Qiskit runtime, a quantum-classical execution platform for cloud-accessible quantum computers

Abstract

The infrastructure challenges of quantum computing has motivated many providers of quantum computing hardware to focus on a cloud access model for their machines. In most cases, these cloud models expose a circuit interface for users to submit requests for execution. Unfortunately, such circuit interfaces are poorly suited to typical workloads that require looping or iterative interactions between quantum and classical computations such as found in variational algorithms, calibration routines, etc. The Qiskit Runtime aims to address this performance bottleneck by hosting both the quantum and classical parts of a computation within a unified system infrastructure. In this talk, I will show the architecture of the Qiskit Runtime, demonstrate the performance benefit on model workloads, and discuss future enhancements to incorporate the Qiskit Runtime into a Quantum Serverless platform.