Just a few months back, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared our vision of empowering the quantum revolution with bold investments towards a scalable end-to-end solution, revolutionary topological approach, and a global team. Today, we take the next step in this journey with the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit to help you get started with quantum development.

The Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, preview available here, includes the following three key components:

Fully integrated quantum-focused programming language Q# (Q-sharp):

Designed ground up for quantum, Q# is the most approachable high-level programming language with a native type system for qubits, operators, and other abstractions. It is fully integrated with Visual Studio, enabling a complete professional enterprise-grade development tooling system for the fastest path to quantum programming efficiency. Local & Azure quantum simulators: To test any quantum algorithm and solutions written in Q#, we are also including a local simulator in the Quantum Development Kit that is easily available from within Visual Studio. This local simulator, which runs on your development system, enables full debugging support for the quantum solutions written in Q#, including setting breakpoints, and stepping into code. For larger-scale quantum solutions, we have developed a scalable cloud-based simulator that supports simulations requiring over 40 qubits. Finally, included in the kit is a trace simulator to help you optimize your code to run on a quantum computer and estimate the cost of needed resources. Rich libraries and samples as building blocks: To help you get started with developing quantum solutions, we are also releasing a rich source of quantum samples and libraries, tutorials, and building blocks ready to apply to your quantum project. Authored in Q# by the industry’s brightest quantum minds, the libraries provide access to quantum concepts with documented code. You can access the entire set of libraries and samples on GitHub.

Quantum computing takes a giant leap forward from today’s technology—one that will forever alter our economic, industrial, academic, and societal landscape. With the preview release of the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit, we are one step closer to realizing this vision.

Learn more at microsoft.com/quantum.