Microsoft and Google have made breakthroughs in quantum computing, a technology that could revolutionize drug discovery and other fields.

With the development, Microsoft is raising the stakes in what is set to be the next big technological contest.

Microsoft has long been working on an alternative that could cut down on the overhead by using components that are far more stable. These components, called Majorana quasiparticles, are not real particles. Instead, they are special patterns of behavior that may arise inside certain physical systems and under certain conditions.