Microsoft unveils free Quantum Development Kit preview

Technology News | December 14, 2017

By Rich Pell

The toolkit, says Microsoft, is designed for developers who are eager to learn how to program on quantum computers whether or not they are experts in the field of quantum physics. In providing such tools, the company hopes to “make the power of quantum computing accessible to many more people.”

“What you’re going to see as a developer is the opportunity to tie into tools that you already know well, services you already know well,” says Todd Holmdahl, the corporate vice president in charge of Microsoft’s quantum effort. “There will be a twist with quantum computing, but it’s our job to make it as easy as possible for the developers who know and love us to be able to use these new tools that could potentially do some things exponentially faster – which means going from a billion years on a classical computer to a couple hours on a quantum computer.”

The kit includes the Q# (pronounced “Q sharp”) programming language, a quantum computing simulator, and other resources for people interested in writing applications for a quantum computer. The Q# programming language was built from the ground up specifically for quantum computing, while the simulator will let users test software on a desktop computer or through the company’s Azure cloud computing service.

The Quantum Development Kit is “deeply integrated” into Visual Studio, the company’s suite of developer tools. It’s designed to work with the quantum simulator included in the kit, which can simulate around 30 logical qubits of quantum computing power using a typical laptop computer, allowing developers to debug quantum code and test programs on small instances right on their own computers.

For larger-scale quantum projects, the company is offering an Azure-based simulator that can simulate more than 40 logical qubits of computing power. Provided along with the kit is a comprehensive suite of documentation, libraries, and sample programs that the company says will give people the background they need to start playing around with aspects of computing that are unique to quantum systems.

Applications created with the kit will be able to run both on the quantum simulator right now and eventually on a topological quantum computer, which Microsoft is in the process of developing for general-purpose quantum computing.

“The beauty of it is that this code won’t need to change when we plug it into the quantum hardware,” says Krysta Svore, a principal researcher at Microsoft who has led the development of the quantum software and simulator.

For more, see Microsoft Quantum Development Kit.