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Welcome to the Qiskit Global Summer School 2024!

This intensive, two-week-long virtual event will start by giving students a thorough overview of foundational quantum computing topics — with this year’s curriculum emphasizing quantum software as opposed to quantum hardware.

Week 1 lectures will give students a detailed overview of Qiskit SDK v1.x, while the week 2 curriculum will consist of deep dives into various quantum applications.Along the way, students will engage in four practical software labs covering vital topics such as quantum circuit transpilation, noise-model building, and more.

This year, qBraid Lab will host all the necessary quantum software tools pre-configured for your use in these labs. This guide will lead you through setting up your QGSS virtual environment on qBraid Lab and introduce additional tools and resources offered on the platform to enhance both your learning and software development experience.

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Getting Started: Launch qBraid Lab

Login or create a free account at account.qbraid.com.

See also: qBraid Accounts

Once you have logged in, click on the purple Launch Lab button at the top of your account page to launch the qBraid Lab interface. All users have access to the “Free” tier image, which includes 2 virtual CPUs and 4 GB of RAM.

Pulling the image may take a couple minutes the first time. The next time you launch Lab, it will load much more quickly.

See also: Getting Started

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Install and setup the QGSS Environment

After launching qBraid Lab, click on the ENVS tab in the upper-right of the Lab console to expand the Environment Manager sidebar. Then, click Add to view the environments available to install. Scroll, or search for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2024 environment. Once you’ve found it, expand its panel, and click Install.

See also: Install Environment

Once the installation is complete, the Python 3 [QGSS-24] kernel will automatically be added.

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Creating and using notebooks

In your main Launcher tab, under Notebooks, click on the Python 3 [QGSS-24] kernel to create a Jupyter Notebook (.ipynb file) using the Qiskit Global Summer School environment.

In the upper-right of the notebook, verify that the Python 3 [QGSS-24] kernel is set. If not, use the kernel selector to switch to the Python 3 [QGCC-24] kernel.

The Qiskit Global Summer School environment comes pre-configured with a range of software packages including qiskit, qiskit-ibm-runtime, qiskit-aer, qiskit-transpiler-service, circuit-knitting-toolbox, and more. However, if there are packages you would like use in your notebooks that are not already included in the environment, you can install them from within a notebook using pip magic commands. Follow instructions below to learn how.

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Installing new packages

From inside a notebook, you must run all pip commands using the “magic” % operator. For example, to install a new package from within a notebook cell, use:

[ ] %pip install <my-package>

WARNING: Do not use the ! operator for pip install commands within Jupyter notebooks on qBraid. Doing so will install packages at the system-level, where they will not be discoverable by your current notebook environment/kernel.

After installing any new packages directly from a notebook, you must restart the kernel to see the changes take effect.

You can also install new packages through the Environment Editor and the qBraid CLI

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Troubleshooting

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Environment Installation Failure

If you encounter an error while attempting to install the QGSS environment, as indicated by the following message:

lab.qbraid.com says

Your environment IBM Qiskit Global Summer School could not be installed at this time

Please follow these steps to resolve the issue:

  1. Uninstall the Environment:

Ensure that the environment is fully uninstalled. Open a terminal and execute the following command:

rm -rf ~/.qbraid/environments/ibm_so_uirbz9
rm -rf ~/.qbraid/environments/tmp*

After running the command, please wait for a few seconds before proceeding to verify the removal with:

[ -d "$HOME/.qbraid/environments/ibm_so_uirbz9" ] && echo "Please wait." || echo "Ready!"

If the output is “Ready!”, you can move on to the next step. If it displays “Please wait.”, allow approximately 5 minutes before attempting to remove the directory again with the same rm -rf command. Repeat this process until you see “Ready!“.

  1. Restart your server
  • Navigate to the Hub Control Panel by selecting File > Hub Control Panel or directly via https://lab.qbraid.com/hub/home.
  • Stop your server by clicking Stop My Server.
  • Restart it by clicking Start My Server.
  • Re-launch qBraid Lab.
  1. Reinstall the Environment

Open the Environment Manager, and re-install the IBM Qiskit Global Summer School 2024 environment.

If installation issues persist after following these steps, please contact a qBraid team member for assistance and/or try using the Python 3 [Default] environment instead.

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QC Grader Install / Import Errors

When initially deployed, the Qiskit Global Summer School environment did not include the qc_grader package. The environment has now been updated to include it. If you encounter an import error for qc_grader, like the one shown below:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'qc_grader'

You have two options to resolve this:

  1. Reinstall the Environment

Completely uninstall and then reinstall the Qiskit Global Summer School Environment to include the updated packages.

  1. Install qc_grader Directly

Directly install the qc_grader package into your existing environment using the following command in a Jupyter notebook:

%pip install git+https://github.com/ryanhill1/Quantum-Challenge-Grader.git

This version of qc_grader has a relaxed Python version requirement for better compatibility. Remember, when installing packages within a notebook, use the %pip magic command to ensure the package is installed in the notebook’s environment.

If you see the following error message:

ERROR: Package 'qc-grader' requires a different Python: 3.9.18 not in '>=3.10'

please resolve it by reinstalling qc_grader with the correct dependencies:

%pip uninstall qc-grader
%pip install git+https://github.com/ryanhill1/Quantum-Challenge-Grader.git

This will ensure qc_grader is compatible with your Python version.

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Continued Support

qBraid is proud to offer comprehensive support for Qiskit Global Summer School 2024, and will be “on-call” throughout the duration of the event to answer questions and troubleshoot issues, as necessary. You can get in touch with a qBraid team member in the following ways:

IBMQ Migration GuideTroubleshooting