Fire Opal meets IBM Qiskit Functions - Unlock turnkey performance at utility scale on industry-leading quantum computers
Ever since we first demonstrated that software solutions using AI-driven error suppression could improve the performance of commercial IBM quantum computers - first at the gate level, and then at the algorithm level - we’ve focused on making these remarkable capabilities as accessible and easy to use as possible.
Users across industries and geographies are searching for quantum advantage: the point at which quantum algorithms are the best way to solve a problem over any classical method. But the burdens they’ve faced have been steep, distracting from their core focus on building real use cases and slowing everyone’s progress.
We aim to accelerate the realization of useful quantum computers and high-impact applications by delivering optimal quantum hardware performance while minimizing complexity for the user. This ethos inspired the creation of Fire Opal, a software package that fully automates the application of advanced AI-driven error suppression strategies, validated to enhance algorithmic performance by several orders of magnitude.
With Fire Opal, you can solve utility-scale problems with exceptional accuracy, fewer shots, and no additional sampling overhead—requiring no manual configurations or adjustments. By simplifying the process and abstracting hardware, Fire Opal empowers application developers and quantum algorithm designers to focus on innovation, without the burden of managing hardware execution.
This is the future we envision. After all, are modern application developers expected to program in or understand assembly language? Similarly, quantum application developers should be able to simply harness the full power of quantum computers without having to look under the hood.
And now to make it easier than ever to leverage Fire Opal’s advanced performance-boosting capabilities, we're excited to integrate these features directly into IBM’s new Qiskit Functions Catalog.
By deploying this new offering, IBM equips an expanding global community of developers, researchers, and data scientists with cutting-edge tools that simplify the tasks of programming and running quantum computers, bringing them to the same level of ease and efficiency as classical systems. Through Qiskit Functions, any IBM Quantum Premium Plan customer can get direct access to the most advanced Q-CTRL technology natively integrated into the systems they rely on.
We’re thrilled to introduce two powerful Qiskit Functions to the IBM Quantum Platform—our Performance Management and Optimization Solver functions—designed to help you maximize the potential of today’s quantum computers.
Q-CTRL’s Performance Management Qiskit Function
Suppress errors with zero overhead
Gone are the days of fiddling with low-level hardware settings, cobbling together research-grade packages, and still getting noisy results. To meaningfully advance algorithm discovery and development, quantum computing users need efficient and reliable results when running circuits to solve real-world problems.
Fire Opal’s Performance Management capabilities enable developers and researchers to run larger circuits at peak performance. When running circuits with Performance Management, the function automatically applies AI-driven error suppression techniques to combat errors everywhere they occur. This overhead-free technique allows you to run circuits using more gates and more qubits while achieving accurate results. As an added benefit, reaching the correct answer also reduces required shots by hundreds or thousands of times, saving on compute time and cost.
The Performance Management function mirrors the standard Qiskit Runtime primitives: the Sampler and Estimator. On the surface, the interface looks nearly the same. Behind the scenes, multiple error suppression techniques work together to prevent errors from happening at runtime. There’s no heavy “mitigation” or postprocessing to adjust for the noise—errors are prevented before they occur. All Fire Opal pipeline methods are pre-configured and algorithm-agnostic, meaning you always get the best performance out of the box.
Learn how to run circuits with the Performance Management function.
How industry leaders are accelerating scientific discovery with Performance Management
Recently, a team of researchers—including members from Mitsubishi Chemical, SoftBank, JSR Corporation and Keio University—set out to find more accurate methods for calculating the physical properties of materials using quantum computers.
The team published a new world-record result using Fire Opal’s Performance Management capabilities on IBM Quantum systems to perform a 33-qubit Quantum Phase Estimation (QPE) algorithm. QPE is a common algorithm used in many applications, such as quantum chemistry, but it's very challenging to implement, and the circuits easily become too unwieldy for current hardware. With Fire Opal, they successfully implemented a much larger use case than any prior published demonstrations, unlocking insights at the scales that mattered to them.
We achieved a significant leap forward in accurately calculating the physical properties of materials, demonstrating a five-fold increase in achievable circuit width over previous Quantum Phase Estimation studies. These results were enabled by Q-CTRL's performance management, which made it possible to run deeper and wider circuits on the IBM Quantum Platform.
Shu Kanno, Scientist at Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation
Q-CTRL’s Optimization Solver Qiskit Function
Solve utility-scale quantum optimization problems without quantum circuits
Some of the most promising near-term applications for quantum computers relate to hybrid optimization—methods that combine tough quantum calculations with efficient classical optimization engines. However. implementing these algorithms often means significant complexity for users in fields like logistics, scheduling, and finance who want to apply quantum solutions. That complexity is no longer a barrier.
Fire Opal’s Performance Management abstracts the details of hardware execution and error suppression from the algorithm development process.
The Fire Opal Optimization Solver goes further, enabling computational and data scientists to solve utility-scale optimization problems on quantum hardware without requiring any quantum expertise or ever writing a quantum circuit! Simply input the high-level problem definition, and the Solver adapts the problem for quantum and runs the algorithm, returning the optimal solution.
The entire workflow is noise-aware and leverages Fire Opal's Performance Management in the background to consistently deliver accurate solutions to classically challenging optimization problems, even at full-device scale on IBM's largest systems.
We’re at an exciting threshold where quantum solutions are becoming seriously competitive with the best we can do classically. Pushing further needs a broader range of users to get working with quantum solutions, and the Fire Opal Optimization Solver makes it easy for anyone to put quantum computers to the test.
Try out the Optimization Solver function on your problems.
How the Australian Army is improving logistics
In search of better and faster solutions to their logistics challenges, the Australian Army turned to us with the challenge of validating their thesis that quantum computing has the potential to help.
Army presented a real-world problem: optimizing the departure schedules and routes of 5,000 convoys as part of Exercise Talisman Sabre—the largest combined training activity between the Australian Defence Force and the United States military.
Fire Opal’s Optimization Solver improved the performance of quantum computers to a level that the early results could finally give the Army confidence that quantum route optimization could be a feasible way to improve convoy logistics, allowing them to build a roadmap toward implementing the solution at scale.
Optimally routing 120 convoys can take more than a month of classical computation. The Australian Army is evaluating the potential of quantum computing to provide improvements; however, it’s been difficult to validate the feasibility of a quantum solution due to hardware noise. With Q-CTRL's Optimization Solver, we are able to achieve results on quantum computers that build confidence in our quantum roadmap.
Marcus Doherty, Australian Reserve Officer, Australian Army
Harness the full potential of quantum computing
With Fire Opal available through the Qiskit Functions Catalog, developers, researchers, and data scientists across the globe can now harness the full potential of quantum hardware. This integration not only empowers users to achieve breakthrough results but also accelerates the realization of quantum advantage in diverse industries.
Whether you’re running large-scale customized circuits or tackling complex optimization problems, Fire Opal provides the tools you need to push the boundaries of what's possible in quantum computing. We’re looking forward to seeing the new results enabled by Fire Opal across the IBM Quantum Network!
Contact us to get started today.
