Microsoft Is Taking Quantum Computers to the Cloud

Microsoft got where it is by ensuring that Windows ran on many different types of hardware. Monday, the company said its cloud computing platform will soon offer access to the most exotic hardware of all: quantum computers.

Microsoft is one of several tech giants investing in quantum computing, which by crunching data using strange quantum mechanical processes promises unprecedented computational power. The company is now preparing its Azure cloud computing service to offer select customers access to three prototype quantum computers, from engineering conglomerate Honeywell and two startups, IonQ, which emerged from the University of Maryland, and QCI, spun out of Yale.

Microsoft does not claim those quantum computers are ready to do useful work. Existing quantum hardware is too puny. But like rivals IBM and Google, Microsoft executives say developers and corporations should start playing with quantum algorithms and hardware now to help the industry learn what the technology is good for.

“We know that we’re not going to come up with the whole landscape of possible solutions; we need a global community,” says Krysta Svore, general manager for Microsoft Quantum.

Microsoft’s new service, christened Azure Quantum, integrates quantum programming tools the company released previously with its cloud service. Coders can run quantum code on simulated quantum hardware, or real quantum hardware from Honeywell, IonQ, or QCI.

Microsoft researchers use this apparatus to cool electronics at the bottom to colder than outer space, in tests of control equipment for future quantum computers.

Photograph: The University of Sydney/Louise M Cooper

Microsoft announced the new service Monday at its Ignite conference in Orlando, saying it would launch in coming months. The company’s partners will run their quantum computers in their own facilities, but link them into Microsoft’s cloud over the internet. Microsoft has a long-running quantum research program of its own but it is yet to produce any quantum computing hardware.

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 program differs in that it offers access to several different quantum computing technologies, in what could be a preview of the future of the quantum computing market.

Because quantum hardware is tricky to operate, most companies using it are expected to do so via a cloud service rather than buying or building their own quantum computers. IBM and Google have so far talked only about offering customers access to their own hardware.

Microsoft’s 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, which offers a service for programmers to build and collaborate with quantum computing tools from IBM, Google, and others. “At the point we’re at in the development of quantum computing as an industry you want to try as many things as possible,” he says.

Microsoft’s hardware partners represent two leading but different ways of building quantum computers. Honeywell and IonQ encode data using individual ions trapped in electromagnetic fields, while QCI uses superconducting metal circuits, an approach also favored by IBM and Google.

Microsoft’s model for the quantum cloud could also solve a problem for companies making progress on quantum hardware, like Honeywell or several richly funded startups, that don’t have cloud businesses of their own and may find it hard to attract customers. “This allows us to focus on what we are best at, making best-in-class quantum computers,” says Peter Chapman, CEO of Microsoft partner IonQ. The startup’s early customers include Dow Chemical, which wants to use quantum computers to solve chemistry problems.

One thing lacking from Microsoft’s quantum cloud is the company’s own quantum hardware. Microsoft’s large quantum research program is focused on a less mature technology it says will be better in the long run, but is yet to produce a chip capable of even kindergarten arithmetic.

Quantum computers are built from unusual devices called qubits. They operate on digital data just like the components in conventional hardware. But because qubits encode 1s and 0s into quantum mechanical effects, like the spin of subatomic particles, they can flip into a third state that is a superposition of both 1 and 0 at the same time. That state, unlike anything in the day-to-day human world, allows math that can shortcut through calculations impossible for conventional computers.

The primary challenge to the tech industry’s quantum dreams is that qubits are very unreliable. Quantum mechanical processes are very subtle and easily overwhelmed by heat or electromagnetic noise. The largest chips made by IBM, Google, and Intel have around 50 qubits. But it’s unclear whether the devices can be useful with fewer than a million or more qubits, of much higher quality.

Microsoft is betting on a so-far-theoretical version of the crucial device called a topological qubit, predicted to be more stable than existing qubits. It’s based on manipulating a long-theorized but only recently glimpsed subatomic phenomenon called the Majorana zero mode—named after an Italian physicist who disappeared mysteriously in 1938.

Although the crucial phenomenon has been found, Microsoft’s topological qubit is still missing, despite statements by the company’s top quantum executive Todd Holmdahl that it would arrive by the end of last year. Chetan Nayak, general manager for quantum hardware at Microsoft and a physics professor at UC Santa Barbara, will say only that his group is plugging away, including on materials science techniques needed to place millions of future topological qubits onto silicon wafers. “We’re very excited about the progress that we’ve been making,” he says.

Asked if Microsoft would unplug the hardware partners it announced Monday when its own quantum processors are ready, Nayak demurred. But he suggested the company is considering a strategy similar to its approach to laptops, where Microsoft offers its own Surface brand, and supports competing devices. “We expect to see multiple forms of hardware coexist for a while,” he said.

Despite lacking quantum computing hardware of its own, Microsoft did unveil a new computer chip Monday. It’s conventional, not quantum, but specially designed to operate at temperatures colder than those of deep space, to help control the company’s hoped-for quantum processors when they arrive.

Like Google and IBM’s current quantum hardware, Microsoft’s future qubits will require cooling near to absolute zero inside a special refrigerator to operate. Creating a computer chip able to keep operating while nestled next to a quantum processor can reduce the number of control wires that need to run out to electronics outside the fridge. Google, whose quantum chips are controlled only by external electronics, said last week that wiring was a major challenge to scaling up its technology.

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