The processor uses qubits that can be measured without error and are resistant to outside interference, which the company says marks a “transformative leap toward practical quantum computing.”

The tech giant joins Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed. Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is “years,

Microsoft started going down this road nearly 20 years ago, and that research has now yielded what looks like a significant quantum-computing breakthrough. The Majorana 1 chip contains eight qubits, or quantum bits, far fewer than top-tier quantum computers currently in operation.