In preparation for the challenge, you should make yourself familiar with the foundational content necessary to understand and complete the four challenges and associated exercises.
If you are new to quantum computing, please watch this YouTube video:
Most quantum computing algorithms require an understanding of linear algebra to formulate the problem. However, you need not be an expert on the topic to complete the IBM Quantum Challenge Fall 2022. Here are the resource that can help you learn or brush-up on the foundations of linear algebra and matrices.
Qiskit, and thus the challenge, is implemented in Python. If you’re not familiar with Python, you can learn how the basics from the Qiskit Textbook chapter on Python and Jupyter Notebooks. Jupyter notebooks are an interactive way to program and are the most common method for communicating Qiskit work. All exercises for the challenge are provided as Jupyter Notebooks on the IBM Quantum platform. To access the platform, you should create an account using the links provided in the section below.
This blog post from the Qiskit offers a simple overview of what Qiskit Runtime is and why it’s so important:
This video is also good for the overview:
Here is a layperson introduction to quantum noise:
The following short videos on Qiskit YouTube channel are a great introduction to error mitigation:
Below is for those who want to learn more.
- What’s the difference between error suppression, error mitigation, and error correction?
- With fault tolerance the ultimate goal, error mitigation is the path that gets quantum computing to usefulness
- Qiskit Global Summer School 2021 - Noise in Quantum Computers (part 1)
- Qiskit Global Summer School 2021 - Noise in Quantum Computers (part 2)
Make sure you have registered on the IBM Quantum platform as it hosts the challenge notebooks and exercises. You can register an account here. You will be using the IBM Quantum Lab, which hosts Jupyter Notebooks for you. If you are not familiar with Jupyter or the IBM Quantum Lab, you can read the Quantum Lab Guide for more information on how it is structured and what features are available.
If you struggle to maintain a stable internet connection to the IBM Quantum Challenge platform, you can download the notebooks from this repo. Note that the challenge notebooks will only be available from the start of the challenge (11 November @ 9:00 EDT).
For a guide on setting up Qiskit on your own computer, have a look at the 'Getting Started' page in the Qiskit documentation. When you install Qiskit using pip, make sure you run the following command instead of that provided by the Qiskit documentation. This will make sure you have the correct dependencies.
pip install qiskit[all]