The race to shape the future of computing is heating up among tech companies, with Microsoft saying it's made a major breakthrough in quantum computing, potentially paving the way for the technology to address complex scientific and societal challenges.Scientists at the tech giant have spent 17 years developing a new material and framework for quantum computing to help power its new Majorana 1 processor. Microsoft is calling the advancement the world's first quantum processor powered by topological qubits, the fundamental units of quantum computation. The company published its latest research in the journal Nature.Unlike traditional computers, quantum computers can process massive amounts of data at the same time in ways that could revolutionize fields such as science, medicine, energy and artificial intelligence. However, quantum computing is prone to errors because of the instability of qubits.But Microsoft said it's new topoconductor -- made of a new material from indium arsenide (a semiconductor) and aluminum (a superconductor) -- can perform tasks with greater speed and accuracy than traditional qubits. The Majorana 1 chip is designed to scale up to 1 million qubits on a single, compact chip.The news comes as several tech companies race to advance quantum computing. In December, Google unveiled its latest quantum computing chip called Willow, claiming it can complete a complex computing challenge in 5 minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers longer than 10 septillion years.Microsoft said it is on track to build the world's first fault-tolerant, scalable quantum computer within years rather than decades. The effort is part of a US government's Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) initiative designed to make quantum computing practical for the real world.