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Qiskit 0.46 release notes

0.46.1

Prelude

Qiskit 0.46.1 is a minor bugfix release for the 0.46 series.

Bug Fixes

0.46.0

Prelude

The 0.46.0 release is the final minor version release for the 0.x series. This release primarily adds new deprecation warnings for API changes coming in the future major version release 1.0.0. It is fully compatible with the Qiskit 0.45.x releases. It is strongly recommended that you upgrade from 0.45.x to 0.46.0 so that you’re able to see the warnings about which interfaces will change with Qiskit 1.0.0.

The 0.46.x release series will continue to be supported and recieve bugfix and security fixes via patch releases for 6 months after this release. For more details on the release schedule and support cycle see: start/install#qiskit-versioning which documents the release schedule in more detail.

Note

If your project depends on Qiskit, it may rely on functionality that will no longer be supported in Qiskit 1.0.0. For this reason, we recommend that you proactively cap your supported version to <1.0. Qiskit 1.0.0 is scheduled to release approximately two weeks after Qiskit 0.46.0, on 2024-02-15, and might not yet be available when you read this message.

The packaging structure of Qiskit is changing in Qiskit 1.0, and unfortunately the changed requirements cannot be fully communicated to pip, especially if pip install --upgrade commands are run after the environment has been initially configured. All versions of Qiskit prior to 1.0 (including this one) have an installation conflict with Qiskit 1.0 that pip will not resolve.

If import qiskit raises an ImportError(opens in a new tab) for you, your environment is in an invalid state, and versions of Qiskit 0.45/0.46 and 1.0 are both reachable, which will result in subtly broken code. You will need to create a new virtual environment, and ensure that only one of the two versions are installed. In particular, if you are intending to install Qiskit 1.0, you must have no packages that depend on qiskit-terra installed; these packages are incompatible with Qiskit 1.0 and must be updated. If you are intending to install Qiskit 0.45 or 0.46, you must ensure that you have nothing attempting to install qiskit>=1.0.

If you develop a library based on Qiskit and you still have a dependency on qiskit-terra, you should urgently release a new package that depends only on qiskit. Since version 0.44, the qiskit package contained only the qiskit-terra compiler core (the component that is now simply called “Qiskit”), so if your minimum version is 0.44, you can safely switch a qiskit-terra>=0.44 dependency to qiskit>=0.44 with no change in what will be installed. For more detail and recommendations for testing and preparation, see the section for developers of the migration guide(opens in a new tab).

New Features

  • A new function, qs_decomposition(), has been added to qiskit.synthesis. This function allows to apply the Quantum Shannon Decomposition of arbitrary unitaries.

  • A new qiskit.providers.basic_provider module has been introduced to replace qiskit.providers.basicaer. This module contains provider tools that mirror those of the BasicAer provider and offers a single, non-efficient, statevector-based simulator: BasicSimulator. This simulator is based on the BackendV2 interface and is exclusively intended for testing and simple prototyping, for more advanced simulation capabilities, please refer to the qiskit-aer package. See the BasicAer deprecation note for migration guidelines.

  • The Target interface and transpiler pipeline now support target definitions with num_qubits=None. This is to allow the creation of Target-based simulators with a flexible number of qubits. A target with num_qubits=None will exclusively contain global instructions (with qargs=None) and when given to the transpiler, it is expected that the transpiler will not resize the circuit. This change in the Target requires future transpiler passes to account for the case where target.num_qubits is None.

  • A new class, GenericBackendV2 has been added to the qiskit.providers.fake_provider module. This class is configurable, and builds a BackendV2 instance that can run locally (in the spirit of fake backends). Users can configure the number of qubits, basis gates, coupling map, ability to run dynamic circuits (control flow instructions), instruction calibrations and dtm of the backend without having to deal with manual target construction. Qubit and gate properties are generated by randomly sampling from default ranges. The seed for this random generation can be fixed to ensure the reproducibility of the backend output. It’s important to note that this backend only supports gates in the standard library. If you need a more flexible backend, there is always the option to directly instantiate a Target object to use for transpilation.

    Example usage 1:

    from qiskit import QuantumCircuit, transpile
from qiskit.providers.fake_provider import GenericBackendV2
 
# Create a simple circuit
circuit = QuantumCircuit(3)
circuit.h(0)
circuit.cx(0,1)
circuit.cx(0,2)
circuit.measure_all()
circuit.draw('mpl')
 
# Define backend with 3 qubits
backend = GenericBackendV2(num_qubits=3)
 
# Transpile and run
transpiled_circuit = transpile(circuit, backend)
result = backend.run(transpiled_circuit).result()

    Example usage 2:

    from qiskit import QuantumCircuit, ClassicalRegister, transpile
from qiskit.providers.fake_provider import GenericBackendV2
 
# Create a circuit with classical control
creg = ClassicalRegister(19)
qc = QuantumCircuit(25)
qc.add_register(creg)
qc.h(0)
for i in range(18):
    qc.cx(0, i + 1)
for i in range(18):
    qc.measure(i, creg[i])
qc.ecr(20, 21).c_if(creg, 0)
 
# Define backend with custom basis gates
# and control flow instructions
backend = GenericBackendV2(
      num_qubits=25,
      basis_gates = ["ecr","id","rz","sx","x"],
      control_flow=True)
 
#Transpile
transpiled_qc = transpile(qc, backend)
    Note

    The noise properties generated by these class do not mimic any concrete quantum device, and should not be used to measure concrete backend behaviors. They are “reasonable defaults” that can be used to test general backend-interfacing functionality. For a more accurate simulation of existing devices, you can manually build a noise model from the real backend using the functionality offered in qiskit-aer.

Upgrade Notes

  • The minimum version required for symengine was bumped to >=0.11. This enabled removing workarounds from ParameterExpression.is_real() to handle a bug in earlier releases of symengine.

Deprecation Notes

  • The ScheduleBlock.scoped_parameters() and ScheduleBlock.search_parameters() methods have been deprecated. These methods produce Parameter objects with names modified to indicate pulse scoping. The original intention of the methods was that these objects would still link to the original unscoped Parameter objects. However, the modification of the name breaks the link so that assigning using the scoped version does not work. See #11654(opens in a new tab) for more context.

  • Passing a QuasiDistribution, ProbDistribution, or a distribution dictionary in for the data argument of the plot_histogram() visualization function is now deprecated. Support for doing this will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0 release. If you would like to plot a histogram from a QuasiDistribution, ProbDistribution, or a distribution dictionary you should use the plot_distribution() function instead.

  • The qiskit-terra Python package is deprecated and will no longer receive updates starting in Qiskit 1.0.0. If you’re installing qiskit-terra by itself this will no longer be updated for Qiskit>=1.0.0. If you’re running qiskit without the qiskit package a FutureWarning will be emitted on import of qiskit to indicate you’re not using the qiskit package.

  • Use of the qiskit.Aer object is deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0. You should instead use the same object from the qiskit_aer namespace, which is a drop-in replacement.

  • Importing from qiskit.providers.aer is deprecated and will stop working in Qiskit 1.0. You should instead import from qiskit_aer, which is a drop-in replacement.

  • Running pulse jobs on backends from qiskit.providers.fake_provider is deprecated, and all support will be removed in Qiskit 1.0. This is due to Qiskit Aer removing its simulation functionality for such jobs. For low-level Hamiltonian-simulation workloads, consider using a specialised library such as Qiskit Dynamics(opens in a new tab).

  • The qiskit.transpiler.synthesis module is deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0. The following objects have been moved:

  • The qiskit.tools.jupyter module has been deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0.0. This module is deprecated because the functionality in this module is tied to the legacy qiskit-ibmq-provider package which is no longer supported and also only supported BackendV1. If you’re using this functionality currently, similar jupyter tools exist in the qiskit-ibm-provider(opens in a new tab) package which can be used instead. The documentation for this module can be found here:

    api/qiskit-ibm-provider/ibm_jupyter

  • The qiskit.tools.monitor module has been deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0.0. This module is deprecated because the functionality in this module is tied to the legacy qiskit-ibmq-provider package which is no longer supported and also only supported BackendV1.

  • The qiskit.tools.visualization module has been deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0.0. This module was a legacy redirect from the original location of Qiskit’s visualization module and was moved to qiskit.visualization in Qiskit 0.8.0. If you’re still using this path you can just update your imports from qiskit.tools.visualization to qiskit.visualization.

  • The qiskit.tools.events module and the progressbar() utility it exposed has been deprecated and will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0.0 release. This module’s functionality was not widely used and better covered by dedicated packages such as tqdm(opens in a new tab).

  • The qiskit.tools module has been deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0.0. Except as noted in the release notes above for specific submodules (qiskit.tools.jupyter, qiskit.tools.monitor, qiskit.tools.events and qiskit.tools.visualization) the functionality in this module have been migrated to qiskit.utils. If you’re using any functionality in this module you can update your imports from qiskit.tools to qiskit.utils.

  • The module qiskit.test is deprecated. This module contains tooling and helpers for internal Qiskit testing, and most of its functionality had been moved or is not used in Qiskit anymore. In practice, the module was never meant to be used externally. If any of the code in the module is absolutely necessary beyond Qiskit, consider copying that code out into your own test infrastructure.

  • The qiskit.quantum_info.synthesis module is deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0.0. The following objects have been moved to qiskit.synthesis:

    The class Quaternion has been migrated from qiskit.quantum_info.synthesis to qiskit.quantum_info. This move has not affected the usual import path of the class, but accessing it via the qiskit.quantum_info.synthesis is now deprecated.

    This function is deprecated and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0.0:

    • cnot_rxx_decompose()

  • The legacy OpenQASM 2 parser module previously present in qiskit.qasm has been deprecated. It will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0.0 release. The legacy OpenQASM 2 parser has been superseded by the qiskit.qasm2 module which provides a faster more correct parser for OpenQASM 2.

  • The qiskit.converters.ast_to_dag function has been deprecated and will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0.0 release. It previously was used to convert the abstract syntax tree generated by the legacy OpenQASM 2 parser (in the qiskit.qasm module which has been deprecated) and convert that directly to a DAGCircuit. As the legacy OpenQASM 2 parser has been deprecated this function will no longer serves a purpose after the legacy parser is removed. If you were previously using this, you can instead parse your OpenQASM 2 files into a QuantumCircuit using the QuantumCircuit.from_qasm_file() or QuantumCircuit.from_qasm_str() constructor methods and then converting that QuantumCircuit into a DAGCircuit with circuit_to_dag().

  • The QuantumCircuit.qasm() method used to generate a OpenQASM 2 representation of the QuantumCircuit object has been deprecated and will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0.0 release. The qasm2.dump() or qasm2.dumps() functions which provide similar functionality should be used instead. If you were using the QuantumCircuit.qasm() method to generate pygments formatted output you should instead look at the standalone openqasm-pygments package to provide this functionality (as qasm2.dump() and qasm2.dumps() do not provide pygments colored output).

  • The ParametricPulse base class and pulses are now deprecated, and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0. This includes:

    The class has been superseded by SymbolicPulse and the corresponding pulse library. SymbolicPulse provides better performance, flexibility and QPY support.

  • The NoiseAdaptiveLayout transpiler pass and the corresponding "noise_adaptive" layout stage plugin have been deprecated and will be removed in the 1.0.0 release. This pass has been largely superseded by VF2Layout and VF2PostLayout which will set a layout based on the reported noise characteristics of a backend.

  • The CrosstalkAdaptiveSchedule transpiler pass has been deprecated and will be removed in the 1.0.0 release. This pass was not usable any longer because its internal operation was dependent on custom properties being set in the BackendProperties payload of a BackendV1 instance. As no backends are setting these fields the pass has been deprecated.

  • The qiskit.visualization.qcstyle module is now deprecated and will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0.0 release. Instead you should use qiskit.visualization.circuit.qcstyle as direct replacement.

  • Injecting circuit gate operations into the pulse builder context is now deprecated. The deprecation affects the following functions:

    • call_gate(),
    • cx(),
    • u1(),
    • u2(),
    • u3(),
    • x()

    As well as input arguments of type QuantumCircuit type in call().

    If you still wish to inject backend calibrated schedules, you can use following pattern instead of calling gate commands.

    from qiskit.providers.fake_provider import GenericBackendV2
from qiskit import pulse
 
backend = GenericBackendV2(num_qubits=5)
sched = backend.target['x'][(qubit,)].calibration
 
with pulse.build() as only_pulse_scheds:
  pulse.call(sched)

    Similarly, QuantumCircuit can be injected in the builder context by manually transpiling and scheduling the object.

    from math import pi
from qiskit.compiler import schedule, transpile
qc = QuatumCircuit(2)
qc.rz(pi/2, 0)
qc.sx(0)
qc.rz(pi/2, 0)
qc.cx(0, 1)
 
qc_t = transpile(qc, backend)
sched = schedule(qc_t, backend)
with pulse.build() as only_pulse_scheds:
    pulse.call(sched)

    In any case we now recommend to write a minimum pulse program with the builder and attach it to QuantumCircuit via the QuantumCircuit.add_calibration() method as a microcode of a gate instruction, rather than writing the entire program with the pulse model.

    The following arguments in build() have also been deprecated:

    • default_transpiler_settings
    • default_circuit_scheduler_settings

    Together with the functions:

  • The following tools in qiskit.utils have been deprecated:

    • Utils in qiskit.utils.arithmetic
    • Utils in qiskit.utils.circuit_utils
    • Utils in qiskit.utils.entangler_map
    • Utils in qiskit.utils.name_unnamed_args

    These functions were used exclusively in the context of qiskit.algorithms and qiskit.opflow, and will be removed following the removals of qiskit.algorithms and qiskit.opflow in Qiskit 1.0.

  • The qiskit.providers.fake_provider module has been migrated to the qiskit-ibm-runtime Python package. For this reason, the following elements in the qiskit.providers.fake_provider have been deprecated as of Qiskit 0.46 and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0:

    Migration example to the new fake provider:

    # Legacy path
from qiskit.providers.fake_provider import FakeProvider, FakeSherbrooke
backend1 = FakeProvider().get_backend("fake_ourense")
backend2 = FakeSherbrooke()
 
# New path
# run "pip install qiskit-ibm-runtime"
from qiskit_ibm_runtime.fake_provider import FakeProvider, FakeSherbrooke
backend1 = FakeProvider().get_backend("fake_ourense")
backend2 = FakeSherbrooke()

    Additionally, the following fake backends designed for special testing purposes have been superseded by the new GenericBackendV2 class, and are also deprecated as of Qiskit 0.46:

    Migration example to the new GenericBackendV2 class:

    # Legacy path
from qiskit.providers.fake_provider import FakeBackend5QV2
backend = FakeBackend5QV2()
 
# New path
from qiskit.providers.fake_provider import GenericBackendV2
backend = GenericBackendV2(num_qubits=5)
# note that this class will generate 5q backend with generic
# properties that serves the same purpose as FakeBackend5QV2
# but will generate different results

  • The qiskit.extensions module is now deprecated. It had been pending deprecation since the Qiskit 0.45 release. Most objects have been moved to qiskit.circuit.library, including:

    With the deprecation of the objects, the following circuit methods have also been deprecated:

    • QuantumCircuit.diagonal,
    • QuantumCircuit.hamiltonian,
    • QuantumCircuit.isometry and QuantumCircuit.iso,
    • QuantumCircuit.uc,
    • QuantumCircuit.ucrx,
    • QuantumCircuit.ucry,
    • QuantumCircuit.ucrz.

  • Qiskit’s execute() function is deprecated. This function served as a high-level wrapper around transpiling a circuit with some transpile options and running it on a backend with some run options. To do the same thing, you can explicitly use the transpile() function (with appropriate transpile options) followed by backend.run() (with appropriate run options).

    For example, instead of running:

    from qiskit import execute
job = execute(circuit, backend)

    you can run:

    from qiskit import transpile
new_circuit = transpile(circuit, backend)
job = backend.run(new_circuit)

    Alternatively, the Sampler primitive is semantically equivalent to the deprecated execute() function. The class BackendSampler is a generic wrapper for backends that do not support primitives:

    from qiskit.primitives import BackendSampler
sampler = BackendSampler(backend)
job = sampler.run(circuit)

  • Implicit conversion from a dense BaseOperator` to a SparsePauliOp in Estimator observable arguments is deprecated as of Qiskit 0.46 and will be removed in Qiskit 1.0. You should explicitly convert to a SparsePauliOp using SparsePauliOp.from_operator() instead.

  • The discrete pulse library is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release. This includes:

    Instead, use the corresponding SymbolicPulse, with get_waveform(). For example, instead of pulse.gaussian(100,0.5,10) use pulse.Gaussian(100,0.5,10).get_waveform().

    Note that the phase of both Sawtooth and Square is defined such that a phase of 2pi2\\pi shifts by a full cycle, contrary to the discrete counterpart. Also note that complex amplitude support is deprecated in the symbolic pulse library - use float, amp and angle instead.

  • The ConfigurableFakeBackend class, which has mainly been used for internal testing, is now deprecated. It will be removed in the Qiskit 1.0.0 release. Instead, you can use the GenericBackendV2 class to build a similar backend for testing.

  • Loading library ScalableSymbolicPulse objects with complex amp parameter from qpy files of version 5 or lower (Qiskit Terra < 0.23.0) is now deprecated. Following the removal in Qiskit 1.0.0, complex amp will be automatically converted to float (amp, angle). The change applies to the pulses:

    • Constant
    • Drag
    • Gaussian
    • GaussianSquare

  • The qiskit.providers.basicaer module and all of its classes are deprecated from Qiskit 0.46 onwards. Their use should be replaced with the qiskit.quantum_info module and the new qiskit.providers.basic_provider module.

    The migration from using qiskit.providers.basicaer to qiskit.providers.basic_provider can be performed as follows:

    Migrate from                     |   Replace with
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:mod:`.basicaer`                 |  :mod:`.basic_provider`
:class:`.BasicAerProvider`       |  :class:`.BasicProvider`
:class:`.BasicAerJob`            |  :class:`.BasicProviderJob`
:class:`.QasmSimulatorPy`        |  :class:`.BasicSimulator`
:class:`.UnitarySimulatorPy`     |  use :class:`~.quantum_info.Operator`
:class:`.StatevectorSimulatorPy` |  use :class:`~.quantum_info.Statevector`

    A notable difference is that the new provider is no longer exposed through a global instance (like BasicAer), so it will not be valid to do from qiskit import BasicProvider. Instead, the provider class must be imported from its submodule and instantiated:

    from qiskit.providers.basic_provider import BasicProvider
provider = BasicProvider()
backend = provider.get_backend("sim_name")

    The following examples show the migration paths of the three simulators in basicaer.

    1. Statevector simulator:

      from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
qc = QuantumCircuit(3)
qc.h(0)
qc.h(1)
qc.cx(1,2)
qc.measure_all()
 
# Former path
from qiskit import BasicAer
backend = BasicAer.get_backend("statevector_simulator")
statevector = backend.run(qc).result().get_statevector()
 
# New path
qc.remove_final_measurements() # no measurements allowed
from qiskit.quantum_info import Statevector
statevector = Statevector(qc)

    2. Unitary simulator:

      from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
qc = QuantumCircuit(3)
qc.h(0)
qc.h(1)
qc.cx(1,2)
qc.measure_all()
 
# Former path
from qiskit import BasicAer
backend = BasicAer.get_backend("unitary_simulator")
result = backend.run(qc).result()
 
# New path
qc.remove_final_measurements() # no measurements allowed
from qiskit.quantum_info import Operator
result = Operator(qc).data

    3. Qasm simulator:

      from qiskit import QuantumCircuit
qc = QuantumCircuit(3)
qc.h(0)
qc.h(1)
qc.cx(1,2)
qc.measure_all()
 
# Former path
from qiskit import BasicAer
backend = BasicAer.get_backend("qasm_simulator")
result = backend.run(qc).result()
 
# New path
from qiskit.providers.basic_provider import BasicProvider
backend = BasicProvider().get_backend("basic_simulator")
result = backend.run(qc).result()
# or, directly
from qiskit.providers.basic_provider import BasicSimulator
backend = BasicSimulator()
result = backend.run(qc).result()

  • Using a PauliList as an observable that is implicitly converted to a SparsePauliOp with coefficients 1 when calling Estimator.run() is deprecated. Instead you should explicitly convert the argument using SparsePauliOp(pauli_list) first.

Critical Issues

  • When updating Qiskit from 0.46.x to 1.0.0 you will not be able to update in place. For example, pip install -U qiskit or pip install --upgrade qiskit is not supported and likely will not work. To upgrade qiskit the recommended path is to create a new virtual environment (venv(opens in a new tab)) to build a new separate environment for Qiskit>=1.0.0. For example:

    python -m venv qiskit_1.0
source qiskit_1.0/bin/activate
pip install qiskit>=1

    will create a new virtual environment named qiskit_1.0 will contain the new version of Qiskit.

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