Microsoft claims quantum computing breakthrough, customers to benefit soon

“This is a crucial milestone on our path to building a hybrid supercomputing system that can transform research and innovation across many industries,” Microsoft said. “It is made possible by the collective advancement of quantum hardware, qubit virtualization and correction, and hybrid applications that take advantage of the best of AI, supercomputing, and quantum capabilities.

“With a hybrid supercomputer powered by 100 reliable logical qubits, organizations would start to see scientific advantage, while scaling closer to 1,000 reliable logical qubits would unlock commercial advantage.”

Analysts suggest this could help Microsoft bolster its market positioning by attracting more investment and forging partnerships, potentially pressuring competitors to showcase their own advancements to stay relevant.

“The development of Microsoft’s quantum computing ecosystem may draw developers and researchers, posing a challenge to competitors needing to offer comparable alternatives,” said Manish Rawat, analyst at TechInsights. “Furthermore, Microsoft’s breakthrough could catalyze partnerships and alliances in the quantum computing space while influencing the establishment of industry standards and accruing valuable intellectual property.”

Quantum race heating up

Microsoft’s latest development in this field comes amid Quantum Computing-related announcements from others. Amazon has said it’s integrating a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm to enhance machine learning, incorporating hyperparameter optimization on its Amazon Braket platform – a dedicated AWS service for quantum computing experiments.

In February, Canadian startup Nord Quantique said it had achieved a world first by demonstrating the enhancement of qubit coherence lifetimes at the single-qubit level through quantum error correction, using a hardware-efficient methodology.