Not Quite Quantum, But a Berry Good Simulator

What, you don’t have an IBM Quantum System Two? And you call yourself a hacker? For shame! Report to the nearest makerspace to turn in your hacker card immediately.

Alright, so I am getting a bit carried away. We may be having conversations like this in 2040, but in today’s world, having a quantum computer is hardly equivalent to owning basic gear like a soldering iron or wire stripper. Since present quantum computers are extremely expensive, difficult to operate, and of limited utility, you are not going to find many of them at all. And with complex operating requirements — like cooling to within a hair of absolute zero — they are definitely not ready for use in a home lab.

Unfortunately, these facts by no means stifle the undying urge to own this cool (freezing, actually!) technology. What is a hacker to do? Well, hack, of course! Andy Stanford-Clark, along with some colleagues at IBM, has been hard at work trying to fill the IBM Quantum System Two-shaped hole in our hearts with a miniature 3D-printed model called the RasQberry Two. With a charming design that is reminiscent of the room-sized beasts of the early days of IBMs mainframe computing era, this project would be appealing simply as a desk toy. But Stanford-Clark took the project to the next level by including a Raspberry Pi to simulate a real quantum computing experience.

This was made possible by using the newly released Raspberry Pi 23 — the world’s first single-board quantum computer. There I go getting ahead of myself again! For now, at least, simulation will have to do. The Raspberry Pi runs Qiskit, which is a collection of applications that are used to execute programs on quantum computers. And since none of us own quantum computers, a simulator was also loaded onto the Raspberry Pi to service those requests.

For those not familiar with quantum computing technology, this may sound strange. But it is possible to run any algorithm designed for a quantum computer on a classical computer — just expect that it will take a good deal more time to execute. If you don’t believe me, check out this “quantum” Commodore 64.

The 3D models have been released under an Apache-2.0 license on GitHub. There are a lot of parts to print (the project includes the entire room an IBM Quantum System Two is housed in), but none of the individual prints is particularly challenging. Instructions have not been released for the installation or use of the software to date, so that part might be challenging to reproduce. There will definitely be some work involved in recreating this project — but it is the closest you are going to get to owning a quantum computer for a long time, so it may be well worth it.