Quantify: An open-source framework for operating quantum computers in the NISQ era

Operating a quantum computer in the NISQ era is an often-underestimated challenge. Specifically, the tune-up and execution of quantum algorithms, which consist of physics experiments requiring access to control parameters and measured signals, as well as classical logic. Typically, these are defined at a higher level of abstraction and are not supported by current control architectures because they are limited to expressing experiments as either a series of classical pulses or variants of QASM. Here, we present Quantify, a robust and extensively documented open-source experiment platform inspired by PycQED (Rol et al. 10.5281/zenodo.160327). Quantify contains all the basic functionality to control experiments (e.g., instrument management, live plotting, data storage, etc.), as well as a novel scheduler featuring a unique hybrid control model allowing quantum gate- and pulse-level descriptions to be combined in a clearly defined and hardware-agnostic way. The scheduler allows parameterized expressions and classical logic to make efficient use of hardware backends that support this. This opens up new avenues for efficient execution of calibration routines as well as variational quantum algorithms (VQA).