Amazon Braket is a fully-managed AWS service that provides a development environment for exploring and designing novel quantum algorithms. With the service, customers can test and troubleshoot their algorithms on quantum circuit simulators and run them on different quantum hardware technologies.
Last year in December 2019 at re:Invent, the company introduced a slew of quantum cloud computing capabilities on their cloud platform including Amazon Braket, Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab, and the AWS Center for Quantum Computing. Now almost a year later, Amazon Braket is generally available (GA) on AWS and customers can now make use of both the classically-powered circuit simulator and quantum computers from D-Wave, IonQ, and Rigetti.
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/braket/
Users can access Braket through a notebook-style interface and can use the console to choose the desired AWS region and create a notebook instance. By creating a notebook instance, the user selects an instance type and Identity Access Management (IAM) role. Once the instance is available, the user can design a quantum algorithm using the available tools or choose a pre-existing one. Subsequently, when the algorithm is ready, the user can use Braket to test the algorithm with a simulator, before running it on one of the available quantum hardware providers.
Source: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-braket-go-hands-on-with-quantum-computing/
AWS is not the only cloud platform providing a quantum managed service. Microsoft, for instance, offers Azure Quantum a service still in preview which allows a select set of partners access to three prototype quantum computers from IonQ, Honeywell, and QCI. Furthermore, IBM provides quantum computing services since 2016.
Bill Vass, vice president, technology, at AWS, said in a press release on the GA of Amazon Braket:
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. Amazon Braket makes it easy for organizations to begin experimenting with quantum computing today—from those just beginning to explore the possibilities to those who 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.
In addition, Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc., told InfoQ:
Quantum technology is going to be the first compute platform that will be only available in the cloud. And it will not run by itself – it needs to be used in combination with data and code assets of traditional applications, which are in the public cloud. So the competition by public vendors is fierce, and AWS, which was initially behind, has now caught up with Microsoft and Google.
Currently, Amazon Braket is available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (N. California), and US West (Oregon) AWS Regions, with more regions to come. Furthermore, the pricing details of the service are available on the pricing page.
