Abstract
We review recent experimental progress towards quantum information processing and quantum simulation using neutral atoms in two-dimensional (2D) arrays of optical microtraps as 2D registers of qubits. We describe a scalable quantum information architecture based on micro-fabricated optical elements, simultaneously targeting the important issues of single-site addressability and scalability. This approach provides flexible and integrable configurations for quantum state storage, manipulation, and retrieval. We present recent experimental results on the initialization and coherent one-qubit rotation of up to 100 individually addressable qubits, the coherent transport of atomic quantum states in a scalable quantum shift register, and discuss the feasibility of two-qubit gates in 2D microtrap arrays.