qsengine

A state-vector quantum simulator for Python. You build circuits in Python; a Rust core runs them on every CPU core or on any GPU, and hands back the results.

pip install qsengine

import qsengine

qc = qsengine.QuantumCircuit(2)
qc.h(0)
qc.cx(0, 1)

print(qc.run(shots=1000, seed=1))   # {'00': 513, '11': 487}

Documentation and guides: qsengine.kaiwave.dev

Why qsengine

• Fast where it counts. Small circuits run on the CPU with almost no per-call overhead; from 14 qubits up, the GPU takes over. On a 22-qubit benchmark qsengine's GPU backend is about 5 times faster than Qiskit Aer.
• Any GPU, nothing to install. The GPU backend uses wgpu, so it runs on NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Apple GPUs through Vulkan, DirectX 12 or Metal. No CUDA, no vendor toolkit.
• Works everywhere. Without a usable GPU the same code runs on the CPU, in full 64-bit precision.
• Small, plain API. One class, eleven gates, three ways to get a result. Mistakes raise a normal Python ValueError on the line that made them.
• Built to learn with. The website walks from bra-ket notation to a complete Deutsch-Jozsa run, and every example on it is real qsengine output.

Install

pip install qsengine

One wheel per platform covers CPython 3.9 and newer on Windows, macOS and Linux. A GPU is optional.

Using it

A circuit has a fixed number of qubits, all starting in |0⟩. Gate methods record gates; nothing runs until you ask for a result.

import qsengine

qc = qsengine.QuantumCircuit(3)
qc.h(0)
qc.cx(0, 1)
qc.cx(1, 2)

qc.run(shots=1000)          # measurement counts: {'000': ..., '111': ...}
qc.probabilities()          # exact probabilities of all 8 basis states
qc.statevector()            # exact complex amplitudes

Bitstrings put qubit 0 on the right, the same convention as Qiskit. Pass seed to run() for repeatable counts.

Choosing a backend

Every method that runs a circuit takes backend="auto" (the default), "cpu" or "gpu".

The full API, every error message and a guide to each topic are in the documentation.

Performance

Each run simulates 5 layers of (H on every qubit, RZ on every qubit, CNOT chain) and samples 1000 shots. Best of several runs on a Ryzen 5 5500 with a Radeon RX 6600, Windows 10, Qiskit Aer 0.18.2.

Below 14 qubits the CPU backend is 7 to 60 times faster than Aer; from 14 qubits the GPU backend is 3 to 9 times faster. Above about 17 qubits the CPU backend is slower than Aer, which fuses multi-qubit gates. These are one machine's numbers: reproduce them with benchmarks/benchmark.py.

Limitations

Version 1.0 measures every qubit at the end of the circuit. There is no SWAP gate and no mid-circuit measurement yet, so algorithms such as teleportation that branch on a measurement are not possible. A register holds at most 30 qubits (16 GiB of memory).

Building from source

You need a recent Rust toolchain (tested with 1.88) and Python 3.9 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/kaiwave/qsengine
cd qsengine
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate       # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install maturin pytest numpy
maturin develop --release       # build and install into the venv

Tests:

cargo test --release            # Rust tests (GPU tests skip without a GPU)
pytest                          # Python tests, checked against a NumPy reference

To build without the GPU backend, use cargo build --no-default-features for Rust.

The website lives in site/ (Next.js, static export, maths rendered with KaTeX at build time):

cd site
npm install
npm run dev                     # local preview
npm run build                   # static site in site/out/

Project layout

src/                Rust core and Python bindings
  engine.rs           CPU backend (64-bit, multithreaded with Rayon)
  gpu.rs              GPU backend (wgpu compute shader in shaders/)
  circuit.rs          QuantumCircuit: records gates, fuses them, runs them
  python.rs           PyO3 bindings for the qsengine Python module
qsengine.pyi        Type hints for editors
tests/              Python tests against NumPy
benchmarks/         Benchmark script, results and plot
site/               Documentation and learning website
docs/RUST_GUIDE.md  A guide to every Rust feature the engine uses

Licence

MIT, see LICENSE. Made by kaiwave.