With dozens of companies, from small startups to tech giants, pursuing quantum computing, there's a steady flow of results as they try to find a path to utility. We typically focus on new technologies and major landmarks, which can obscure the fact that any big success will inevitably have been built on a lot of incremental progress. The past few weeks have seen a number of companies release progress reports on how they're trying to get the technologies closer to general use. None of these represents a major breakthrough, but all are absolutely necessary for the technology to advance. The idea here is to convey the hard work required to move us closer to something useful. Microsoft does material science Microsoft is one of the few companies working on topological qubits, based on the distinct physics that occurs when particles are confined. Microsoft's system relies on a thin superconducting wire placed on top of a semiconductor. In supercond...
