The field of quantum computing has advanced beyond the level of error-prone physical qubits to an era of reliable quantum computation with logical qubits. To continue making progress toward fault-tolerant quantum machines, advances in both quantum hardware and software are required. Microsoft is committed to providing the tools that developers and scientists need to enable applications on the quantum machines that exist today, as well as the fault-tolerant machines of the future.
New tools that simplify quantum development
The Microsoft Quantum Development Kit (QDK) is an open-source developer toolkit for building quantum applications. It provides everything needed—from simulators to a modern programming experience—for developers to build and execute quantum code, both locally and on quantum hardware. The QDK is integrated with VS Code and GitHub Copilot to help you write, test, and execute quantum code. Microsoft’s QDK installs and runs on laptops, and GitHub Copilot makes it quick and easy to get started.
Domain libraries and workflows available with Microsoft’s QDK include those for error correction and chemistry, with other applications on the horizon. The included tools reduce the effort and expertise needed for researchers to design, test, and implement quantum chemistry applications or the error correction codes needed to create logical qubits. Both these tools and the QDK are open source and interoperable with the most popular quantum programming languages and frameworks, including Q#, OpenQASM, Qiskit, and Cirq. The quantum chemistry toolkit supports WSL and Docker support for reproducibility and portability across systems.
AI-enabled quantum programming
Microsoft’s QDK is fully integrated with VS Code and GitHub Copilot. After installing the QDK extension from the VS Code Marketplace, GitHub Copilot simplifies the use of QDK features in VS Code, including Python and Jupyter integration, circuit rendering, IntelliSense, breakpoint debugging, local simulators, visualizations, histograms, hardware submission, and resource estimation. With GitHub Copilot and the QDK, programming tasks such as code generation, unit tests, and job submissions are faster and easier than ever before.
