A new era of quantum computing is dawning as Microsoft and Quantinuum collaborate to advance the development of Logical Qubit
Microsoft and Quantinuum claim to have made significant progress in quantum computing through their joint Azure Quantum project.
The companies say they have successfully created a new generation of highly reliable logic qubits, which are essential for realizing practical applications of quantum computing.
A few months ago, Microsoft and Quantinuum pioneered the creation of highly reliable logic qubits by applying Microsoft’s qubit virtualization system to Quantinuum’s H-Series ion-trap qubits.
Azure quantum
Initially, the companies managed to produce four logical qubits from thirty physical qubits. The logical error rate for production was 800 times better than the physical error rate. Although Microsoft considered this achievement impressive, it continued to push the boundaries and it paid off.
Now the collaboration has expanded, resulting in the creation of 12 logical qubits from 56 physical qubits on Quantinuum’s H2 machine, showing a remarkable 99.8% reliability in two-qubit operations.
The teams demonstrated the entanglement of these logic qubits in a complex arrangement known as a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state, which is more complicated than previous preparations for the Bell state. This entanglement resulted in a circuit error rate of 0.0011, significantly lower than the physical qubits’ error rate of 0.024. Such developments not only highlight the potential for deeper quantum computations, but also pave the way for fault-tolerant quantum computing, a crucial step toward realizing the full capabilities of quantum technology.
The collaboration between Microsoft and Quantinuum is also a milestone in the application of quantum computing to real-world problems, especially in the field of chemistry. By integrating logic qubits with artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud high-performance computing (HPC), they successfully tackled a complex scientific problem: estimating the ground state energy of a key catalytic intermediate.
The process started with the identification of the active space of the catalyst through HPC simulations. After this, the logic qubits were used to simulate the quantum behavior of the active space. The measurement results from these simulations were then used to train an AI model, which ultimately provided an accurate estimate of the ground state energy. This end-to-end workflow represents the first time quantum computing, HPC and AI have been combined to solve a scientific problem, demonstrating the practical utility of quantum technologies.
While the current results do not yet represent a full scientific quantum advantage – defined as the ability of quantum computers to solve problems beyond the reach of classical computers – they do show that quantum systems can outperform classical methods in specific scenarios. The hybrid approach used in this study illustrates how quantum computing can improve the accuracy of chemical calculations, especially for complex problems that challenge classical systems.
The successful demonstration of this hybrid workflow not only highlights the capabilities of the logic qubits, but also highlights the importance of integrating quantum computing with other advanced technologies. By combining the strengths of quantum, AI and HPC, researchers can develop innovative solutions for urgent scientific challenges.
The Azure Quantum platform acts as a central hub where quantum computing, AI and high-performance computing (HPC) come together. This ecosystem is designed to enable seamless interactions between different hardware architectures, allowing researchers to leverage the strengths of each technology. By combining quantum capabilities with AI, researchers can use machine learning algorithms to analyze massive data sets and gain meaningful insights, significantly accelerating the research and development process.
Looking ahead, Microsoft claims it wants to advance its Azure Quantum platform to support a variety of qubit architectures, including neutral-atom qubits and topological qubits. The integration of these diverse technologies aims to increase the reliability and scalability of quantum computing, ultimately leading to the development of systems capable of tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges.
“The ability of our systems to triple the number of logical qubits while less than doubling our physical qubits from 30 to 56 physical qubits is a testament to the high reliability and overall connectivity of our H-Series trapped-ion hardware . says Rajeeb Hazra, CEO of Quantinuum.
“Our current H2-1 hardware combined with Microsoft’s qubit virtualization system brings us and our customers fully into Level 2 resilient quantum computing. This powerful collaboration will enable even greater improvements when combined with the advanced AI and HPC tools delivered through Azure. Quantum.”