Microsoft announces Azure Quantum, an open cloud ecosystem to learn and build scalable quantum solutions

Yesterday, at the Microsoft Ignite 2019 in Orlando, the company released the preview of its first full-stack, scalable, general open cloud ecosystem, ‘Azure Quantum’. For developers, Microsoft has specifically created the open-source Quantum Development Kit, which includes all of the tools and resources you need to start learning and building quantum solutions.

Azure Quantum is a set of quantum services including pre-built solutions to software and quantum hardware, providing developers and customers access to some of the most competitive quantum offerings in the market. For this offering, Microsoft has partnered with 1QBit, Honeywell, IonQ, and QCI.

With Azure Quantum service, anyone gains deeper insights about quantum computing through a series of tools and learning tutorials such as the quantum katas. It also allows developers to write programs with Q# and QDK and experiment running the code against simulators and a variety of quantum hardware. Customers can also solve complex business challenges with pre-built solutions and algorithms running in Azure.

According to Wired, “Azure Quantum has similarities to a service from IBM, which has offered free and paid access to prototype quantum computers since 2016. Google, which said last week that one of its quantum processors had achieved a milestone known as “quantum supremacy” by outperforming a top supercomputer, has said it will soon offer remote access to quantum hardware to select companies.”

Microsoft’s Azure Quantum model is more like the existing computing industry, where cloud providers allow customers to choose processors from companies such as Intel and AMD, says William Hurley, CEO of startup Strangeworks. This startup offers services for programmers to build and collaborate with quantum computing tools from IBM, Google, and others.

With just a single program, users will be able to target a variety of hardware through Azure Quantum – Azure classical computing, quantum simulators, and resource estimators, and quantum hardware from our partners, as well as our future quantum system being built on revolutionary topological qubit.

Microsoft, on its official website, announced that the Azure Quantum will be launched in private preview in the coming months.

Many users are excited to try the Quantum service by Azure.

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To know more about Azure Quantum in detail, visit Microsoft’s official page.