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Title: Microsoft, Atom Computing Leap Ahead On the Quantum Frontier With
Logical Qubits

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/11/20/0026...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Microsoft and Atom
Computing say they've reached a new milestone in their effort to build fault-
tolerant quantum computers that can show an advantage over classical
computers. Microsoft says it will start delivering the computers' quantum
capabilities to customers by the end of 2025, with availability via the Azure
cloud service as well as through on-premises hardware. "Together, we are co-
designing and building what we believe will be the world's most powerful
quantum machine," Jason Zander, executive vice president at Microsoft, said
in a LinkedIn posting. Like other players in the field, Microsoft's Azure
Quantum team and Atom Computing aim to capitalize on the properties of
quantum systems -- where quantum bits, also known as qubits, can process
multiple values simultaneously. That's in contrast to classical systems,
which typically process ones and zeros to solve algorithms. Microsoft has
been working with Colorado-based Atom Computing on hardware that uses the
nuclear spin properties of neutral ytterbium atoms to run quantum
calculations. One of the big challenges is to create a system that can
correct the errors that turn up during the calculations due to quantum noise.
The solution typically involves knitting together "physical qubits" to
produce an array of "logical qubits" that can correct themselves. In a paper
posted to the ArXiv preprint server, members of the research team say they
were able to connect 256 noisy neutral-atom qubits using Microsoft's qubit-
virtualization system in such a way as to produce a system with 24 logical
qubits. "This represents the highest number of entangled logical qubits on
record," study co-author Krysta Svore, vice president of advanced quantum
development for Microsoft Azure Quantum, said today in a blog posting.
"Entanglement of the qubits is evidenced by their error rates being
significantly below the 50% threshold for entanglement." Twenty of the
system's logical qubits were used to perform successful computations based on
the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm, which is used as a benchmark for quantum
calculations. "The logical qubits were able to produce a more accurate
solution than the corresponding computation based on physical qubits," Svore
said. "The ability to compute while detecting and correcting errors is a
critical component to scaling to achieve scientific quantum advantage."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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