Topics / Intermediate / Running on real hardware
Intermediate · 4 resources

Running on real hardware

Several vendors give free or cheap cloud access to real quantum processors, where you meet queueing, calibration data, connectivity constraints and genuinely noisy results.

Learn first:Programming with Qiskit

Why it matters

Simulators are clean; hardware is not. Your first noisy histogram teaches you more about the state of the field than any lecture.

After this you will be able to

  • Submit a job to a real quantum processor
  • Read backend calibration and coupling-map data
  • Explain the gap between your simulated and measured results
Start here

3 best places to start

Hand-picked and ordered. If you only have time for one, take the first.

Free accounts get a graphical circuit composer and a monthly allowance of runtime on genuine superconducting quantum processors. Your first noisy histogram from real hardware is a rite of passage.

BeginnerInteractive toolFree tierOngoing

One API across IonQ, Rigetti, QuEra and IQM hardware plus managed simulators. The practical way to run the same circuit on trapped-ion, superconducting and neutral-atom machines and compare.

IntermediateInteractive toolOngoing
Quantum Inspire
QuTech (TU Delft)

Europe's public quantum computing platform, with free access to simulators and to spin-qubit and transmon processors. A useful counterweight to seeing only IBM hardware.

IntermediateInteractive toolFreeOngoing
Also covering this

1 more resource

The reference for the most widely used quantum SDK. The transpiler and primitives sections are where you will spend real time once you move past toy circuits.

IntermediateDocsFreeReference
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This unlocks

Topics that list Running on real hardware as a prerequisite.

Error mitigation

Post-processing techniques — zero-noise extrapolation, probabilistic error cancellation, readout correction — that recover accurate expectation values from noisy hardware without full error correction, at the cost of extra shots.

Advanced

Compilation & transpilation

Turning an abstract circuit into one a specific device can execute: decomposing into native gates, mapping logical to physical qubits, and inserting SWAPs to satisfy connectivity — while minimising depth.

Advanced