Acquisition of access to a Quantum Computer(IBM Quantum Premium Service)

Under the Faculty of Science the Department of Chemistry does research in many areas of Chemistry. Researchers at Department of Chemistry strive to develop better chemical compounds and processes and to determine how new solutions will influence environment and climate. Researchers at the Department are searching for fundamental insights as well as mature inventions. Our focus is on the development of Quantum Chemical Methods and Software to be run on Quantum Computers.

For use in our research project on Hybrid Quantum Chemistry on Hybrid Quantum Computers we need access to 5% of a quantum computer, which is build from at least 127 and later 433 superconducting transmom qubits through 3 years and which is running QisKit. In addition we need premium access to the IBM Quantum Network and to the Quantum Technical Foundations training module from the IBM Quantum Accelerator including.

For our research work in Hybrid Quantum Chemistry on Hybrid Quantum Computers we need a quantum computer build from at least 127 and later 433 superconducting transmom qubits, which is running QisKit, as we and our collaborators are developing software for this specific type of quantum computer.

Speed is fundamental to the type of quantum algorithms that can be practically run in hardware in the amount of time needed for research applications. Quantum Computing speed properties are measured jointly by the CLOPS (circuit layer operations per second) benchmark. For our research work we expect a good target to be CLOPS ≥ 10,000, with improvements of 3x-10x expected within 1 year after service commencement.

Research-grade use and workloads execution is not possible without access to the most reliable systems available. We will need access to more than 5 systems, each having an uptime of more than 99%.

In addition, we need the support service and the training program for QisKit of IBM’s Quantum Technical Foundations training module from the IBM Quantum Accelerator as only this will allow us to get started with our project fast enough in order to complete it within the deadlines of the project.

With open-source software, researchers can implement more open standards than with proprietary software. Within our research program we expect to develop new tools, which can easily be added to and integrated with existing open-source software. Use of the open source Qiskit software stack is required as it provides simplicity of consumption, has good performance, and does not require a great deal of expertise to use. Hardware integration with Qiskit must be at a level where compilation methodologies take hardware details and characterization into account to optimize gate scheduling, qubit mapping, and mitigate some errors through software. This improves the efficiency of the quantum computing stack given qubit coherence and errors.

We have researched the marked and found that the only instrument and services that fulfill our needs is the one included in IBM Quantum Premium Service.