Microsoft and Quantinuum said they have created 12 highly reliable logical qubits by combining Azure Quantum's qubit virtualization system to Quantinuum's H2 trapped-ion quantum computer. Microsoft also said it would work with Atom Computing to add a new quantum system to Azure Quantum.

The companies said they also demonstrated reliable quantum computing by integrating it with AI models and high-performance computing (HPC). That development highlights how quantum systems, HPC and classical compute will ultimately be used together. Previously: Quantinuum, Microsoft claim quantum reliability breakthrough

Microsoft and Quantinuum also said they produced the 12 logical qubits with good fidelity and lower error rates. Here's what Microsoft said in a blog post about error corrections.

"Microsoft and Quantinuum demonstrated several fault-tolerant computations with the improved logical qubits. On eight logical qubits, the teams successfully conducted five rounds of repeated error correction. Furthermore, the eight logical qubits were used to perform a fault-tolerant computation during error correction, successfully demonstrating the combination of logical entangling operations with multiple rounds of quantum error correction. The eight logical qubits exhibited a circuit error rate of 0.002, which is 11 times better than the corresponding physical qubits’ circuit error rate of 0.023. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of computation and error correction being beneficially combined, and it showcases the ability of these logical qubits to perform increasingly deeper quantum computations reliably, paving the way to fault-tolerant quantum computing."

On the hybrid quantum computing front, Microsoft and Quantinuum said they used HPC, AI and quantum hardware to chemistry problems. To that end, Microsoft Azure will include Quantinuum's InQuanto computational chemistry offering and integrate it into Azure Quantum Elements.

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Microsoft's partnership with Atom Computing, which has yielded logical qubits and systems that are being optimized. Microsoft said it will apply its qubit-virtualization system to Atom Computing's second-generation systems within Azure Elements.  

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