The new release of the simulator is much faster than the first release, with the corporation saying that it works four to five times faster, particularly on simulations with 20 or more qubits.
The quantum libraries and examples are now available under an open source license the authorization to these were previously merely shared enabling others to change and extend them. Interoperability with current libraries is also being improved: Microsoft is working on combining Python support. On Windows, today’s announcement includes a preview of the Python integration, which allows Q# applications to call Python code and vice versa.
Microsoft’s quantum simulator a small translation of which can run locally, with an extensive version that runs in the cloud is planned to aid the progress and understanding of quantum programs. It allows the quantum state to be examined something not possible with a real quantum state, because examining it collapses the wave function and forces it to take a distinct value and for the scaling and performance outline of quantum programs to be contained. What it can’t do, however, is quantum computing on a large scale; the thought and computational demands grow exponentially with the number of simulated qubits-32 qubits require 32GB of RAM, and each extra qubit doubles the memory requirements.
The simulator is designed to be a precursor to real quantum hardware, which Microsoft is also operating on. Microsoft’s quantum computing efforts are built around a theory called a topological qubit. The topological qubit is attractive because it should be extremely more robust than the qubits used in other quantum computers; while Microsoft’s system will still have to operate at the near-absolute zero heats used in other quantum machines, it should require considerably fewer qubits for error-checking and correction, opposed to those other systems.