Installation Guide

A few terms to orient you as you are installing:

  1. pyQuil: An open source Python library to help you write and run quantum programs written in quil.
  2. Quil: The Quantum Instruction Language.
  3. QVM: The Quantum Virtual Machine is an open source implementation of a quantum abstract machine on classical hardware. The QVM lets you use a regular computer to simulate a small quantum computer and execute Quil programs.
  4. QPU: Quantum processing unit. This refers to the physical hardware chip which we run quantum programs on.
  5. Quil Compiler: The open source compiler, quilc, compiles arbitrary Quil programs to the supported lattice and instruction for our architecture.
  6. Quantum Cloud Services: Quantum Cloud Services offers users access point to our physical quantum computers and the ablity to schedule compute time on our QPUs. If you’d like to access to our quantum computers for QCVV research, please email support@rigetti.com.

Step 1. Install pyQuil and the Forest SDK

pip install pyquil

Next you must install the SDK which includes the Rigetti Quil Compiler (quilc), and the Quantum Virtual Machine (qvm). Request the Forest SDK here. You’ll receive an email right away with the download links for macOS, Linux (.deb), Linux (.rpm), and Linux (bare-bones).

If you dont already have Jupyter or Jupyter lab now would be a good time to install that too.

pip install jupyterlab

Step 2. Install forest-benchmarking

forest-benchmarking can be installed from source or via the Python package manager PyPI.

Note: NumPy and SciPy must be pre-installed for installation to be successful, due to cvxpy.

Source

git clone https://github.com/rigetti/forest-benchmarking.git
cd forest-benchmarking/
pip install numpy scipy
pip install -e .

PyPI

pip install numpy scipy
pip install forest-benchmarking

Step 3. Build the docs (optional)

We use sphinx to build the documentation. To do this, first install the requirements

pip install sphinx
pip install sphinx_rtd_theme
pip install nbsphinx
pip install nbsphinx_link

then navigate into Forest-Benchmarkings docs directory and run:

make clean
make html

To view the docs navigate to the newly-created docs/_build/html directory and open the index.html file in a browser.