Use a Quantum Cloud for (almost) Free (2024)

This story is about geographical and social inclusion!

Geography inclusion: Quantum computers are not cheap at the moment (we talk about 15 millions USD investments) without mentioning the knowledge to set it up. The good news is that anyone in the globe can start using a quantum computer through cloud platforms. So, it doesn’t matter if you live in Norway, US, Peru, or Botswana. As long as you have internet access you can run programs on quantum circuit. Unfortunately, they are not totally free but they are at accessible prices (e.g. 0.3 USD per run).

Social inclusion: In this article I will guide through one of these platforms. This is not an over-comprehensive guide and I am not comparing this platform to the others. I want you to show how easy is to run programs on quantum circuit. Do you need a PhD in quantum physics? Obviously it is better, but if you are just a highschool student you can start from here, and if you like it, you can continue in the future. Also, girls this is not a nerdy thing, you might like it :-) So let’s start with Amazon Braket.

Amazon Braket is one of the platforms easily accessible online. It is a quantum computing platform that gives access to multiple quantum devices from different companies (D-Wave, IonQ, Rigetti), one way to use it is through the Braket Python SDK. I will guide you through the basics. To be honest, I prefer the IBM QPU (which is virtually totally free) and Qiskit, but I think exactly for this reason I write in the future more in dept tutorials. Anyway, here lets first focus on Braket.

First, open a browser and go to the url https://aws.amazon.com/braket/

Then, you have to select a North American Cloud and a data repository. Amazon Braket stores results from your algorithms in any Amazon S3 bucket.

We can select the quantum processor (D-wave, IonQ, Rigetti) or a simulator. There are a couple of options about the D-Wave and the Rigetti. It is also possible that those quantum machines are temporarily not available. Let’s see briefly those connected devices before you choose. This dashboard is actually more an overview of the possibilities…