Quantum Information Software Kit (QISKit)

The Quantum Information Software Kit (QISKit for short) is a software development kit (SDK) for working with OpenQASM and the IBM Q experience (QX).

Use QISKit to create quantum computing programs, compile them, and execute them on one of several backends (online Real quantum processors, online simulators, and local simulators). For the online backends, QISKit uses our python API client to connect to the IBM Q experience.

We use GitHub issues for tracking requests and bugs. Please see the IBM Q experience community for questions and discussion. If you'd like to contribute to QISKit, please take a look at our contribution guidelines.

Links to Sections:

• Installation
• Creating your first Quantum Program
• More Information
• Authors
• License

Installation

Dependencies

At least Python 3.5 or later is needed for using QISKit. In addition, Jupyter Notebook is recommended for interacting with the tutorials. For this reason we recommend installing the Anaconda 3 python distribution, as it comes with all of these dependencies pre-installed.

In addition, a basic understanding of quantum information is very helpful when interacting with QISKit. If you're new to quantum, start with our User Guides!

PIP Installation

For those more familiar with python, the fastest way to install QISKit is by using the PIP tool (a python package manager):

    pip install qiskit

Source Installation

An alternative method is to clone the QISKit SDK repository onto your local machine, and change into the cloned directory:

Manual download

Select the "Clone or download" button at the top of this webpage (or from the URL shown in the git clone command), unzip the file if needed, and change into qiskit-sdk-py folder in a terminal window.

Git download

Or, if you have Git installed, run the following commands:

    git clone https://github.com/QISKit/qiskit-sdk-py
    cd qiskit-sdk-py

Setup your enviroment

We recommend using python virtual environments to improve your experience. Refer to our Environment Setup documentation for more information.

Creating your first Quantum Program

Now that the SDK is installed, it's time to begin working with QISKit.

We are ready to try out some QASM examples, which runs via the local simulator.

This is a simple superposition example.

from qiskit import QuantumProgram, QISKitError, RegisterSizeError

# Creating Programs create your first QuantumProgram object instance.
Q_program = QuantumProgram()

try:
  # Creating Registers create your first Quantum Register called "qr" with 2 qubits
  qr = Q_program.create_quantum_register("qr", 2)
  # create your first Classical Register called "cr" with 2 bits
  cr = Q_program.create_classical_register("cr", 2)
  # Creating Circuits create your first Quantum Circuit called "qc" involving your Quantum Register "qr"
  # and your Classical Register "cr"
  qc = Q_program.create_circuit("superposition", [qr], [cr])

  # add the H gate in the Qubit 0, we put this Qubit in superposition
  qc.h(qr[0])

  # add measure to see the state
  qc.measure(qr, cr)

  # Compiled  and execute in the local_qasm_simulator

  result = Q_program.execute(["superposition"], backend='local_qasm_simulator', shots=1024)

  # Show the results
  print(result)
  print(result.get_data("superposition"))

except QISKitError as ex:
  print('There was an error in the circuit!. Error = {}'.format(ex))
except RegisterSizeError as ex:
  print('Error in the number of registers!. Error = {}'.format(ex))

In this case, the output will be (approximately due to random fluctuations):

COMPLETED
{'00': 509, '11': 515}

Executing your code on a real Quantum chip

You can also use QISKit to execute your code on a real Quantum Chip. In order to do so, you need to configure the SDK for using the credentials for your Quantum Experience Account:

Configure your API token and QE credentials

1. Create an IBM Q experience> account if you haven't already done so

2. Get an API token from the IBM Q experience website under "My Account" > "Personal Access Token". This API token allows you to execute your programs with the IBM Q experience backends. Example.

3. You will insert your API token in a file called Qconfig.py. First copy the default version of this file from the tutorial folder to the main SDK folder (on Windows, replace cp with copy):

    $ cp Qconfig.py.default Qconfig.py

4. Open your Qconfig.py, remove the # from the beginning of the API token line, and copy/paste your API token into the space between the quotation marks on that line. Save and close the file.

5. If you have access to the IBM Q features, you also need to setup the values for your hub, group, and project. You can do so by filling the config variable with the values you can find on your IBM Q account page.

For example, a valid and fully configured Qconfig.py file would look like:

APItoken = '123456789abc...'

config = {
    'url': 'https://quantumexperience.ng.bluemix.net/api',
    # The following should only be needed for IBM Q users.
    'hub': 'MY_HUB',
    'group': 'MY_GROUP',
    'project': 'MY_PROJECT'
}

Once the Qconfig.py file is set up, it can be used for running Quantum Programs by passing its variables to QuantumProgram.set_api(). For example:

from qiskit import QuantumProgram
import Qconfig

# Creating Programs create your first QuantumProgram object instance.
Q_program = QuantumProgram()
Q_program.set_api(Qconfig.APItoken, Qconfig.config["url"], verify=False,
                  hub=Qconfig.config["hub"],
                  group=Qconfig.config["group"],
                  project=Qconfig.config["project"])

For more details on this and more information see our QISKit documentation.

Next Steps

Now you're set up and ready to check out some of the other examples from our Tutorial repository. Start with the index tutorial and then go to the ‘Getting Started’ example. If you already have Jupyter Notebooks installed, you can copy and modify the notebooks to create your own experiments.

To install the tutorials as part of the QISKit SDK, see the following installation details. Complete SDK documentation can be found in the doc directory.

More Information

For more information on how to use QISKit, tutorial examples, and other helpful links, take a look at these resources:

• User Guides, a good starting place for learning about quantum information and computing
• Tutorials, for example notebooks, start with the index and ‘Getting Started’ Jupyter notebook
• OpenQASM, for additional information and examples of QASM code
• IBM Quantum Experience Composer, a GUI for interacting with real and simulated quantum computers
• QISkit Python API, an API to use the IBM Quantum Experience in Python

QISKit was originally developed by researchers and developers on the IBM-Q Team at IBM Research, with the aim of offering a high level development kit to work with quantum computers.

Visit the IBM Q experience community for questions and discussions on QISKit and quantum computing more broadly. If you'd like to contribute to QISKit, please take a look at our contribution guidelines.

Multilanguage guide

• Korean Translation, Basic guide line written in Korean.

Authors (alphabetical)

Jim Challenger, Andrew Cross, Vincent Dwyer, Mark Everitt, Ismael Faro, Jay Gambetta, Juan Gomez, Paco Martin, Yunho Maeng, Antonio Mezzacapo, Jesus Perez, Russell Rundle, Todd Tilma, John Smolin, Erick Winston, Chris Wood

In future releases, anyone who contributes with code to this project is welcome to include their name here.

License

This project uses the Apache License Version 2.0 software license.