Amazon Braket launches trapped-ion quantum computer from Alpine Quantum Technologies

Amazon Braket enables customers to design and run quantum algorithms on a broad selection of quantum hardware through a unified interface. Today, we expand the hardware available on Braket by adding Alpine Quantum Technologies (AQT) as a new quantum hardware provider. AQT brings their IBEX Q1 trapped-ion quantum computer to Braket, offering customers a 12-qubit fully connected trapped-ion system. The IBEX Q1 device is physically located in Innsbruck, Austria and is available through the eu-north-1 Region (Stockholm).

Figure 1: Photo of an AQT rack-mounted trapped-ion quantum processor

IBEX Q1 joins Amazon Braket’s existing quantum hardware portfolio to provide customers in Europe with access to locally hosted trapped-ion technology. This addition addresses the needs of European customers who require data residency within the EU while exploring quantum computing applications. The device fits into two standard 19-inch data center racks, operates at room temperature, and consumes less than 2 kilowatts of power.

In this NISQ era of quantum computing, experimentation across a variety of available devices is crucial for developing quantum algorithms to eventually address complex problems across domains like finance, energy, pharmaceuticals, and logistics. Customers worldwide can now run experiments on AQT’s quantum hardware using on-demand access for designing and executing programs. Customers looking for priority access should use Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs for running variational quantum algorithms, all with simple pay-as-you-go pricing. For workloads with latency or time-sensitive requirements, customers can reserve dedicated capacity on the IBEX Q1 through on a per-hour basis.

Trapped-ion architecture with full connectivity

IBEX Q1 is based on a crystal of calcium-40 ions confined in a radio frequency trap within an ultra-high vacuum chamber. The device encodes quantum information in the electronic spin state of these charged atoms. Entangling gates are realized through controlled, collective vibrations running through the chain of ions. This interaction mechanism, enabled by the long-range Coulomb interaction in the ion crystal, provides all-to-all connectivity, meaning any qubit can directly interact with any other qubit in the system.

At the time of launch, this device achieves average two-qubit gate fidelity of 97.7% across all qubit pairs in the register. The device supports RZ, R, and RXX as its native gate set. IBEX Q1 automatically calibrates on a regular basis to maintain quantum gates. Up-to-date characterization data can be found on IBEX Q1’s device details page in the Amazon Braket Management Console.

The device is available Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 09:00 to 16:00 UTC, providing customers in European time zones convenient access during their work hours. This availability window enables researchers, developers, and enterprises across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia to integrate quantum computing experiments into their regular workflows without time zone constraints.

Getting Started with IBEX Q1 on Braket

Customers can build, test, and run quantum programs on IBEX Q1 with the Braket SDK, CUDA-Q, PennyLane, and Qiskit. To execute programs on IBEX Q1, specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) in the device definition before running your circuit:

from braket.aws import AwsDevice

device = AwsDevice("arn:aws:braket:eu-north-1::device/qpu/aqt/Ibex-Q1")

The all-to-all connectivity of IBEX Q1 enables efficient implementation of quantum algorithms that require interactions between distant qubits. Without full connectivity, quantum circuits often require additional SWAP gates to move quantum information between qubits that are not directly connected, increasing circuit depth and introducing additional sources of error. The following example demonstrates how IBEX Q1’s full connectivity allows direct CNOT operations between qubit 0 and all other qubits without requiring intermediate SWAP gates:

from braket.aws import AwsDevice
from braket.circuits import Circuit

device = AwsDevice("arn:aws:braket:eu-north-1::device/qpu/aqt/Ibex-Q1")

# Create 12-qubit GHZ state using full connectivity
circuit = Circuit().h(0)
for i in range(1, 12):
    circuit.cnot(0, i)

task = device.run(circuit, shots=1000)

The GHZ state is a maximally entangled state of multiple qubits, and achieving high-fidelity GHZ states across all qubits in a device serves as an important benchmark for quantum computing systems.

Hear from the founder

We sat down with Thomas Monz, cofounder and CEO of Alpine Quantum Technologies, to discuss what excites him most about making IBEX Q1 available through Amazon Braket. In the following clip, Thomas shares his perspective on how cloud access will expose AQT’s hardware to a diverse set of customers and use cases beyond traditional on-premises deployments at high performance computing centers.

Thomas Monz, cofounder and CEO of Alpine Quantum Technologies, and Sebastian Hassinger, Principal Specialist – Amazon Braket at AWS have a conversation about IBEX Q1 on Amazon Braket

Get Started Today

Visit the Amazon Braket Management Console to view the device topology, availability, and real-time calibration data to help you understand the current performance characteristics of the device.

Researchers at accredited institutions can apply for AWS credits to support experiments on Amazon Braket through the AWS Cloud Credits for Research program. This program provides funding to explore quantum computing applications across a wide range of research domains.

To get started with running your own quantum programs on the IBEX Q1 processor, refer to our GitHub repository for example notebooks and tutorials. You can run these programs using one of our managed Jupyter notebooks or from your local development environment. The example notebooks include getting started guides, algorithm implementations, and best practices for working with trapped-ion quantum computers.