Comparing Quantum Service Offerings

TL;DR

This paper compares various cloud-based quantum computing services across different hardware technologies by conducting uniform experiments, aiming to clarify their differences and assist practitioners in choosing suitable offerings.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of quantum service offerings from different hardware providers through standardized experiments, highlighting key differences and usage lessons.

Findings

Differences in capabilities and requirements among quantum services.

Insights into hardware technology variations and their impact.

Practical guidelines for users of quantum cloud services.

Abstract

With the emergence of quantum computing, a growing number of quantum devices is accessible via cloud offerings. However, due to the rapid development of the field, these quantum-specific service offerings vary significantly in capabilities and requirements they impose on software developers. This is particularly challenging for practitioners from outside the quantum computing domain who are interested in using these offerings as parts of their applications. In this paper, we compare several devices based on different hardware technologies and provided through different offerings, by conducting the same experiment on each of them. By documenting the lessons learned from our experiments, we aim to simplify the usage of quantum-specific offerings and illustrate the differences between predominant quantum hardware technologies.