Exercise - Get started with the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator

8 minutes

Let's get some practice with the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator. In the following example, you estimate the physical resources of a Shor's algorithm sample.

Install qsharp and qsharp-widgets

First, install the latest Azure Quantum qsharp and qsharp-widgets packages.

python -m pip install --upgrade qsharp qsharp-widgets

Create the quantum algorithm

In Visual Studio Code, select View > Command palette and select Create: New Jupyter Notebook.

In the notebook's first cell, import the qsharp package:

import qsharp
from qsharp_widgets import EstimateDetails

Add a new cell and copy the following code:

%%qsharp
/// # Sample
/// Random Bit
///
/// # Description
/// This Q# program generates a random bit by setting a qubit in a superposition
/// of the computational basis states |0〉 and |1〉, and returning the measurement
/// result.

    operation RandomBit() : Result {
        // Qubits are only accesible for the duration of the scope where they
        // are allocated and are automatically released at the end of the scope.
        use qubit = Qubit();

        // Set the qubit in superposition by applying a Hadamard transformation.
        H(qubit);

        // Measure the qubit. There is a 50% probability of measuring either 
        // `Zero` or `One`.
        let result = M(qubit);

        // Reset the qubit so it can be safely released.
        Reset(qubit);
        return result;
    }

Estimate the quantum algorithm

Now, estimate the physical resources for the RandomBit operation using the default assumptions. Add a new cell and copy the following code:
```
result = qsharp.estimate("RandomBit()")
result
```
The qsharp.estimate function creates a result object, which can be used to display a table with the overall physical resource counts. The first table shows the main physical-resource estimates. The RandomBit operation requires 300 qubits and takes two microseconds to run on a quantum computer.

Physical resource estimates Value

Runtime 2 microsecs

rQOPS 3.00M

Physical qubits 300

Physical resource estimates	Value
Runtime	2 microsecs
rQOPS	3.00M
Physical qubits	300

You can inspect cost details by collapsing the groups, which have more information. For example, collapse the Logical qubit parameters group to see that the code distance is 5 and the number of physical qubits per logical qubit is 50.

Logical qubit parameter	Value
QEC scheme	surface_code
Code distance	5
Physical qubits	50
Logical cycle time	2 microsecs
Logical qubit error rate	3.00E-5
Crossing prefactor	0.03
Error correction threshold	0.01
Logical cycle time formula	(4 * `twoQubitGateTime` + 2 * `oneQubitMeasurementTime`) * `codeDistance`
Physical qubits formula	2 * `codeDistance` * `codeDistance`

You can use the jobParams field to access all the target parameters that can be passed to the job execution and see which default values were assumed:

result['jobParams']

{'errorBudget': 0.001,
 'qecScheme': {'crossingPrefactor': 0.03,
  'errorCorrectionThreshold': 0.01,
  'logicalCycleTime': '(4 * twoQubitGateTime + 2 * oneQubitMeasurementTime) * codeDistance',
  'name': 'surface_code',
  'physicalQubitsPerLogicalQubit': '2 * codeDistance * codeDistance'},
 'qubitParams': {'instructionSet': 'GateBased',
  'name': 'qubit_gate_ns_e3',
  'oneQubitGateErrorRate': 0.001,
  'oneQubitGateTime': '50 ns',
  'oneQubitMeasurementErrorRate': 0.001,
  'oneQubitMeasurementTime': '100 ns',
  'tGateErrorRate': 0.001,
  'tGateTime': '50 ns',
  'twoQubitGateErrorRate': 0.001,
  'twoQubitGateTime': '50 ns'}}

You can see that the Resource Estimator takes the qubit_gate_ns_e3 qubit model, the surface_code error correction code, and 0.001 error budget as default values for the estimation.

Change the default values and estimate the algorithm

When submitting a resource estimate request for your program, you can specify some optional parameters. These are the target parameters you can customize:

errorBudget: The overall allowed error budget for the algorithm
qecScheme: The quantum error correction (QEC) scheme
qubitParams: The physical qubit parameters
constraints: The constraints on the component-level
distillationUnitSpecifications: The specifications for T factories distillation algorithms
estimateType: Single or frontier

Change qubit model

You can estimate the cost for the same algorithm using the Majorana-based qubit parameter, qubitParams, qubit_maj_ns_e6.

result_maj = qsharp.estimate("RandomBit()", params={
                "qubitParams": {
                    "name": "qubit_maj_ns_e6"
                }})
EstimateDetails(result_maj)

Change quantum error correction scheme

You can rerun the resource estimation job for the same example on the Majorana-based qubit parameters with a floqued QEC scheme, qecScheme.

result_maj = qsharp.estimate("RandomBit()", params={
                "qubitParams": {
                    "name": "qubit_maj_ns_e6"
                },
                "qecScheme": {
                    "name": "floquet_code"
                }})
EstimateDetails(result_maj)

Change error budget

Next, rerun the same quantum circuit with an errorBudget of 10%.

result_maj = qsharp.estimate("RandomBit()", params={
                "qubitParams": {
                    "name": "qubit_maj_ns_e6"
                },
                "qecScheme": {
                    "name": "floquet_code"
                },
                "errorBudget": 0.1})
EstimateDetails(result_maj)