Microsoft and Atom Computing are planning to launch a commercial quantum computer in 2025. The launch is made possible by a break-through in the design of fault-tolerant quantum computing.
The breakthrough was announced last month at the Microsoft Ignite conference, held this year in Chicago. The two companies reported that they were able to entangle 24 logical qubits, the highest number of entangled logical qubits on record, using neutral atoms held in place by lasers.
While we have various technologies that can store and manipulate bits of quantum information, none of them has been able to operate error-free. Errors make it difficult to perform computations that are beyond the capabilities of classical computers.
The solution is logical qubits, which allow the detection and correction of errors when they occur.
What is also important is that the Microsoft – Atom Computing system is able to detect when one of the neutral atoms that make up a physical qubit disappears. And the system can correct for that disappearance.
Using this system, Microsoft and Atom Computing created 20 logical qubits made from 80 physical qubits and successfully ran the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm on it.
Krysta Svore, the technical fellow and vice president of advanced quantum development for Microsoft Azure Quantum, commented, “We’ve run that algorithm in this hardware out to 20 logical qubits in that computation and shown that we can get better than physical performance there. You also get better than classical, it turns out, for this algorithm. So we’ve shown the ability to compute with these logical qubits, and then we’ve also been able to do repeated loss correction with these qubits.”
Ben Bloom, founder and CEO of Atom Computing, noted: “By coupling our state-of-the-art neutral-atom qubits with Microsoft’s qubit-virtualization system, we are now able to offer reliable logical qubits on a commercial quantum machine. This system will enable rapid progress in multiple fields, including chemistry and materials science.”
The new machine is coming.
So no, it’s not just another Windows Update.