Qiskit is an open-source Software Development Kit (SDK) by IBM for creating Quantum Programs at the level of Quantum Circuits and running them on IBM Quantum Computers on the cloud, IBM Computers simulating Quantum Computers in the Cloud, or on local machines simulating Quantum Computers. It is released under Apache 2.0 license. Qiskit consists of several elements or components such as- Terra, Aer, Ignis, Aqua, IBMQ Provider, Qiskit, etc. You will learn more about these components in this Qiskit Tutorial Series.
Why learn Quantum Computing?
Computers have revolutionized the world. However, some problems prove to be too difficult for the Computers, referred to as Classical Computers in the entire tutorial(in the field of Quantum Computing as well). These problems include various important problems such as Travelling Salesman Problem(TSP), Prime Factorization, etc. Quantum Computing promises to solve these problems. Quantum Computers can also prove useful in variety of fields such as Finance, Simulating Nature, Machine Learning(there is an entire field of Quantum Machine Learning) among others. It is because of its usefulness and its abilities to solve many of these problems that various organizations such as IBM, Google, Microsoft, along with several other startups are all working in the field of Quantum Computing.
While the Quantum Computers that are currently available are not sufficient to solve any of these problems. It is hoped and believed that soon enough the technical challenges associated with Quantum Computing will be addressed and the Quantum Computers will be able to make themselves helpful for solving real world problems.
Why learn Qiskit?
Qiskit is developed by IBM Research that allows for easy developing and running Quantum Programs. Qiskit allows you to run your Quantum Programs on your local machine by simulating a Quantum Computer. Moreover, IBM offers access to its Quantum Computers and Computers simulating Quantum Computers in the Cloud free of cost through Qiskit and IBM Quantum- an integrated environment in the cloud that allows users to develop and run Quantum Programs on the Cloud.
Additionally, Qiskit is a open-source library with strong community support which can be reached out for help. The Qiskit Community has strong support from IBM. Various competitions, webinars, summer schools, etc are held by Qiskit through out the year.
Since 1981, when the first Physics of Computation Conference was organized at MIT’s Endicott House by MIT and IBM which led to creation of the field of Quantum Computing, IBM has always maintained its strong presence in the field. This is true even to this day. All these reasons make a very good case for learning Qiskit.
Do you have Qiskit?
You can check if you already have Qiskit installed by running the following command in your Python interpreter or Jupyter Notebook.
import qiskitIf you don’t have Qiskit installed, an error message similar to the one below will be displayed.
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'qiskit'However, if no such error message appears, then Qiskit is already installed and you are good to continue with the rest of this Qiskit tutorial.
Installing Qiskit
Qiskit is easy to install. The procedure for installing it depends on your package manager.
Installing Qiskit using Pip
Pip is the default package management system for python. Therefore, it comes bundled with your python interpreter and is not required to be installed separately. To install qiskit using pip, simply run the following command
pip install qiskitChecking Qiskit Version
You can check the version of Qiskit and all its various components by running the following command
print(qiskit.__qiskit_version__)A sample output for this will be-
{'qiskit-terra': '0.18.2', 'qiskit-aer': '0.8.2', 'qiskit-ignis': '0.6.0', 'qiskit-ibmq-provider': '0.16.0', 'qiskit-aqua': '0.9.5', 'qiskit': '0.29.1', 'qiskit-nature': None, 'qiskit-finance': None, 'qiskit-optimization': None, 'qiskit-machine-learning': None}Note– Checking the version of Qiskit by qiskit.__version__ will NOT return the version of Qiskit, but Qiskit Terra. For example, running the following code
qiskit.__version__will return the following result-
'0.18.2'
Note– This Qiskit tutorial is written using the Qiskit 0.29.1 version.
Note– It is also recommended that you use Python 3 instead of Python 2 for this tutorial.
With Qiskit installed on your system, you are good to follow along with this Qiskit tutorial.