Chapter 1: Exploring the IBM Quantum Experience

Quantum computing has been growing in popularity over the past few years, most recently since IBM released the IBM Quantum Experience (IQX) back in May 2016. This release was the first of its kind, hosted on the cloud and providing the world with the opportunity to experiment with a quantum computer for free. The IQX includes a user interface that allows anyone to run experiments on both a simulator and on a real quantum computer.

The goal of this chapter is to first introduce you to the IBM Quantum Experience site, specifically the dashboard, which contains everything you need in order to run experiments. It also allows you to experiment with existing experiments contributed by other developers from around the world, the benefits of which can help you to understand how others are experimenting, and you can perhaps collaborate with them if the experiments correlate with your own ideas.

This chapter will help you understand what actions and information are available in each view. This includes creating an experiment, running experiments on a simulator or real quantum device, information about your profile, available backends, or pending results to experiments. So, let's get started!

The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

• Navigating the IBM Quantum Experience
• Getting started with IBM Quantum Experience