One of the limiters in the adoption of quantum computing is what we see as the gap between the subject matter experts in an organization and the quantum computational scientists who better understand how quantum works. In order to lessen this gap IBM and its partners have just made some announcements that will improve the user experience with Qiskit by making it easier to use through additional functions and tools. These tools will make it quicker an easier to get the best results from the available quantum hardware.
To do this, IBM has introduced a new capability called the Qiskit Functions Catalog. This catalog provides a series of prepackaged circuit and application functions that are being supplied by both IBM and its software partners that can provide a level of abstraction to the program development so that developers can accelerate the development of quantum programs for their particular use case. This catalog has just started with just a handful of functions, but the intent is to grow it with contributions from both IBM and software partners so that it will cover more areas and be even more useful as time goes on.
The Qiskit Functions have just been made available to IBM Premium Plan customers in a preview mode. A quick overview of the functions that are initially available in this first phase is shown below. The initial set of software partners providing functions include Algorithmiq, Q-CTRL, Qedma, and QunaSys. Users will need to purchase licenses from these vendors to use the functions that the vendors provide.
Circuit Functions
- IBM is providing a circuit function that provides accurate hardware results using AI powered circuit optimization and advanced error mitigation.
- Q-CTRL is providing a circuit function that includes its Fire Opal performance management software that applies AI-driven error suppression without extra overhead to allow users to run larger circuits at peak performance.
- Algorithmiq is providing a Tensor Network Mitigation method (TEM) that performs noise mitigation entirely at the classical post processing stage. This method results in unbiased estimators with a fewer number of shots and less runtime than other methods such as probabilistic error cancellation (PEC) or zero-noise extrapolation-probabilistic error amplification (ZNE-PEA).
- QEDMA is providing a function that implements efficient and accurate characterization of the quantum processors and uses that data to implement error suppression and error mitigation.
Application Functions
- Qunasys is providing their Quri Chemistry software that computes the ground state energy and electron configuration distribution of a molecule.
- Q-CTRL is providing a function for an optimization solver that lets a user input the definition of a problem at a high level and then proceeds an optimal solution for that problem.
Qiskit Addons
Another capability that IBM is introducing are a set of tools called Qiskit Addons. These allow a user to scale or design new algorithms at the utility scale and, in effect, create additional functions on their own. The code of each of these addons is being made available on GitHub. The first three addons that IBM is making available include the following:
- Multi-product formulas (MPF), reduce Trotter errors through a weighted combination of several circuit executions during the mapping step.
- Operator backpropagation (OBP), reduces circuit depth during the optimize step by trimming operations from the end of the circuit.
- Sampling-based quantum diagonalization (SQD), classically post-processes noisy samples from a quantum processor to produce more accurate eigenvalue estimations for things like chemistry Hamiltonians.
For more details on these new Qiskit Circuit Functions and Qiskit Addons, you can read a blog post on the IBM quantum website here and visit documentation for the Qiskit Functions here. In addition, Q-CTRL has posted its own blog describing their two functions which is available here, Algorithmiq has issued a press release announcing the availability of their algorithm in Qiskit Functions here and Qunasys has issued a press release announcing the availability of their application in Qiskit Functions here.
September 16, 2024
