What are the IBM Quantum® machines?

This section is less of a recipe and rather more of a basic overview of the quantum components and processes that you will be encountering. If you'd rather jump ahead and start coding right away, then go to the next recipe.

With Qiskit®, you can run your quantum programs on two types of quantum computers: simulators and IBM Quantum® hardware. The simulators run either locally or in the cloud on IBM hardware. Generally speaking, running a simulator in the cloud gives you greater power and performance; ibmq_qasm_simulator – available online – lets you run fairly deep quantum programs on up to 32 qubits. Your local simulator performance depends on your hardware; remember that simulating a quantum computer gets exponentially harder with each qubit added.

The actual IBM quantum computer hardware is located in an IBM lab and is accessed through the cloud. There are good reasons for this, so let's walk through...