Windows 10: Microsoft announces Northwest Quantum Nexus for quantum computing

Brink · Mar 19, 2019

The Northwest is brimming with talented, dedicated people who can deliver quantum computing advances today and secure our quantum future for tomorrow. Today, at the inaugural Northwest Quantum Nexus Summit, we announced the Northwest Quantum Nexus, a coalition assembled by three keystone partners: Microsoft Quantum, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the University of Washington.

In line with the goals of the National Quantum Initiative Act, the Northwest Quantum Nexus accelerates Quantum Information Science (QIS) to develop a quantum economy and workforce in the greater Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada. The high concentration of quantum activity in the Northwest makes it one of the top regions globally to address key QIS needs. The goal of the two-day Summit this week is to bring together the region’s experts who can define the region’s potential to drive quantum computing’s future.

Its objectives include:

Bringing together academia, government, startups, and industry to pursue multi-disciplinary QIS research to deliver scalable quantum computing.

Pursuing quantum computing via collaborative research and development, targeted quantum algorithms and programming, and the development of quantum materials.

Capitalizing on public-private partnerships to promote a rapid exchange of knowledge and resources and drive discoveries in quantum technologies.

Applying research outcomes to application areas and testbeds, including clean energy and sustainability.

Cultivating the future quantum workforce through programs that range from early to higher education and professional levels, as well as the corresponding network of institutions and outlets offering curriculum and training opportunities.

“The Northwest Quantum Nexus represents another big step toward the development of scalable, stable quantum computers,” says Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Quantum. “The partnership just makes a lot of sense – we’re already one of the top regions in the world for quantum research, and the Nexus will help us leverage that expertise to build a quantum-ready workforce and boost the region and nation’s quantum ecosystem.”

Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Quantum

The Northwest Quantum Nexus intersects with another complementary, broad-based initiative led by Microsoft, the Microsoft Quantum Network. Both the Northwest Quantum Nexus and the Microsoft Quantum Network were begun with the understanding that creating a scalable quantum computer will require the collective effort of many skilled and diverse teams. Just last week, Microsoft hosted the Microsoft Quantum Network’s first Startup Summit.

Creating a regional quantum powerhouse

The Northwest Quantum Nexus partnership unites considerable intellectual talent. The University of Washington is one of the top research institutions in the world. It recently established UW Quantum X, which joins existing research endeavors across the university in QIS, including quantum sensing, quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum materials.

Recently, in a partnership of Microsoft Quantum researchers and the University of Washington faculty, we identified opportunities to ready students with quantum computing programming skills and an understanding of quantum algorithms. Microsoft researchers now teach quantum computing programming and algorithm development with the Q# programming language, giving students a head start in developing quantum solutions.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL) QIS program includes capabilities in algorithm development and programming, as well as expertise in materials synthesis and characterization, quantum chemistry applications, quantum sensing, and workforce development – all fields are seeing tremendous advances today due to the power of a quantum computer.

Microsoft has recently collaborated with PNNL on the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit chemistry library. The library can be used in conjunction with NWChem, an open-source, high-performance computational chemistry tool funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. With the state-of-the-art tools provided in the Quantum Development Kit – including resource estimation, algorithm programming, debugging and simulation – this collaboration enables chemists to develop quantum chemistry solutions for a quantum computer, and better understand what that solution can look like today.

As for Microsoft, we’ve been driving advances in quantum computing and software development for 15 years. We see the power of quantum computing as solving some of the world’s most challenging problems for a wide range of industries – healthcare, environmental sciences, financial services, auto engineering, and others. Our team of experts in quantum physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering have partnered with universities, industry, and government on cross-cutting research to advance our scalable qubit approach across the globe.

The prominence of the Northwest Quantum Nexus is expected to increase the visibility of QIS research, leading to even greater collaboration and drawing quantum talent – trainees and employers – to the U.S. Locally, the Northwest Quantum Nexus will help position the greater Pacific Northwest region as a global leader for creating and sustaining an exceptional quantum workforce and economy.

Says Krysta Svore, General Manager for Quantum Software at Microsoft: “The Northwest Quantum Nexus is a pivotal element to making scalable quantum computing a reality. It enables the type of synergistic research and development needed to deliver critical technological advances from quantum algorithms and programming to materials design and development.”

Visit the Northwest Quantum Nexus web site to learn more about this important coalition.
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Source: Microsoft, University of Washington, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory join to establish Northwest Quantum Nexus - Microsoft Quantum

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Brink · Mar 19, 2019

Announcing the Microsoft Quantum Network

Creating a scalable quantum computer will require the collective effort of many skilled and diverse teams. To reach that goal, over the past few years we have built a coalition of partners, universities, customers, and developers, all with the goal of sharing knowledge and collaborating with the best quantum innovators.

Today – at our inaugural Startup Summit – we’re formalizing that coalition as the Microsoft Quantum Network. This global community of individuals and organizations will work directly with Microsoft to advance quantum computing, develop practical applications, and build the quantum workforce of the future.

“The Microsoft Quantum Network is our commitment to establishing the partnerships required to build the quantum workforce and the quantum economy,” Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of Azure Hardware Systems Group at Microsoft, said during the summit. “We believe both are vital to solving some of the world’s toughest problems.

Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of Azure Hardware Systems Group at Microsoft, speaking to the Microsoft Quantum Network

We’ve previously announced partnerships with some of the world’s leading startup talent in quantum software and algorithm development.Today we welcome two new partners:

HQS Quantum Simulations develops quantum algorithms for predicting molecular properties for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

Rahko is a quantum machine–learning company developing scalable quantum chemistry solutions for near-term quantum computers and beyond.

HQS Quantum Simulations and Rahko will join other quantum startups who are working closely with Microsoft to build practical applications and accelerate the adoption of quantum computing. Quantum Network startups also benefit from a partnership with Microsoft for Startups to help them grow their businesses, build innovative solutions, and connect to valuable resources.

Other segments of the Microsoft Quantum Network are:

Affiliate organizations have engaged directly with Microsoft to advance their expertise in quantum computing and jointly develop solutions that benefit their organization and industry. Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), and Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL) are examples of organizations collaborating with us on many solutions in the areas of optimization and chemistry.

Centers dedicated to research, development, and educational excellence have partnered with Microsoft to pursue the advancement of quantum computing. Today we’re performing quantum research alongside some of the best and brightest minds at Purdue University, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Copenhagen, TU Delft, and the University of Sydney. At these locations, we’ve established Microsoft Quantum Labs where our research teams are advancing Microsoft Quantum research goals while also serving as scientific collaborators and partners with the quantum community.

Developers and organizations have created their own quantum algorithms and applications with our free resources, including the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, tutorials, Q# libraries, samples, and workshops. Developers have now downloaded the Quantum Development Kit more than 100,000 times.

If you or your organization are interested in becoming a member of the Microsoft Quantum Network as a startup or affiliate, click here to tell us about yourself.

It will take a diverse set of skills across academia and industry to help develop the world’s first scalable quantum computer and quantum applications. We are excited to bring together the best minds in quantum computing. Together, we will bring this vision to life and shape the future of the quantum workforce and economy.
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Source: Announcing the Microsoft Quantum Network - Microsoft Quantum

See also: Join the Microsoft Quantum Network

Brink · Mar 19, 2019

Microsoft releases free preview of Quantum Development Kit

So you want to learn how to program a quantum computer. Now, there’s a toolkit for that.

Microsoft is releasing a free preview version of its Quantum Development Kit, which includes the Q# programming language, a quantum computing simulator and other resources for people who want to start writing applications for a quantum computer. The Q# programming language was built from the ground up specifically for quantum computing.

The Quantum Development Kit, which Microsoft first announced at its Ignite conference in September, is designed for developers who are eager to learn how to program on quantum computers whether or not they are experts in the field of quantum physics.

It’s deeply integrated into Visual Studio, Microsoft’s suite of developer tools, so aspects of it will be familiar to people who are already developing applications in other programming languages. And it’s designed to work with a local quantum simulator, also released as part of the kit, that can simulate around 30 logical qubits of quantum computing power using a typical laptop computer. That will allow developers to debug quantum code and test programs on small instances right on their own computers.

For larger-scale quantum challenges, Microsoft also is offering an Azure-based simulator that can simulate more than 40 logical qubits of computing power.

Along with the kit, Microsoft also is making a comprehensive suite of documentation, libraries and sample programs available. That will give people the background they need to start playing around with aspects of computing that are unique to quantum systems, such as quantum teleportation.

That’s a method of securely sharing information across quantum computing bits, or qubits, that are connected by a quantum state called entanglement.

“The hope is that you play with something like teleportation and you get intrigued,” said Krysta Svore, a principal researcher at Microsoft who has led the development of the quantum software and simulator.

The kit will let people create applications that can run right now on the quantum simulator, and those same apps also will eventually work on a topological quantum computer, which Microsoft is in the process of developing for general purpose quantum computing.

“The beauty of it is that this code won’t need to change when we plug it into the quantum hardware,” Svore said.

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From artificial intelligence to climate change

Experts believe quantum computers could allow scientists to address some of the world’s toughest challenges, such as world hunger or the dangerous effects of climate change. That’s partly because quantum computers will be able to do calculations in hours or even minutes that would take the lifetime of the universe for even the most advanced classical computers in use today.

Quantum computers also are expected to help spur major advances in fields such as artificial intelligence.

For example, many of the current breakthroughs in AI are based in part on machine learning, in which a system is given a set of data and learns from that data to recognize things like words, sounds or objects.
With a quantum computing simulator, Svore said computer scientists are already seeing how they could create quantum algorithms for that type of AI research. In early testing on the simulator, they are seeing how these quantum algorithms could more quickly find more nuanced patterns in data, which could spur major advances in fields such as speech, vision or language recognition.

“It seems like there’s a huge amount of potential there, and we’re just scratching the surface,” Svore said.

Topological quantum computing

The Quantum Development Kit is part of Microsoft’s plan to build a robust, full-fledged quantum computing system, which includes everything from the quantum computing hardware to the full software stack. The company’s researchers also are working on projects focused on cryptography and security in a quantum computing world.

Microsoft’s approach is centered on the development of a topological qubit, a more robust type of qubit that Microsoft’s experts believe will provide a better basis for practical, scalable quantum computing.
One big challenge about quantum computing is that qubits are extremely finicky. They need to be stored at very low temperatures, for example, or they might be disturbed and destroyed.

Because they are so finicky, most approaches to building qubits require massive amounts of error correction, or techniques to ensure information is delivered reliably. With a topological qubit, error correction is built right into the physics of the qubit itself. That makes it easier to scale up and deliver reliable results, and to do computations that are orders of magnitude larger than is possible on a classical computer, with fewer qubits than other quantum systems.

It goes without saying that quantum physics is extremely complex, and even some of the smartest people in the world confess that quantum computing is hard for them to understand.

Todd Holmdahl, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft’s quantum effort, noted that it’s up to Microsoft to figure out the quantum physics – and then to deliver tools like the Quantum Development Kit that people without a quantum physics degree can use. The hope is that these tools will make the power of quantum computing accessible to many more people.

“What you’re going to see as a developer is the opportunity to tie into tools that you already know well, services you already know well,” Holmdahl said. “There will be a twist with quantum computing, but it’s our job to make it as easy as possible for the developers who know and love us to be able to use these new tools that could potentially do some things exponentially faster – which means going from a billion years on a classical computer to a couple hours on a quantum computer.”

Related:

Try out the Quantum Development Kit

Learn more: Announcing the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit

With new Microsoft breakthroughs, general purpose quantum computing moves closer to reality

Microsoft doubles down on quantum computing bet

Allison Linn
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Source: The future is quantum: Microsoft releases free preview of Quantum Development Kit - The AI Blog

See also: Welcome to the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit Preview | Microsoft Docs

waltc · Mar 19, 2019

Microsoft doubles down on quantum computing bet

The phrase "quantum computing" is an oxymoron if ever I've heard one... It's the equivalent of using algebra/trigonometry to describe quantum mechanics...! Computers are 100% classical math, on-off binary. Quantum mechanics, aside from not being defined at all, is by definition *not* classical-math definable. Whenever I hear "quantum computing" I always get a chuckle. Basically, quantum mechanics = magic, more or less. "Spooky action", etc. Great stuff for raising capital, though--as investors love the sci-fi buzzwords.

Windows 10: Microsoft announces Northwest Quantum Nexus for quantum computing

Microsoft announces Northwest Quantum Nexus for quantum computing

Microsoft announces Northwest Quantum Nexus for quantum computing

Microsoft announces Northwest Quantum Nexus for quantum computing

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