Getting Started

New to Ocean? The following sections describe how to install Ocean tools, what they are and how they fit together, and give examples of using them to solve hard problems on a D-Wave quantum computer.

Initial Set Up

D-Wave’s Leap integrated development environment (IDE) is the fastest way to get started writing your quantum application or just learning to use Ocean tools. This cloud-based IDE—run in your browser—is available to all Leap accounts. It provides reusable/disposable workspaces (developer environments pre-configured with Ocean and other standard libraries as well as D-Wave extensions) for running code from your own GitHub repository or a collection of code examples you can then modify.

Alternatively, install the tools and configure for running problems on D-Wave remote compute resources, including quantum-classical hybrid solvers and the D-Wave quantum processing unit (QPU), or locally on your CPU.

• Installing Ocean Tools
• Configuring Access to D-Wave Solvers

Ocean’s Programming Model

Learn Ocean software’s workflow for problem solving.

• How a D-Wave System Solves Problems
• Formulate Your Problem for a Quantum Computer
• Ocean Software Stack

D-Wave Compute Resources

Use Ocean’s samplers to solve problems on D-Wave’s compute resources (solvers) or locally on your CPU.

• Solving Problems by Sampling
• Hybrid Solvers
• Classical Solvers
• Quantum Solvers

Examples

See how Ocean tools are used with these end-to-end examples.

Because many large, hard problems are best approached with quantum-classical hybrid solvers, a good place to start is with examples of the Beginner-Level Examples: Hybrid Computing section and then learn how to work directly on the quantum computer with examples of the Beginner-Level Examples: Using the QPU section.

Beginner-Level Examples: Hybrid Computing

• Structural Imbalance in a Social Network solves an arbitrary-sized problem using a Leap hybrid solver.
• Large Map Coloring demonstrates using an out-of-the-box Ocean hybrid solver.
• Map Coloring: Hybrid DQM Sampler solves a discrete quadratic model (DQM) using Leap’s hybrid DQM solver.

Beginner-Level Examples: Using the QPU

• Vertex Cover solves a small graph problem.
• Constrained Scheduling solves a small constraint satisfaction problem.
• Boolean NOT Gate mathematically formulates a BQM for a two-variable problem.
• Boolean AND Gate demonstrates programming the QPU more directly (minor-embedding).

Intermediate-Level Examples

• Map Coloring example solves a more complex constraint satisfaction problem.
• Multiple-Gate Circuit looks more deeply at minor-embedding.
• Problem With Many Variables builds a hybrid workflow and solver for a large graph problem.
• Postprocessing with a Greedy Solver improves samples returned from a QPU by post-processing with a classical greedy algorthim.

Advanced-Level Examples

• Using the Problem Inspector improves minor-embedding on a graph partition problem.
• Working With Different Topologies runs your code on software samplers with different QPU-inspired topologies.

Demonstrations and Jupyter Notebooks

D-Wave’s dwave-examples GitHub repo contains demos, typically in the form of short code examples, you can open in the Leap IDE or copy (clone) locally and run.

D-Wave’s Leap Quantum Application Environment provides a number of Jupyter Notebooks with detailed code examples for various types of problems (for example, constraint satisfaction problems) and ways of using the quantum computer (for example, hybrid computing and reverse annealing). These can also serve as a framework in which to develop your own code.

Additional Tutorials

• Getting Started with the D-Wave System

  This guide in the System Documentation introduces the D-Wave quantum computer, provides some key background information on how the system works, and explains how to construct a simple problem that the system can solve.

• D-Wave Problem-Solving Handbook

  This guide for more advanced users has an opening chapter of illustrative examples that explain the main steps of solving problems on the D-Wave system through two “toy” problems.