IBM Qiskit
IBM today announced the development and global adoption of its quantum software, Qiskit. Since its launch in 2017, Qiskit, an open-source software development kit (SDK), has enabled over 550,000 users to create and execute quantum circuits on IBM’s quantum hardware platforms, totaling over 3 trillion quantum circuit executions.
To achieve even greater performance, Qiskit has been developed into a whole software stack in its most recent version. From its humble beginnings as a well-liked quantum software development kit for investigating and executing quantum computing experiments, it has developed into a reliable SDK and services portfolio, designed to help users gain better performance when executing intricate quantum circuits on more than 100 qubit IBM quantum computers.
Members of the IBM Quantum Network will be able to discover the next generation of quantum algorithms in their respective areas with the most powerful Qiskit capabilities thanks to this extension, which will also help them uncover quantum advantage.
Users must have a set of tools that can map their issues to make use of both sophisticated classical and quantum computation, optimise the problem for effective quantum execution, and then successfully execute the quantum circuits on actual quantum hardware in order to achieve quantum advantage. These tools, which IBM has been developing for the past seven years, are now coming together to form the Qiskit software stack.
Qiskit has had over 100 releases since its debut as a pioneering quantum computing research tool. Qiskit is used by enterprises, governments, research centres, and universities to undertake large-scale quantum experiments.
The Qiskit software stack is expanded to include:
- The Qiskit SDK v1.x stable release is designed for creating, refining, and displaying quantum circuits.
- Quantum circuit optimisation using artificial intelligence (AI) integrated into the Qiskit Transpiler Service.
- Simplified modes of operation for the Qiskit Runtime Service, which may be adjusted to run quantum circuits efficiently on quantum hardware.
- Watsonx-based generative AI models enable the Qiskit Code Assistant to automate the creation of quantum code.
- Using quantum hardware and classical clusters, quantum-centric supercomputing tasks can be executed using the Qiskit Serverless open-source platform.
Qiskit SDK
Circuits for quantum hardware can now be optimized 39 times faster than with Qiskit 0.33 thanks to the addition of new features and enhancements to the Qiskit SDK. In addition, Qiskit is designed to minimize overhead and minimize the size of circuits; it has been shown to cut memory use by an average of three times when compared to Qiskit 0.43.
Additionally, by integrating AI and heuristic passes with the Qiskit Transpiler Service, customers can minimise circuit depth in comparison to utilising the Qiskit SDK without AI optimisation.
According to Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Quantum, “the global adoption of quantum computing and the discovery of quantum advantage will require a combination of leading quantum hardware alongside a robust and performant software stack to run workloads.” The algorithm discovery process that has started on utility-scale quantum technology is based on these two foundations. The Qiskit stack is expected to serve as a fundamental tool for investigating the computational domains where quantum computing shines, as an expanding quantum ecosystem matches its most challenging issues to quantum circuits.
In 2023, IBM gave its quantum hardware’s utility-scale capabilities its first public demonstration. This was the first step towards a future where quantum hardware would be able to execute quantum circuits more quickly and precisely than a classical computer could emulate a quantum computer. Designed to optimise the capabilities of cutting-edge quantum hardware, the Qiskit software stack seeks to support a worldwide community of users in exploring novel quantum algorithms that investigate scenarios in which quantum computing may outperform traditional methods in solving problems.
Giorgio Cortiana, Head of Data and AI – Energy Intelligence, E.ON, stated, “it offers a valuable set of tools for E.ON as we investigate how quantum computing could help us navigate the financial and operational complexities of the energy industry.” “Our team is able to advance utility-scale prototypes with this as a performant foundation to build and discover quantum algorithms that can be applied to business use cases, with the aim of finding new solutions to challenges in the European energy sector.”
Senior scientist Stephan Eidenbenz of Los Alamos National Laboratory stated, “We started using Qiskit for our quantum computing efforts several years ago as part of an effort to help develop a quantum-ready workforce.” Every day, scientists in the lab utilise this to experiment with novel algorithmic concepts and to communicate with IBM’s quantum hardware backends. Our team can also add compiler optimisation steps and enable pulse-level access thanks to it’s open nature.
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