[Hardware]Azure Quantum: Microsoft's system to bring you closer to quantum computing

[UltimaTexCS]

Quantum computing is one of those technological advances soradicals that will surely change the world as we know it. Of course, we have not yet reached that point and there are years of development for us to see it at the consumption level, replacing the current binary system. Even so, in some very specific calculations, quantum computing has indeed revolutionized some areas that had long been blocked by the lack of power of traditional computing or by its excess consumption of resources.

Companies like Microsoft offer through Azure the possibility of peering into the quantum world without the need to buy a computer of the future, for those problems that cannot be solved in a traditional way with current computers, and that it is possible that the premature state of quantum computing can solve them.

Quantum has three basic application areas: process optimization, machine learning, and quantum simulation. Current quantum computers are not good at processing data, their RAM is not enough, so artificial intelligence or big data is out of their reach. AI so widely used today in solving problems and generating forecasts, as has happened in the COVID-19 crisis, works much better on traditional hardware.

Something that Microsoft has done very well is that, without the need to expand development knowledge, just understanding how quantum computing works, it is possible to start developing in Azure Quantum with just Python and Q #. Also, for those who are used to using Azure, the system will be familiar, both for the development and for the deployment of the technology.

Microsoft already has a few success stories behind it this year. To give an example, the consulting firm Jij has managed to get its client Toyota to improve traffic in the city by optimizing traffic lights using Azure Quantum. In this way, waiting times for cars are reduced by 20%, which also means less emissions and less air pollution. It's a good example of one of the areas we talked about earlier, optimization. Traditional hardware has a limit on the number of traffic lights that you can optimize on a route, but not the Quantum.

Another area of use for quantum computing is simulation. The OTI company is able to design new materials by simulating the interaction of different molecules, using QIO or quantum-inspired optimization. In this way they do not create new materials by research, as they have done before, but rather design them depending on their needs. Until now, doing a three-molecule simulation was impossible for traditional hardware, a process necessary for OTI to be able to create new materials cheaply and efficiently, eliminating the bottleneck of traditional computing. The optimization of the use Microsoft Azure allows that instead of using 58,000 variables, the simulation can work only with 132 when working natively.

Quantum computing still has a long way to go to replace the current binary, but there are already fields where it excels. Surely, as hardware improves, the application of this technology will move to more areas, but for now, Azure Quantum makes quantum computing accessible and applicable for any company.