AWS Braket, Amazon’s Fully Managed Quantum Computing Service, Now Available for General Public

Abhisheik Shandilya

5 months ago

AWS Braket, Amazon’s fully managed quantum computing service, has now been made available to the general public. The Seattle Cloud giant had first announced the service back at its re:Invent event in December 2019. With this, Amazon has become the latest entrant in providing online access to a quantum computing service, as IBM has been doing so since 2016. Currently, Braket is available for three AWS data centers in the United States — North Virginia, Northern California, and Oregon. The company plans on adding more regions soon.

Amazon stated that the fully-managed service would make it easier for developers, students, researchers, and scientists to build, test, and run quantum computing algorithms. Users of Braket can design their own quantum algorithms or choose pre-existing algorithms. Once, the algorithm part is done, Braket steps in as a fully managed simulation service, and troubleshoots and verifies implementation. The users can experiment with services of different quantum hardware providers — D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti — all in one single place.

Further, Braket also eases the development of hybrid algorithms that combine classical and quantum tasks. In order to do this, Braket helps manages classical compute resources, and establishes low-latency connections to quantum resources. According to Amazon, this combined usage of classical and quantum resources “can help overcome the limitations that are inherent in today’s quantum technology.” AWS’ Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr also made a blog post regarding how to use Braket.

AWS Braket can be very helpful in various fields of research, as quantum computing opens up several new doors. Companies involved in research in various domains such as drug discovery, materials science research, financial portfolio optimizations, and logistics and transportation can build skills and benefit from the capabilities of quantum computing. AWS customers such as Enel, Fidelity, and Volkswagen have already been utilizing Amazon Braket during the preview phase.

Here’s what Bill Vass, the vice-president of Engineering at AWS, said, “As we see quantum computing technologies make more meaningful progress, thousands of customers are asking for ways to experiment with quantum computers to explore the technology’s potential and contribute to its development. The cloud will be the main way that customers access quantum computers and combine those systems with high-performance classical computing for certain types of computationally-intensive research.”

Here’s how Amazon described the launch of its fully-managed quantum computing service:

“Amazon Braket makes it easy for organizations to begin experimenting with quantum computing today — from those just beginning to explore the possibilities to those that are already familiar with different quantum technologies and are ready to use it as a research tool. Our goal for Amazon Braket is to be a catalyst for innovation across the quantum community, bringing together hardware and software developers, researchers, and end users.”

Other than Braket, Amazon is also currently working on building AWS Center for Quantum Computing. With this center, Amazon aims to create an incubator for quantum computing hardware and novel quantum applications. However, the site is supposed to become operational only by Spring 2021. Lastly, the pricing models range from $0.68 to $5.18 for different tasks, and the full details can be accessed here.