Building a slide deck, pitch, or presentation? Here are the big takeaways:

  • Microsoft’s Quantum Development Kit has officially added support for Linux and Mac for developing quantum computing applications.
  • New open source libraries and Python integration have been added to Microsoft’s Quantum Development Kit.

Microsoft’s Quantum Development Kit is adding support for Linux and Mac users, the company announced in a Monday blog post. The firm is also adding net open source libraries to the kit as well as Python interoperability.

With the macOS and Linux support, the power to create apps that take advantage of quantum computing is coming to even more developers. On the flip side, Microsoft gets its business capabilities in the hands of a broader audience of developers, who have increasing control over the buying process in the enterprise.

“At Microsoft, we believe quantum computing holds the promise of solving many of today’s unsolvable problems and we want to make it possible for the broadest set of developers to code new quantum applications,” the post said.

SEE: IT leader’s guide to the future of quantum computing (Tech Pro Research)

The Quantum Development Kit was originally released in December 2017, along with a new quantum programming language called Q#. This update marks the first major update to the kit since its launch, the release said.

The possibility of building Q# quantum applications on macOS and Linux was the no. 1 requested feature for the kit from developers, the release said, so it’s the core piece of this update. However, Microsoft is also open sourcing all of the quantum development libraries and samples as well. Those are available here.

The Python interoperability was added because Microsoft knew that a lot of the developers who wanted to use the development kit had existing libraries of code in Python, and didn’t want to have to port it. “Available as a preview on Windows today, Python interoperability allows Q# code to call Python routines directly, and vice-versa,” the release said.

This update has led to faster simulator performance as well. According to the release, the performance has seen a 4-5x bump, which could lead to faster testing and optimization.

Interested developers can download the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit here.