Microsoft to build quantum computing tools: Satya Nadella

Microsoft CEO announces partnership with Ola as well as says the company is a stack of tools on quantum computing on his latest visit to India.

After concentrating all its energies on cloud and artificial intelligence, Microsoft is now focusing on building what it believes is the next big technology. Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft who is currently in India to launch and promote his book Hit Refresh, said that the company is now focussing on quantum computing.

“Despite AI, mixed reality and cloud, the real state of our computational problems is such that we still can not solve some of the hardest problems that we face as a society like producing food enzymes or conductors that ensure no loss of energy etc. These problems inspired us. We have been working with quantum. We are bringing in world-class Mathematician, physicist, and scientist to work on it,” said Nadella.  

Nadella believes that just like AI, which was developed in 1995, has today become the center of things while we talk about speech first, quantum would be similar - a long-term approach technology.  

“With this everything we ever learnt with computer science in terms how we program changes. Because we now will use quantum for programming. So we are building a complete stack. Today, we are building the quantum language, a quantum simulator and the quantum Azure so that people can start programming quantum algorithms to solve the most pressing problems of the society,” added Nadella.   

 How quantum computing works?

If one tries to solve a problem using classic computing, he or she hits an obstacle, retraces and traces again. The problem is solved eventually but is time-consuming. However, quantum computer, it is like a parallel computer.

“You take all paths available simultaneously in quantum and that is the speed up we require in order to tackle the hardest challenges. That is the next frontier in order to keep creating more surplus, more economic benefits for people of our society. Technology is going to be something we really need to have high ambition about. It is about how can technology be able to imagine the improbable and solve the impossible,” said Nadella.  

Ola and Microsoft partners

In addition to this Nadella also talked about how Ola rides could be smarter in the coming days. Nadella and Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder, Ola announced on Tuesday that the two companies have partnered for Ola Play. Through the partnership, the Microsoft Office Suite will be brought into the car.This essentially means that once a passenger enters an Ola cab, their calendar is synced, Skype calls can be synched and all offerings of the suite are available on Ola Play. The second part of the partnership is the use of the cloud, IoT and artificial intelligence capabilities developed by Microsoft. “I believe through this partnership, a technology developed in India can be taken across the globe through Microsoft,” said Aggarwal.