Microsoft and Rambus have announced a partnership whereby they will be jointly looking into the memory requirements which will be necessary for quantum computing to become a reality in some form.
Quantum computing is potentially the future when it comes to driving processing power forward at a rate of knots, and utilises quantum bits (qubits) which can have more than two simple states (0 or 1).
And Microsoft wants to push on in this arena, looking at the theoretical side of creating quantum computers, and designing the relevant hardware and software – basically laying the groundwork at this point, rather than actually building such a machine.
And exploring the memory requirements with Rambus is a key part of the puzzle.
As Rambus Labs VP Gary Bronner observes in a blog post (spotted by Silicon Angle), new high-performance computer systems are needed as current computer architectures are hitting their limits, particularly when it comes to coping with the explosion of big data (flames that will be fanned as the Internet of Things expands rapidly in the near future).
Bronner wrote: "By working with Microsoft on this project, we can leverage our vast expertise in memory systems to identify new architectural models."
Both firms are set to pool their resources to explore potential architectures that could "significantly enhance memory capabilities" across a range of scenarios.
Microsoft has been researching quantum computing for the past decade, although the company has got far more serious about the subject in recent times – back in the summer of 2014 Redmond set up a quantum hardware design group to help spur the work on.
Via: Neowin
