Microsoft on Wednesday announced Majorana 1, its first quantum computing chip. The achievement comes after the company has spent nearly two decades of research in the field. Technologists believe quantum computers could one day efficiently solve problems that would be taxing if not impossible for classical computers.

At the core of a quantum computer are qubits, a unit of information in quantum computing much like the binary bits that computers use today. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Goo

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is "years, not decades" away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed.