The following document provides an ecosystem overview of how the various tools compatible with Cirq can work together to enable quantum computing research.
Research Libraries and Tools: Libraries and tools used for researching new quantum algorithms and designing and preparing experiments on quantum devices.
Cirq: A framework specifically for programming noisy intermediate quantum computers.
Quantum Cloud Services: Cirq can connect to a variety of quantum cloud services. Behind each cloud service, quantum algorithms run on either a quantum processor or simulator.
Quantum Circuit Simulators: Cirq is compatible with a number of quantum circuit simulators that can run either locally or in a distributed fashion.
Algorithm libraries and experiments
| Name | Main sponsor | Description |
|---|---|---|
| OpenFermion | An open-source algorithms library for developing new quantum chemistry and materials simulation algorithms | |
| TensorFlow Quantum | An open-source algorithms library for developing new quantum machine learning algorithms | |
| Stim | An open-source library for high speed simulation of Clifford circuits and quantum error correction | |
| ReCirq | An open-source repository of example experiments, tools, and tutorials for running experiments on Google’s Quantum Computing Service | |
| Forge | QCWare | A proprietary library for domain-specific quantum algorithms and applications |
| Pennylane | Xanadu | An open-source library for quantum machine learning with TensorFlow, PyTorch, or NumPy |
Development tools
| Name | Main sponsor | Description |
|---|---|---|
| MITIQ | Unitary Fund | An open-source library for error mitigation |
| Orquestra | Zapata | A proprietary workflow management tool for quantum computing |
| pyGSTi | Sandia National Labs | An open-source library for modeling and characterizing noisy quantum information processors |
| QUEKO | UCLA | An open-source tool to generate benchmarks with the known optimal solutions |
| tket | Cambridge Quantum | An open-source and platform agnostic SDK for circuit optimisation, compilation and noise mitigation |
| True-Q | Quantum Benchmark | A proprietary library for assessing and optimizing quantum hardware and algorithm performance. |
Supported quantum cloud services
| Company | Type of Quantum Computer |
|---|---|
| Alpine Quantum Technologies | Trapped ions |
| IonQ | Trapped ions |
| Microsoft Azure Quantum | Trapped ions (Honeywell and IonQ) |
| Pasqal | Neutral atoms |
| Rigetti | Superconducting qubits |
For more information for vendors about integrating with cirq, see our RFC page.
High performance quantum circuit simulators
| Name | Main sponsor | Description |
|---|---|---|
| qsim | An open-source, high performance circuit simulator for Schrödinger simulations | |
| quimb | Johnny Gray | An open-source, high performance circuit simulator using tensor-networks |
| qulacs | Quansys | An open-source, high performance circuit simulator for Schrödinger simulations |
| Stim | An open-source library for high speed simulation of Clifford circuits and quantum error correction | |
| cuQuantum | Nvidia | Tools for speeding up quantum simulation on GPUs |