Quantum Computing Is Now Publicly Available
What the release of Microsoft’s Azure Quantum to the public means for us moving forward
On February 1, 2021, Microsoft announced the launch of its cloud-based platform which will allow anyone to use quantum hardware tools called Azure Quantum. This platform has curated resources from its partners (Honeywell, IONQ, Quantum Circuits, and 1Qloud) to provide what they claim to be “some of the most compelling and diverse quantum resources available.”
They are offering users a free hour to test some of their available solutions. After this hour, testing basic services will cost about $10 per hour (full pricing table below).
Microsoft originally announced the release of its Quantum Development Kit, quantum focused programming language Q#, and quantum simulators in December of 2017. This technology was then made available to select Microsoft partners in May of 2020. We are now seeing that it is publicly available. Microsoft has made significant strides in this space in the past few years.
In order to start working with Azure’s quantum computing solution, one will need to learn…