IBM Quantum systems overview¶

Since 2016, when it made the world’s first quantum computer available through IBM Cloud®, IBM Quantum Experience has remained the premier place for researchers, industry professionals, developers, and students to access cutting edge quantum hardware.

IBM Quantum currently hosts a wide variety of quantum systems, offering access through our open and premium systems. All quantum systems deployed by IBM Quantum are based on superconducting qubit technology, as the control and scalability of this technology pave a clear path to achieving quantum advantage with these systems.

• What is a backend?

• Cite usage of a backend

• Available systems: premium systems and open systems

What is a backend?

A backend is an interface to a quantum system or classical quantum simulator. A backend may be online or local and may support different types of experiments (pulse schedule and/or circuit execution). Here we focus only on those backends that are hosted on IBM Quantum Experience. These backends are denoted by names that start with ibmq_*. All backends return a configuration file containing all the information needed for executing quantum circuits on the backend. Additionally, real quantum systems return properties information that details the characteristics of the device qubits, and the gates acting on these qubits. This includes noise information obtained from device calibration scripts.

Cite usage of a backend

For research papers, we encourage authors to acknowledge IBM Quantum using:

We acknowledge the use of IBM Quantum services for this work. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official policy or position of IBM or the IBM Quantum team.

Systems should be cited using the following format (here using Vigo as the example):

ibmq_vigo v1.0.2, IBM Quantum team. Retrieved from https://quantum-computing.ibm.com (2020).