of the biggest issues when your quantum computer has more pipes than a plumber’s garage is that scaling its computational power becomes a nightmare.
Although quantum chips and quantum computers are looking less and less like upside-down wedding cakes and more like fridges as manufacturers shrink components, they’re still pretty bulky.
There is a very low Qubit count per square inch of floor space and they are very expensive to boot.
For instance, if you wanted enough quantum computers to crack current RSA encryption, you might need numerous football fields full of them. *Wink Wink
Need to cure cancer? You might need an area the size of Canada (before the U.S. invasion)—jam-packed with bulky fridges, each hiding an upside-down wedding cake inside.
It’s simply too impractical, too expensive, and requires far too much electrical power to be useful at scale. At the moment. Although Quantum computing is being used today, its limited use cases and scale remains a barrier.
So are Quantum Computers Useless?
🐀🐀“Rats! Our quantum dreams are up in smoke,” you might think.
Well, no, not at all.
In fact, the chip just announced from Microsoft is one of the most advanced available today. (There is some discussion in Science circles about this claim - calling BS) but lets not let fact interrupt a good PR story.
It only has 8 qubits, which—by qubit standards—is tiny.
IBM, by comparison, has systems with over 1,000 qubits.
What’s special about these Microsoft qubits is that they’re topological.
This means they may be digitally controlled and they report to be far more stable.
Among other things, they use something called interferometric fermion parity measurement—but let’s not go there.
The key takeaway is that it’s easier to control qubits in this type of setup, which means less decoherence and more reliable quantum computation. (if its true)
Now, watch this video zooming in on an Apple microchip.
(Note: Apple doesn’t make quantum chips—at least not yet, as far as I know.)This is digitally enhanced with an electron microscope.
Wow—nanotechnology is absolutely mind-blowing.🔭🔭
It’s like zooming into a miniature city, complete with tiny “football fields” and even tiny fridges (well, sort of).
This is the same approach that chipmakers are using to miniaturise quantum chips.
While they’re not literally shrinking refrigerators to fit on a chip, the principle stands: if you can make the components smaller, you need less space to store or run them, and they need less power.
Now, if you talk to a quantum cybersecurity expert (depending on how pessimistic they are), they might say that 2,000 to 5,000 stable qubits—or maybe even more—are needed to break the encryption that keeps your computer safe. Thats 625 upside down wedding cakes running the new Microsoft Chips.
Obviously, 8 qubits won’t go very far for that purpose.
The truth is, no one actually knows for sure, because breaking RSA security hasn’t been done yet (*wink wink again).
As for Microsoft’s chip: chunky though it may look today, Microsoft claims they’ll be able to scale to millions of qubits in just a few years.
Imagine it—millions of qubits!
Stable qubits that can run an immense amount of calculations.
Now while that is going to panic everyone in cybersecurity, who have just moved their Quantum Safe encryption projects to the very top of the super urgent list, for the rest of us it poses bigger questions.
What about, for example, modelling all the possible combinations of a financial trade?
What about modelling credit data to eradicate fraud?
What about modelling how we get to Mars?
What about green chemical compounds, or pesticides that dont kill bees?
What about modelling how we fix the climate crisis?
What about optimising solar cells so that one tiny panel can power our houses?
What about optimising the energy grid or cold fusion reactors so we have unlimited power?
What about I stop asking silly questions?
Well, unfortunately, really difficult problems—like modelling molecular chemistry to cure certain types of cancer, or working out the secrets of space—will likely need hundreds of millions of stable qubits, possibly billions upon billions.
And that, my friends, is why I’m excited.
Imagine a chip that could a billion qubits.
Now imagine a single football field of servers, each running one billion qubits.
Well, there are companies today—such as diraq.com (and others)—that are already pretty close to figuring out how to make that happen.
They predict that by 2040 (see their roadmap), they’ll have quantum dots running on silicon chips that can scale up to a billion qubits.
There are also teams of brilliant researchers out there right now working out how to apply the same technology—(remember that interferometric fermion parity measurement)—to silicon chips that scale to billions of qubits as well.
And there is even more good news, they have just discovered a material that may be able to store and manipulate information on these chips in multiple ways, solving some of our most complex scaling issues.
So that’s potentially billions and billions of stable qubits available before your children are even middle-aged, available on cheaper circuit boards, scaling to the hundreds of billions of Qubits (possibly, potentially, perhaps).
No invasion of Canada required.
And you think AI is big?
Humanity is about to experience a true epoch shift in our technological capabilities—assuming we don’t let politicians mess it up first.
The pace of innovation in this sector is far, far ahead of what most people realise.
How do I know this? Come and attend some of the lecture events at Quantum Security and Defence, or follow Quantum Security Defence on LinkedIn.
You’ll meet interesting folks doing some strange, crazy and amazing things with Quantum Technologies.
What does this mean for business?
Simply put, if your business model relies on complex computation in any way, it’s about to be upended faster than an American peace accord.
If you’re in tech, start reading now and don’t stop until you can say “quaking quantum qubits” three times fast.
Thanks for listening—share this article if you love your children, or if you need money.
About me
Helping leaders in Cybersecurity, Quantum, and AI drive high-impact growth, stronger valuations, and better exits.
📌 Director of the world’s largest Quantum Cybersecurity community (700+ members), connecting top experts in Quantum, AI, and Cybersecurity.
📌 C-suite executive with a proven track record in scaling tech, finance, and asset finance businesses across EMEA & APAC.
📌 Former network engineer with deep expertise in computational Root Cause Analysis & Causal Reasoning, applied in military and telecom environments.
📌 Member of the Institute of Directors, European Corporate Governance Institute, and Royal United Services Institute for Defence & Security.
