AWS is making its Amazon Braket service widely available, which enables customers to deploy quantum computing from the public cloud. With Amazon Braket, developers, researchers and scientists have access to a (test) environment for quantum computing.
Amazon Braket allows users to develop their own quantum algorithms with the Braket developer kit or to choose from a library of pre-built algorithms. They can also use hybrid algorithms that combine traditional systems with quantum computing systems. The development of these algorithms can be done using AWS-managed Jupyter notebooks.
Subsequently, they can test these quantum algorithms within AWS with a local simulator or with a fully managed high-performance simulator. AWS can also bring customers into contact with experts in the field of quantum computing through its Quantum Solutions Lab. The quantum algorithms can be run on three quantum hardware architectures.
Three architectures
AWS believes it is important that Amazon Braket collaborates with three external parties that provide an architecture for quantum computing. Quantum computing is still in a development phase, and it is unclear which architecture will work best. AWS Braket is collaborating with D-Wave Systems, IonQ, and Rigetti Computing.
D-Wave Systems has a quantum computer based on a ‘quantum annealing superconductor’ architecture. Rigetti Computing’s quantum computer is based on a gate-based superconducting architecture. IonQ provides a more innovative quantum computing environment. This environment is based on captured charged particles, ions, in a vacuum to generate qubits. As a result, the hardware no longer needs to be excessively cooled.
Ultimately, the results are pushed via Amazon Braket to an AWS S3 bucket.
Competition and availability
AWS mainly wants to compete with existing services of other public cloud providers. For example, Microsoft’s Azure Quantum. This service also provides access to various quantum computer environments from IonQ, Honeywell and Quantum Circuits. This service is still in preview. Microsoft also invests in its own quantum computer.
Google and IBM also have their own quantum computers based on their own hardware. Both public cloud providers offer researchers the opportunity to use these computers through their own public cloud services.
AWS Braket is currently only available in the United States, such as the cloud regions US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California) and US West (Oregon). The rollout in other cloud regions is planned.
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