Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of its quantum computing service today. Called Amazon Braket, the service provides quantum computing simulators running on Amazon EC2 instances as well as remote access to real quantum hardware. These include superconducting quantum annealers from D-Wave, trapped ion processors from IonQ, and superconducting quantum processors from Rigetti.
Naturally, it supports the development tools required to design, prototype, and run quantum algorithms as well. The popular open-source web application Jupyter Notebook is integrated to help you create, debug, share, and run code. A selection of prebuilt quantum algorithms have been provided as well.
In many ways, Amazon Braket is similar to IBM Q. Both feature quantum computing simulators and access to quantum hardware. The former outsourced this task to D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti, while IBM Q has a rapport of its own quantum computers hosted on the cloud. Both support local simulators, Jupyter Notebook, and pre-designed quantum algorithms.
Currently, Amazon Braket is available in US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), and US West (Oregon) AWS Regions. Availability is set to expand to other regions in the future. Pricing is dissected into two factors — per shot and per task — depending upon the choice of quantum hardware. If you"re interested, here"s a short guide to help you get started with creating your first notebook and running a quantum computing simulation on a local simulator using Amazon Braket.