Q-CTRL Integrates Error Suppression Technology Into IBM Quantum Services

Insider Brief

• Q-CTRL announced that its Q-CTRL Embedded software has been integrated as an option with IBM Quantum’s Pay-As- You-Go Plan.
• The integration aims to provide user-friendly functionality to address unreliable results on hardware.
• Q-CTRL’s software automatically addressing the problem of noise and hardware error.

PRESS RELEASE — Q-CTRL, a global leader in developing useful quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, today announced that its Q-CTRL Embedded software has been integrated as an option with IBM Quantum’s Pay-As- You-Go Plan to deliver advancements in quantum computing utility and performance. This integration represents the first time a third-party independent software vendor’s technology solution will be available for users to select in the IBM Quantum Pay-As-You-Go Plan.

The integration aims to provide user-friendly functionality to address the primary challenge facing quantum computing end-users: Unreliable results from algorithms run on today’s hardware.

To get the most out of near-term quantum computers you need to be an expert in an array of technical specializations – algorithms, compilers, error suppression strategies, and error mitigation – without focusing on each of these it’s difficult to get reliable results. The combination of Q-CTRL technology and IBM Quantum services reduces this burden, making it simpler to get useful results from real hardware by automatically addressing the problem of noise and hardware error.

Companies and end-users are seeking streamlined ways to integrate useful quantum computing into their workflows and to better leverage their existing IT expertise. Q-CTRL’s state-of-the-art performance-management infrastructure software, Q-CTRL Embedded, delivers these benefits to users and will now be available as an option within the IBM Quantum Pay-As-You-Go Plan.

Now, any IBM Quantum Pay-As-You-Go Plan user has the option to utilize Q-CTRL’s advanced technology using a single command within their Qiskit environment. And in great news for the community, accessing Q-CTRL’s performance-management software incurs no additional costs to the IBM Quantum Pay-As-You-Go Plan.

“Since we joined the IBM Quantum Network in 2018, we’ve been building the world’s most advanced infrastructure software for performance management in quantum computing,” said Q-CTRL CEO and Founder Michael J. Biercuk. “IBM has built a world-class quantum computing platform with the flexibility needed for experts like Q-CTRL to demonstrate new software able to dramatically improve the success of real quantum algorithms—detailed tests on a suite of benchmarking algorithms showed benefits up to thousands of times. We’re very excited to now bring these tools to the exceptional ecosystem of researchers and businesses building their quantum workflows on IBM hardware.”

• TRL Embedded delivers enhancements in computational accuracy and efficiency through a simple configuration-free setting. When the performance management option is selected, a fully configured autonomous toolchain is triggered in the background to suppress

Based on recently peer-reviewed research on this topic and new tests on utility-scale quantum systems, benefits can reach up to:

• 10X increase in the complexity of quantum algorithms they can run (measured through circuit depth), up to intrinsic hardware limits;
• 100X cost reduction relative to alternative research-grade error-reduction strategies by

reducing the number of experimental “shots” required to suppress errors;

• >1,000X improvement in the success of quantum algorithms widely used in the

These functionalities, in combination with the IBM Quantum development roadmap, aim to accelerate the path toward quantum advantage and allow end users from research to enterprise to gain strategic advantages they’ve been seeking from their quantum applications.

“At IBM, our goal is to give our users the ability to run valuable quantum workloads beyond what can be simulated on classical computers. A core requirement to this is reducing noise. The noise suppression provided through Q-CTRL’s performance management makes exploring useful quantum circuits even easier. I very much look forward to what our users will be able to do with this newly added error-suppression technology,” said Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Quantum.