QPU & Emulators

Neutral-atom QPU hardware and cloud-hosted emulators for quantum job execution.

Every Pasqal quantum task runs on a backend, either a neutral-atom Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) or one of our Emulators running on classical resources. This page explains what’s on offer, where each QPU and emulators available, and how to pick the right one.

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A QPU (Quantum Processing Unit) is real quantum hardware which leverages individual atoms trapped in arrays of laser light to perform computations

An emulator reproduces the behaviour of a QPU using classical resources. They should be used for development, debugging and scaling studies before you spend time on the real hardware.

QPUs

Run on Fresnel, Pasqal's neutral-atom analog quantum processor. See specifications, supported modes, and availability by region and cloud provider.

Emulators

Six emulators from a free 10-qubit sandbox to GPU-accelerated 100-qubit tensor networks. Compare use cases, availability and pricing.

Emulators can run either locally on your machine or remotely on Pasqal Cloud and third-party providers.

Local (on your machine)

Install the emulator as a Python package and run it on your own laptop, workstation. No network round-trip, no per-job cost, full control bounded by your own hardware.

Remote (on the Cloud)

Submit a job through Pasqal Cloud or a third-party provider. GPU-accelerated emulators run on Pasqal's managed fleet, so you can simulate larger registers without using your own hardware.

Availability

Pasqal remote emulators and QPUs are deployed and accessible in a variety of environments: directly on Pasqal Cloud platform, through hyperscalers or inside an HPC center. Not every backend is offered on every access channel. The table below lists remote availability per backend and access channel.

	Pasqal Cloud	Google Cloud	Azure Quantum	OVHCloud	Scaleway	HPC Access
FRESNEL	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Unavailable
FRESNEL_CAN1	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Unavailable
FRESNEL_SA1	AvailableKSA Cloud	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable
RUBY	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	AvailableCEA
SOL	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	AvailableCineca
JADE	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	Unavailable	AvailableJülich
EMU_FREE	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Unavailable
EMU_MPS	Available	Available	Available	Available	Available	Unavailable
EMU_SV	Available	Available	Available	Unavailable	Available	Unavailable
EMU_TN	Deprecated	Deprecated	Unavailable	Available	Available	Unavailable

Note

Remote emulators are not available inside HPC centers. On HPC clusters, run emulators locally using the center’s CPU and GPU resources instead.

Choosing a backend and a device

A backend and a device are two different but complementary concepts: you always need one of each to run a quantum program.

The device defines the physical constraints and capabilities that a quantum program (sequence) must satisfy — such as the maximum number of atoms, available channels, and layout rules.

• Targeting an emulator backend: you’re free to build your own virtual device to experiment, or reuse a real QPU’s device to mimic its constraints. For example, you can build a sequence using the FRESNEL_CAN1 device and execute it on the EMU_MPS backend — a common workflow to validate a sequence on an emulator using the real QPU’s specifications before submitting to hardware.
• Targeting a QPU backend: you must build your sequence using that QPU’s actual device.

The backend is what executes your job. It is either:

• an emulator, or
• a QPU (real quantum hardware).

Selection flow

1. Choose a library to build your sequence and check out its quick start guide
2. Build your sequence using a device — a virtual device (free choice) or a real device (required for QPU)
3. Choose a backend — an emulator or a QPU

Choosing a backend

Run either locally on your own machine (free, open-source emulators) or remotely on Pasqal Cloud or external cloud providers, which covers cloud emulators as well as QPUs. The usual workflow is to run first on an emulator, then on a QPU. Weigh the trade-offs: emulators are either exact (full state vector, small registers) or approximate (tensor-network, large registers); execution is either free or billed depending on the chosen access channel, your contract and the chosen backend.

• Just starting? Use EMU_FREE (remote, free).
• Need exact results? EMU_SV keeps the full state vector for registers up to ~25 qubits.
• Remote or local? Use remote if you have no access to sufficient CPU/GPU resources locally to run your simulations or if you want a turn-key solution. Otherwise use local emulators, for example on your own machine or on an HPC cluster.
• Scaling toward QPU size? EMU_MPS handles 80 qubits with a controllable approximation.
• About to run on hardware? Submit your sequence to a QPU using QPUBackend once it validates on an emulator. The QPU is reachable through Pasqal Cloud directly and through external cloud providers. Availability, region and access route depend on the device — please refer to our QPU page for additional information.

View QPU page

Status

The cloud-hosted backends status history and planned maintenance windows are available on the following status page:

Check Status page