Microsoft to give DARPA hands-on access to quantum system at new Maryland site

Microsoft on Tuesday said it will give the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency direct, on-site access to its latest quantum computing hardware as part of a new research center the company opened in Maryland alongside the University of Maryland and other industry partners.

The center, located in the university's Discovery District near Washington, D.C., will house a new quantum system that uses Microsoft's Majorana 2 chip for independent testing and evaluation by DARPA.

Quantum computers hold the promise of tackling problems that would take conventional machines thousands of years. Of particular interest to national security experts is protecting and cracking encrypted communications.

Microsoft is one of a number of quantum firms being evaluated by DARPA to discover whether any quantum computing approach can yield economically feasible systems by 2033.

Until now, DARPA has evaluated Microsoft's technology remotely, accessing machines in Redmond, Washington, and Europe. The Maryland delivery marks a shift to physical access in a dedicated DARPA space where its experts can load hardware and run it through their own boot sequences.

"This is a big deal for us because it essentially enables DARPA to kick the tires and to sort of figure out how good this machine is and how it's performing," Zulfi Alam, corporate vice president of Microsoft Quantum, said in an interview.

Alam said the arrangement imposes discipline as Microsoft moves from research toward a commercial product. DARPA's key evaluation metric is whether the value of the computation performed by a quantum system outweighs the system's cost.

"It enforces a certain amount of engineering rigor that scientific teams normally do not have," he said, describing DARPA as "a completely trusted organization" with which Microsoft can share both current work and future plans.