Azure Quantum, the public cloud ecosystem dedicated to quantum applications developed by Microsoft, is now available for public preview. The Redmond giant has urged developers and researchers in the field to start using the platform's cloud services to explore, build and test applications of quantum technologies that could transform a wide range of industries.
Since Microsoft's Build event last year, Azure Quantum has been in limited preview, and developers from select companies have been piloting the platform for the past few months. Experiments have been carried out in many different fields, including materials design, financial modelling and traffic optimization.
"With Azure Quantum Public Preview, we're opening up the technology to the broader ecosystem," Julie Love, senior director at Microsoft Quantum, told ZDNet. "This means that developers, researchers, systems integrators, and customers can use it to learn and build."
Azure Quantum aims to create a one-stop shop for developers, complete with the software and hardware resources that are necessary to build quantum applications.
Quantum computing is based on different building blocks than classical computing. While classical bits can only hold a single value of either zero or one, quantum bits – or qubits – can be programmed to hold multiple values at the same time. Leveraging this particular characteristic of qubits, quantum computers can solve problems exponentially faster than classical computers, although quantum devices are still in their infancy.
By Daphne Leprince-Ringuet on ZDNet
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