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Draft:Microsoft Azure Quantum

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Microsoft Azure Quantum
Developer(s)Microsoft
Initial releaseFebruary 1, 2021; 3 years ago (2021-02-01)[1]

Microsoft Azure Quantum (Azure Quantum) is part of Microsoft’s Strategic Mission and Technologies division centered on high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and quantum computing with early applications in chemistry and materials science.[2][3] Microsoft Azure Quantum is also the name for the company’s cloud service that provides access to quantum and hybrid HPC-quantum services.[4]

Azure Quantum uses a platform approach to quantum computing that includes original research, quantum networks, and software and hardware development.[5][6][7][8][9][10] The Azure Quantum Elements workbench combines AI and HPC for quantum chemistry and materials science research.[2][3] The Azure Quantum team also has developed a quantum programming language – Q# (pronounced Q Sharp) and an Azure Quantum Development Kit.[11]

In 2024, Azure Quantum and Quantinuum created four logical qubits from 30 physical qubits on trapped ion hardware using a quantum error correction code. The work attained an error rate 800x better than physical qubits alone and performed 14,000 error-free experiments.[12][13]

Microsoft is the only major technology company with a history of research and development in topological quantum computing.[14]

History

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In 2000, physicist Alexei Kitaev at Microsoft Research proposed the idea of using Majorana particles for topological quantum computing. Microsoft has pursued this approach since 2004.[5]

In 2003, Michael Freedman, who led Microsoft’s quantum research at Station Q in 2005, authored a paper with Kitaev demonstrating how a topological quantum computer could perform any computation that a conventional quantum computer could.[6][7]

In 2005, Das Sarma, Freedman and Chetan Nayak proposed creating a topological qubit using the fractional quantum Hall effect.[8] Nayak took on the role of general manager for Microsoft’s quantum hardware program the same year. In 2006 and 2008, the team continued with publication of papers using non-abelian anyons for topological quantum computing.[15][16] In 2015, Microsoft further developed its theoretical framework of Majorana zero modes for information processing through braiding-based topological quantum computing.[17]

In 2017, Microsoft released Q#, a programming language for quantum algorithms, as part of its quantum development kit.[18]

Microsoft’s Azure Quantum platform was officially released for public preview in February 2021 as part of Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technologies division, which focuses on commercializing emerging technologies across quantum computing, telecommunications, space, satellites, cloud and digital transformation.[1]

In December 2021, Krysta Svore, a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, took on the role of vice president of quantum software.[19]

In March 2022, Matthias Troyer, a Distinguished Scientist and Technical Fellow at Microsoft, joined the quantum system architecture and quantum application development to lead these efforts.[20]

In 2023, Azure Quantum Elements was released to accelerate scientific discovery in computational chemistry by scaling and speeding up molecular simulations and calculations using HPC, AI and quantum computing.[10]

The same year, the Azure Quantum team demonstrated the ability to create and control Majorana quasiparticles, the qubits in Microsoft’s topological quantum computer.[21]

At the end of 2023, the team outlined three quantum computing implementation levels (QCIL), starting at a foundational level with noisy physical qubits, progressing to a resilient state with reliable logical qubits and finally achieving scale with quantum supercomputers.[22][23][24]

In 2024, in collaboration with Quantinuum, Microsoft achieved the resilient level of quantum implementation on a trapped ion system by creating 4 logical qubits from 30 physical qubits.[12]

Technology

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Hardware

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Microsoft offers cloud access to quantum computing with the most logical qubits available, asserting in 2024 that its error correction algorithm on a trapped ion processor from Quantinuum demonstrated the best ratio of reliable logical qubits to physical qubits on a quantum chip ever produced, up to 800 times better than previous records.[12][13]

Azure Quantum cloud-based software supports other quantum hardware modalities, including neutral atom and superconducting systems.[25]

Topological quantum computing

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Microsoft Azure Quantum is building a topological quantum computer from Majorana zero modes due to their inherent protection against errors and potential to make qubits faster, smaller and more accurate than other quantum computing approaches.[26]

Microsoft’s ideas for a topological quantum computer were first proposed in 2005, and their first prerequisite for topological quantum computing by Majorana zero modes was achieved in 2023, when Microsoft engineered devices to induce and control a topological phase creating Majorana zero modes.[8][21]

Majorana zero modes allow a qubit to be split into two parts, protecting the encoded information from local disturbances. The neutral charge of the particle also means no energy difference exists in Majorana zero modes between its two possible states, making them more stable and less prone to environmental disturbances than other qubit types.[26]

In 2022, Microsoft demonstrated the underlying physics required to build scalable topological qubits with Majorana particles. The topological gap protocol creates and sustains a topological quantum phase of matter bookended by a pair of Majorana zero modes.[27]

Microsoft’s process layers semiconducting and superconducting materials onto a device in an extremely controlled and atomically precise way. In the presence of specific magnetic fields and voltages, the devices can produce a topological phase with a pair of Majorana zero modes.[27]

In 2022, the Microsoft Azure Quantum team demonstrated the ability to create and control Majorana quasiparticles.[28][27] The paper published in 2023 presented measurements and simulations of semiconductor-superconductor heterostructure devices that are consistent with the observation of topological superconductivity and Majorana zero modes.[21]

The topological gap protects quantum information against interaction with the environment, differentiating Microsoft’s hardware platform from those that have only demonstrated non-Abelian anyons in software systems.[22]

Software

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The Azure Quantum Development Kit (QKD) is used to interface with Azure Quantum services and build quantum programs for quantum hardware. The Modern QKD, released in March 2024, is the latest version of the Classic QDK, released in December 2017.[29][30]

Q# (Q sharp) is Azure Quantum’s open-source, domain-specific programming language for developing and running quantum algorithms. The QKD includes access to local and Azure-hosted simulators to test Q# solutions.[31]

Azure Quantum Copilot is a GPT-4 based LLM (Large Language Model) tool for quantum researchers that generates Q# sample codes for educational purposes and has a built-in code editor, quantum simulator, and code compilation.[32][33] It also generates calculations and simulations, visualizes data and provides guided answers. [33]

Microsoft’s Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) is an intermediate (abstract) representation which serves as a common interface between quantum programming languages and quantum computation platforms.[34] QIR allows users to take high-level languages, map them to QIR and send it to back-end providers.[35]

The Azure Quantum Resource Estimator is an open-source tool for estimating the resources needed to execute a given quantum algorithm on a fault-tolerant quantum computer. The tool includes parameters which can be customized for various levels of the quantum computing stack, including application (Q#), compilation (QIR) and modeling.[36] The estimator can also be applied to quantum cryptography to investigate how quantum computing will impact common encryption algorithms.[37]

Implementation Levels

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In 2023, Microsoft proposed three levels of implementation for quantum computing: Foundational, Resilient and Scale.[33][38][39]

At the foundational level, Noisy intermediate-scale quantum era devices, and industry are limited by errors and are used for experimentation to prepare for scaled quantum computing. Industry progress is measured by qubit count and quantum volume.

At the resilient level, quantum systems are operated by reliable logical qubits. Microsoft claimed to have reached this level in 2024.[33]

At the scale level, quantum supercomputers will be able to solve intractable problems beyond the abilities of the most powerful classical supercomputers.[12]

Quantum Error Correction

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In 2024, Microsoft developed a qubit virtualization system that completed more than 14,000 experiments on a trapped ion quantum computer without error, using 30 physical qubits to create 4 reliable logical qubits.[12]

Further testing of the quantum error correction code showed that the system had an error rate of 1 in 100,000, approximately 800 times better than the performance of the same quantum computer without the logical qubits from Microsoft.[12]

Microsoft asserted that the work with logical qubits marked an advancement in the quantum industry to Level 2 – resilient quantum computing.[12]

Networks 

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In 2024, Photonic and Microsoft collaborated to perform a teleported CNOT gate between qubits physically separated by 40 meters. By confirming remote quantum entanglement between T-centers, the work represents a first requirement for long-distance quantum communication.[40]

Microsoft invested in the company in 2023 and made Photonic’s quantum computer available in Azure Quantum Elements.[41]

Benchmarking 

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In 2023, Microsoft introduced a benchmark for quantum computer performance called reliable Quantum Operations Per Second (rQOPS), a metric of that combines several separate metrics: logical error rates, clock speed, and number of reliable qubits.[22][42]

rQOPS is calculated as rQOPS=Q x f, at a corresponding logical error rate pL., where Q is the number of logical qubits and f is the logical clock speed. Microsoft has selected this metric for the higher quantum computing implementation levels as it encompasses scale, speed, and reliability. Their initial goal is to achieve an rQOPS measure of 1 million.[22]

Products

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Azure Quantum Elements

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Azure Quantum Elements (AQE) is a computational chemistry and materials science platform that provides access to high-performance computing, AI and quantum.

Announced in 2023, AQE uses a combination of HPC clusters, AI-accelerated computing and AI-augmented reasoning, quantum tools and existing quantum hardware, and future access to Microsoft’s quantum supercomputer.[42][43]

The platform was also launched with Copilot, a generative AI assistant trained on materials science and quantum computing data which uses natural language processing to write code and answer computational chemistry queries.[42][43]

Integrated Hybrid Computing

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In 2023, Microsoft released Integrated Hybrid Computing in Azure Quantum to integrate classical and quantum compute architectures in the cloud.

Integrated quantum computing allows classical computations to be performed while physical qubits are coherent.[44] As a result, classical code controls execution of quantum operations based on mid-circuit measurements.[45] Programs run on the platform can then use common programming constructs to perform mid-circuit measurements, optimize and reuse qubits, and adapt in real-time to the QPU.[44]

The platform can be used for adaptive phase estimation and machine learning.[44]

In addition, quantum-inspired optimization algorithms can be run on classical hardware, using a quantum approach to enable speed-ups over traditional approaches.[46]

References

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  1. ^ a b Lardinois, Frederic (1 Feb 2021). "Microsoft's Azure Quantum is Now in Public Preview". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 26, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "Microsoft puts Azure Quantum Elements to work". TechCrunch. 9 January 2024. Retrieved 2024-06-24.
  3. ^ a b "Accelerating discovery with Azure Quantum Elements". C&EN. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  4. ^ "What is Azure Quantum?". TechTarget. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  5. ^ a b Kitaev, A Yu (2001). "Unpaired Majorana fermions in quantum wires". Physics-Uspekhi. 44 (10S): 131–136. arXiv:cond-mat/0010440. doi:10.1070/1063-7869/44/10S/S29. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  6. ^ a b Freedman, Michael; Kitaev, Alexei; Larsen, Michael; Wang, Zhenghan (2002). "Topological quantum computation". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 40: 31–38. doi:10.1090/S0273-0979-02-00964-3. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  7. ^ a b "Microsoft hopes to build topological quantum computer". Data Center Dynamics. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  8. ^ a b c Das Sarma, Sankar; Freedman, Michael; Nayak, Chetan (2005). "Topologically Protected Qubits from a Possible Non-Abelian Fractional Quantum Hall State". Physical Review Letters. 94 (16): 166802. arXiv:cond-mat/0412343. Bibcode:2005PhRvL..94p6802D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.166802. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  9. ^ "Photonic and Microsoft demonstrate inter-module entanglement". Optics. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  10. ^ a b "Microsoft says new computing service for chemicals can slash R&D time". Reuters. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  11. ^ "Quantum Computers Barely Exist—Here's Why We're Writing Languages for Them Anyway". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g "Quantinuum quantum computer using Microsoft's 'logical quantum bits' runs 14,000 experiments with no errors". Phys.org. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  13. ^ a b "Microsoft, Quantinuum claim breakthrough in quantum computing". Reuters. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  14. ^ "Microsoft Quantum Computing. A Quantum Journey with the Pioneers Behind Windows, DOS, Azure, and XBox". Quantum Zeitgeist. 3 May 2024. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  15. ^ "Topological quantum comoputation". Physics Today. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  16. ^ Nayak, Chetan; Simon, Steven H.; Stern, Ady; Freedman, Michael; Das Sarma, Sankar (2008). "Non-Abelian anyons and topological quantum computation". Reviews of Modern Physics. 80 (3): 1083–1159. arXiv:0707.1889. Bibcode:2008RvMP...80.1083N. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.80.1083. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  17. ^ Sarma, Sankar Das; Freedman, Michael; Nayak, Chetan (2015). "Majorana zero modes and topological quantum computation". npj Quantum Information. 1: 15001. Bibcode:2015npjQI...115001S. doi:10.1038/npjqi.2015.1. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  18. ^ "Announcing the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit". Microsoft. 11 December 2017. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  19. ^ "Meet the 16 power players of Microsoft's developer strategy, leading the tech titan's most important software initiatives — including the creator of Python, who came out of retirement to join up". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  20. ^ "ISC Keynote: Why Quantum Computing Matters and the Race for Practical Uses". HPCwire. 29 June 2021. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  21. ^ a b c Aghaee, Morteza; et al. (2023). "InAs-Al hybrid devices passing the topological gap protocol". Physical Review B. 107 (24): 245423. arXiv:2207.02472. Bibcode:2023PhRvB.107x5423A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.107.245423. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  22. ^ a b c d "A Deeper Dive Into Microsoft's Topological Quantum Computer Roadmap". Quantum Computing Report. 21 September 2023. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  23. ^ "Microsoft Quantum's Krysta Svore Offers Glimpse Into The Quantum Future". The Quantum Insider. November 2023. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  24. ^ "Quantum Computing Implementation Levels". Microsoft. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  25. ^ "Quantum computing providers on Azure Quantum". Microsoft. 6 February 2024. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  26. ^ a b "Meet Majorana". Wired. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  27. ^ a b c "In a historic milestone, Azure Quantum demonstrates formerly elusive physics needed to build scalable topological qubits". Microsoft. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  28. ^ "Microsoft expects to build a quantum supercomputer within 10 years". TechCrunch. 21 June 2023. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  29. ^ "What are Q# and the Azure Quantum Development Kit?". Microsoft. 3 July 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  30. ^ "Microsoft Quantum Development Kit: Introduction and step-by-step demo". YouTube. 11 December 2017. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  31. ^ "Quantum Computers Barely Exist—Here's Why We're Writing Languages for Them Anyway". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  32. ^ "What is Copilot in Azure Quantum?". Microsoft. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  33. ^ a b c d "Microsoft achieves first milestone towards a quantum supercomputer". Microsoft. 21 June 2023. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  34. ^ "Microsoft taps LLVM for quantum computing". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  35. ^ "Democratizing the quantum ecosystem; Microsoft's Krysta Svore on the pathway towards a scalable quantum computer". Physics World. 30 August 2022. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  36. ^ "What is the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator?". Microsoft. July 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  37. ^ "Quantum Resource Estimation and Cryptography". Microsoft. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  38. ^ "Accelerating scientific discovery with Azure Quantum". Microsoft. 21 June 2023. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  39. ^ "Microsoft and Quantinuum say they've ushered in the next era of quantum computing". TechCrunch. 3 April 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  40. ^ "Photonic and Microsoft demonstrate inter-module entanglement". Optics. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  41. ^ "Photonic Raises $100 Million USD for Quantum Technology from BCI, Microsoft, and Other Investors". Photonic. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  42. ^ a b c "Microsoft Debuts Azure Quantum Elements and Azure Quantum Copilot LLM". HPCwire. 22 June 2023. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  43. ^ a b "Microsoft and 1910 Genetics partner to turbocharge R&D productivity for the pharmaceutical industry". Microsoft. 29 February 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  44. ^ a b c "Hybrid quantum computing". Microsoft. 15 April 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  45. ^ "Integrated hybrid computing". Microsoft. 6 June 2024. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  46. ^ "Microsoft Expands Azure Quantum Cloud Services". The New Stack. 6 January 2022. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
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