Microsoft is Building a Programming Language for Quantum Computers

At the Ignite Conference, Microsoft announced that later this year it will release a new quantum computing programming language that is very tightly integrated with Visual Studio. The language is designed to work on both a quantum simulator and a quantum computer.

Microsoft has been working on quantum computers for decades. The company hired Michael Freedman some 20 years ago to continue his work on topology. Microsoft’s quantum computing work is based on the work Freedman has done over ages. Eventually Microsoft has started to see some results of the work it has been doing for ages.

Krysta Svore, principal researcher at Microsoft Research, said that a programming language that can run in a simulated environment will help people understand how to harness quantum power for different types of problems.

One big difference between the work Microsoft is doing on quantum computing and the rest of the industry, is that the company doesn’t want to build a quantum computer for display in labs. Microsoft wants to deliver a full-fledged topological quantum computing system.

According to Allison Linn, Senior writer, editor, and multimedia storyteller at Microsoft, it’s a system that includes everything from hardware capable of consistently running calculations that require tens of thousands of logical qubits to a complete software stack that can program and control the quantum computer.