Quantum Virtual Machine joins a long list of tools that Google has made publicly available for free. Quantum Virtual Machine can now be deployed instantly from Colab’s notebook, Google says.

“Combined with CPU output, QVM becomes a great tool for prototyping, testing and optimizing quantum circuitry for short-term quantum hardware,” Google said in a press release.

Google added, “The quantum virtual machine emulates the experience and results of programming one of the quantum computers in its lab, from circuit testing to processor infidelity.” Researchers route measurements of their Sycamore processors, such as qubit decay, defocusing, gate and readout errors, to the QVM and combine them with the device’s qubit coupling to simulate quantum-like processor outputs using models from its physics research group.

Users can currently emulate two processors, Weber and Rainbow. Weber is the Sycamore processor used in Google’s experiments, first published in Nature in 2019. Rainbow, on the other hand, is used in experiments by the tech giant demonstrating a variational quantum proprietary solver for quantum chemistry problems.

Once a user deploys a quantum virtual machine, users can run their quantum program on a grid of virtual qubits. If they require more qubits than what can be simulated through Colab, the QVM can be overloaded with additional high-performance computation of their choice.