Rigetti Aspen-8 on AWS
Building useful quantum software and applications requires access to state-of-the-art quantum hardware. This begins with quantum processors that have enough qubits and sufficiently low error rates that they are difficult to simulate classically. These processors must be tightly coupled to classical compute resources to achieve practical performance requirements. And they have to be integrated with existing compute infrastructure to support real hybrid workflows.
Aspen-8, our most advanced system to date, delivers these capabilities to all of our QCS integration partners. Now, in collaboration with Amazon Braket, this system is available to every AWS customer.
On-chip performance
Aspen-8 is a gate-model superconducting quantum processor based on our latest 32-qubit node technology. It features an all-tunable qubit architecture with 3-fold connectivity, fast (60ns and 160ns) 1Q and 2Q gates, long qubit coherence times measuring ~20µs, and industry-leading program execution rates powered by active register reset and parametric control.
The addition of excitation-preserving XY entangling gates to our existing controlled-Z gates on Aspen-8 gives users more precise control for building complex circuits. This allows for significant reductions in circuit depth relative to processors with only one type of gate per edge.
Quantum programs can be further optimized with our quilc compiler. Quilc is equipped with a technique called state-aware compilation that uses knowledge about the quantum state of the system to execute only those instructions that would have a measurable effect on the program. Quilc also considers how many qubits are available, how they’re connected, their performance characteristics, and what types of native gates they support to ensure optimized program execution on Rigetti QPUs.
Hybrid optimized
Rigetti quantum systems are designed to explore today’s most promising NISQ-era applications. Our hybrid architecture is optimized for integration with existing compute infrastructure, with the capability for ultra-low-latency (sub-millisecond) connectivity between a customer’s classical hardware and Rigetti QPUs. This makes it possible to run high-performance hybrid computations seamlessly with a classical environment tuned to their specific infrastructure and application workflow.
Our systems are also tailored to support the development of practical software and applications. Scheduling and running quantum programs are done through an API, which means developers can use any modern programming language to access the system. Users of the Rigetti pyQuil library can abstract away the details of the API calls, specifying the classical parts of a hybrid algorithm in Python while pyQuil manages the execution of quantum subroutines on the QPU. Quilc accepts both Quil and QASM as an input, enabling integration with other languages like QISKit or Cirq. Customers with a legacy of high-performance code can write their own tools that produce Quil, and then leverage the API to integrate Rigetti QPUs with their existing tool chains.
Delivering quantum advantage is a full-stack engineering pursuit. Aspen-8 gives users the flexibility and on-chip performance to optimize their quantum programs, fast execution times and variational feedback loops for high-performance hybrid computation, and industry-leading integration capabilities to support the exploration and development of practical applications.
