  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.
