Microsoft and Atom Computing on Tuesday announced a breakthrough on the fault-tolerant quantum computing at the Microsoft Ignite 2024 conference.

The two companies entangled 24 logical qubits using neutral atoms held in place by lasers. The two companies say that this is the highest number of entangled logical qubits on record.

The system was also able to detect when one of the neutral atoms that make up a physical qubit disappeared and repeatedly correct for that, according to the announcement.

The two companies plan to deliver quantum computers based on this technology to commercial customers next year. Those machines will feature over 1,000 physical qubits, the announcement said.

"We've run that algorithm in this hardware out to 20 logical qubits in that computation and shown that we can get better than physical performance there. You also get better than classical, it turns out, for this algorithm," said Krysta Svore, the technical fellow and vice president of advanced quantum development for Microsoft Azure Quantum.

The Azure Quantum Compute platform provides a qubit virtualization system that allows the teams to design quantum error correction that is optimized for a specific quantum processor. It's this virtualization system, combined with the steady advances in Atom Computing's work with neutral atoms, that has, in part, allowed for these recent advances, Svore said.

"We are excited to continue our collaboration with Microsoft, which has already led to significant milestones in quantum computing," said Ben Bloom, founder and CEO of Atom Computing. "By coupling our state-of-the-art neutral-atom qubits with Microsoft's qubit-virtualization system, we are now able to offer reliable logical qubits on a commercial quantum machine. This system will enable rapid progress in multiple fields, including chemistry and materials science."