GPU-based quantum simulation on Google Cloud

In this tutorial, you configure and test a virtual machine (VM) to run GPU-based quantum simulations on Google Cloud.

The later steps in this tutorial require you to enter several commands at the command line. Some commands might require you to add sudo before the command. For example, if a step asks you to type icecream -fancy, you might need to type sudo icecream -fancy.

1. Create a virtual machine

Follow the instructions in the Quickstart using a Linux VM guide to create a VM. In addition to the guidance under the Create a Linux VM instance heading, ensure that your VM has the following properties:

• In the Machine Configuration section, in the Machine Family options, click on the GPU filter.
• In the Machine Configuration section, in the Machine family options, in the GPU type option, choose NVIDIA Tesla A100.
  • In the Number of GPUs option, choose 1.
• In the Boot disk section, click the Change button.
  • In the Operating System option, choose Ubuntu.
  • In the Version option, choose 20.04 LTS.
  • In the Size field, enter 30 (minimum).
  • This overrides step 3 through 5 in the Quickstart guide.
• In the Firewall section, ensure that both the Allow HTTP traffic checkbox and Allow HTTPS traffic checkbox have marks.

When Google Cloud finishes creating the VM, you can see your VM listed in the Compute Instances dashboard for your project.

Find out more

• Choosing hardware for your qsim simulation
• Choosing the right machine family and type
• Creating a VM with attached GPUs

2. Prepare your computer

Use SSH in the glcoud tool to communicate with your VM.

1. Install the gcloud command line tool. Follow the instructions in the Installing Cloud SDK documentation.
2. After installation, run the gcloud init command to initialize the Google Cloud environment. You need to provide the gcloud tool with details about your VM, such as the project name and the region where your VM is located.
   1. You can verify your environment by using the gcloud config list command.

3. Connect to your VM by using SSH. Replace [YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME] with the name of your VM.

   gcloud compute ssh [YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME]
   

When the command completes successfully, your prompt changes from your local machine to your virtual machine.

3. Enable your virutal machine to use the GPU

1. Install the GPU driver. In the Google Cloud documentation, in the Installing GPU drivers guide, follow the steps provided in the following sections:
   • Examples, under the Ubuntu tab. Only follow the steps for Ubuntu 20.04 (steps 3a through 3f).
   • Verifying the GPU driver install

2. Install the CUDA toolkit.

   sudo apt install -y nvidia-cuda-toolkit`
   

3. Add your CUDA toolkit to the environment search path.

   1. Discover the directory of the CUDA toolkit that you installed.

      ls /usr/local
      

      The toolkit is the highest number that looks like the pattern cuda-XX.Y. The output of the command should resemble the following:

      bin cuda cuda-11 cuda-11.4 etc games include lib man sbin share src
      

      In this case, the directory is cuda-11.4.

   2. Add the CUDA toolkit path to your environment. You can run the following command to append the path to your ~/.bashrc file. Replace [DIR] with the CUDA directory that you discovered in the previous step.

      echo "export PATH=/usr/local/[DIR]/bin${PATH:+:${PATH} }" >> ~/.bashrc
      

   3. Run source ~/.bashrc to activate the new environment search path

4. Install build tools

Install the tools required to build qsim. This step might take a few minutes to complete.

sudo apt install cmake && sudo apt install pip && pip install pybind11

5. Create a GPU-enabled version of qsim

1. Clone the qsim repository.

   git clone https://github.com/quantumlib/qsim.git
   

2. Run cd qsim to change your working directory to qsim.

3. Run make to compile qsim. When make detects the CUDA toolkit during compilation, make builds the GPU version of qsim automatically.

4. Run pip install . to install your local version of qsimcirq.

5. Verify your installation.

   python3 -c "import qsimcirq; print(qsimcirq.qsim_gpu)"
   

   If the installation completed successfully, the output from the command should resemble the following:

   <module 'qsimcirq.qsim_cuda' from '/home/user_org_com/qsim/qsimcirq/qsim_cuda.cpython-38-x86_64-linux-gnu.so'>
   

6. Verify your installation

You can use the code below to verify that qsim uses your GPU. You can paste the code directly into the REPL, or paste the code in a file.

# Import Cirq and qsim
import cirq
import qsimcirq

# Instantiate qubits and create a circuit
q0, q1 = cirq.LineQubit.range(2)
circuit = cirq.Circuit(cirq.H(q0), cirq.CX(q0, q1))

# Instantiate a simulator that uses the GPU
gpu_options = qsimcirq.QSimOptions(use_gpu=True)
qsim_simulator = qsimcirq.QSimSimulator(qsim_options=gpu_options)

# Run the simulation
print("Running simulation for the following circuit:")
print(circuit)

qsim_results = qsim_simulator.compute_amplitudes(
    circuit, bitstrings=[0b00, 0b01])

print("qsim results:")
print(qsim_results)

After a moment, you should see a result that looks similar to the following.

[(0.7071067690849304+0j), 0j]

Next steps

After you finish, don't forget to stop or delete your VM on the Compute Instances dashboard to prevent further billing.

You are now ready to run your own large simulations on Google Cloud. For sample code of a large circuit, see the Simulate a large circuit tutorial.