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//va edited this page May 17, 2023 · 15 revisions

Welcome to the FAQ and Tips section!

Below you will find frequently asked questions, and the answers to each.

We will update this throughout the duration of the Challenge.

The #1 piece of advice we have: Be kind and patient 😄

General Questions

How does the Challenge work?

The Challenge is a series of five guided Labs, in the form of Jupyter notebooks hosted on IBM Quantum Labs. Each Lab file is a mixture of tutorial content and coding exercises for you to learn from and prove your knowledge. The Labs are self-paced - you can work on them whenever you have time. They are also individual - every participant is trying to solve each Lab alone, but you can talk with others on the official Discord, or however you prefer to chat.

I'm not in the Discord, why not?

Only registered users received the email to the Discord. If you registered and still did not get this email, check your spam folder. If it's not there, then likely there was a typo when you submitted your email.

How do I submit an answer?

Within each Lab, on the challenge portal, you will find guidelines to submit an answer. You formally submit your code by running the grader cell. It's important to remember that when you change code in any cell, you need to run that cell before submitting to the grader again.

For more information, reference the tutorial section at the beginning of Lab 1.

My country is not allowed to register for the Challenge. Can I still participate?

Yes, to an extent. You can still download each Lab from this GitHub, and learn alongside all the other participants. You can complete all of the exercises except for the very last one. You can not, however, use the quantum computers reserved for registered participants. You also can not earn a badge for this event. We encourage you to try the Qiskit Global Summer School or Quantum Explorers programs for alternate ways to earn badges.

I encountered a 'Server Error'. Why won't my server load?

Servers sometimes take a while to load, especially if hundreds of people request them at the same time. Please have patience, and try again in a few minutes.

Do we need to download the notebooks from github?

No, you can run all exercises on the challenge portal itself.

Do I need to take the Labs in order?

We encourage you complete the Labs in the given order as this is the intended structure for the Challenge. However, you may take the Labs in any order. Labs are released 1 per day, until all 5 have been released.

Do I need an IBMid associated with my IBM Quantum Account?

Yes, you'll need an IBMid associated with your IBM Quantum account in order to complete the Challenge. If you don't already have one, please register a new IBMid using the SAME email address associated with your IBM Quantum account. If you have any questions or face any issues, please let us know in the Discord.

How do I find the backends associated with my account?

AKA - what's the deal with hub / group / projects?

Log into your IBM quantum computing account. In the very top right corner click on the "person" icon, then "Account settings." From there, look to the very bottom. There will be a table with "instance" and "compute resources". Search for the line with "qc-spring." In that line click on "1 system". That will open up your backend, see column "Name"

I encountered the error: Login with some authorized provider required.

Please make sure you have an IBMid and are logging in with the IBMid option i.e., not using the Single Sign-on from Google account, GitHub account, etc.)

I encountered this error Failed: 400 Client Error: / Failed: 401 Client Error: Unauthorized for url:

For one of these errors:

  • Failed: 400 Client Error: Bad Request for url: https://auth.quantum-computing.ibm.com/api/users/loginWithToken
  • Failed: 401 Client Error: Unauthorized for url: https://auth.quantum-computing.ibm.com/api/users/loginWithToken

If running in Quantum Lab try the following steps

  1. From lab notebook go into File menu and select Control Hub Panel
  2. Click on Stop my Lab
  3. After it has stopped, click on Logout
  4. Log back into the Quantum Lab (using IBMid option)
  5. Try running the notebook cells and grading again

If you still have the issues then continue with the following extra steps

  1. Go to your Account details (can be accessed from user icon top right corner in lab)
  2. Copy your API token
  3. In the lab notebook, restart the kernel
  4. Enter the following in a new cell at the top of the notebook (set it to the token copied from your Account details... do not use quotes)
%env QXToken=YOUR_IBM_QUANTUM_TOKEN
  1. Run the cell
  2. Continue/try running rest of the notebook cells

If running the notebook locally, you can try to run the following code in your local Jupyter notebook cell.

%env QXToken=YOUR_IBM_QUANTUM_TOKEN
%env QC_GRADING_ENDPOINT=https://qac-grading.quantum-computing.ibm.com
%env QXAuthURL=https://auth.quantum-computing.ibm.com/api

You can may need to run these again every time after restarting kernel. You can verify these environmental variables by running the following code:

import os
print(os.environ['QXToken'])
print(os.environ['QC_GRADING_ENDPOINT'])
print(os.environ['QXAuthURL'])

If you follow these steps to find your IBM Quantum token.

Technical Questions

- Can I run the challenge notebooks on a local computer?

Yes it is possible. But for a minimal setup experience and seamless progress tracking, we strongly recommend you solve the exercises on the challenge portal. If you really want to run the exercises locally, you can download the notebooks from the challenge repository and run using Jupyter notebook. Please make sure you have installed the following Qiskit version:

  • qiskit-aer : >= 0.12.0
  • qiskit-ibm-provider : >= 0.5.2
  • qiskit-ibmq-provider : >= 0.20.2
  • qiskit-terra : >= 0.23.3

You can check what Qiskit versions you have installed by running pip list | grep qiskit in a terminal window or by running the following code in a Jupyter notebook cell:

import qiskit.tools.jupyter
%qiskit_version_table

If you don't have the latest version installed. You can run pip install qiskit[all] in a terminal to install all of the Qiskit packages. If you receive an error, try running pip install qiskit\[all].

Note: Make sure to restart the kernel to use updated packages.

- Can I check answers on a local computer?

Yes it is possible. But similar to the above question, we strongly recommend you solve the exercises and check answers on the challenge portal. If you really want to check answers on a local computer, you need to install the grading client in addition to downloading the notebooks.

For details on how to setup the grader locally:

  • Make sure you install all the libraries above in your environment
  • Install the qc grader by running pip install git+https://github.com/qiskit-community/Quantum-Challenge-Grader.git
  • Set your environment variables
  • Set your token from the dashboard Do not add any quotes and DO NOT share this key with anyone
  • Test out to see if it works by running a grading cell

- How can I check the grader version?

Please make sure you have installed the latest 0.15.x version of the grader. You can verify the grader version using the following code in a Jupyter notebook cell:

import qc_grader
qc_grader.__version__
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