Edit

Troubleshoot Azure Quantum

  • Article

When working with the Azure Quantum service, you may run into these common issues. See how you can solve them.

Submitting jobs

Issue: Missing targets

If the target where you want to run your job is missing from the available target list, you likely need to update to the latest version of the Quantum Development Kit for Visual Studio Code. For more information, see Update the QDK.

Issue: Operation returns an invalid status code 'Unauthorized'

Steps to resolve this issue:

  1. Open your Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com) and authenticate your account.

  2. Under Navigate, select Subscriptions and select your subscription.

  3. Select Access control (IAM).

  4. Under Check access, search for your email address and select the account.

  5. You shouldn't see an Owner or a Contributor role listed.

  6. Select the Role assignments tab.

    Note

    If you don't see the Role assignments tab, you may need to expand the portal to full screen or close the <your name> assignments pane.

  7. Select the Role dropdown, select either Owner or Contributor, then enter your email address and select your account.

  8. Select Save.

  9. You should now see your account set configured with either the Owner or Contributor role.

  10. Create your Azure Quantum workspace again and then submit a job against this new Workspace.

Issue: "Failed to compile program" when attempting to submit a Q# program through the CLI

When attempting to submit a job at the command prompt using the az quantum submit command, you may encounter the following error message:

az quantum job submit ...
Failed to compile program.
Command ran in 21.181 seconds (init: 0.457, invoke: 20.724)

This error occurs when there's a problem with the Q# program that causes the compilation to fail.

Issue: Compiler error "Wrong number of gate parameters"

When submitting a job to Quantinuum from a local Jupyter Notebook or command line environment, and using the legacy QASM translator (OPENQASM 2.0), you may encounter this error:

Job ID <jobId> failed or was cancelled with the message: 1000: Compile error: [<file, line>] Wrong number of gate parameters

This error occurs when a comma "," or another non-period character is used as a decimal separator, as is common in many languages. Replace any non-period decimal separators with periods ".".

// replace this line:
rx(1,5707963267948966) q[0];

// with this:
rx(1.5707963267948966) q[0];

Note

This issue does not occur in hosted notebooks in the Azure Quantum portal, only in local development environments.

Issue: Compiler error "not available for the current compilation configuration"

When you run a Q# code cell in a Jupyter Notebook in VS Code, you may encounter the error:

<function name> not found. Found a matching item `<function name>' that is not available for the current compilation configuration

This error indicates that the QIR target profile is set to Basic and the function in question requires the Unrestricted target profile. To set the target profile to Unrestricted:

  1. While in your Q# program in VS Code, select Q#: QIR base on the bottom status bar.
  2. From the options displayed in the top status bar, select Q#: unrestricted.

Issue: Operation returned an invalid status code 'Forbidden'

When you submit your first job, you may get a ‘forbidden’ error code.

This issue may originate during the workspace creation: Azure Quantum fails to complete the role assignment linking the new workspace to the storage account that was specified. A typical scenario for this situation happens if the tab or web browser window is closed before the workspace creation is completed.

You can verify that you're running into this role assignment issue by following these steps:

  • Navigate to your new quantum workspace in Azure Portal
  • Under Overview > Essentials > Storage account, select on the storage account link
  • In the left navigation bar, select Access Control (IAM)
  • Select Role Assignments
  • Verify that your workspace appears as a Contributor
  • If the workspace doesn't appear as a Contributor you can either:
    • Create a new workspace and make sure to wait for the workspace creation to be completed before closing the web browser tab or window.
    • Add the proper role assignment under the storage account
      • Access Control (IAM) > Add role assignments
      • Role > Contributor
      • Assign access to > User, group, or service principal
      • Select > [Workspace name]
      • Save

Issue: Job fails with error code: QIRPreProcessingFailed

When you submit a job to a Rigetti provider, the job fails and is reported in the Job management console in the Azure portal:

Error code: QIRPreProcessingFailed
Error message: No match found for output recording set converter from outputrecordingset.v2.labeled to outputrecordingset.v1.nonlabeled

This error may be caused by a dependency conflict with a previous version of pyqir or qiskit-qir. Uninstall all versions of pyqir, pyqir-*, and qiskit-qir on your local machine, and then install or update the azure-quantum Python package using the [qiskit] parameter:

pip install --upgrade azure-quantum[qiskit]

Issue: Retrieving basic information about failed jobs

After you submit a job to a hardware target, your job may sit in the queue for several hours, or even one or two days, before failing.

To retrieve more information about the failure:

  • Use the get_results() method with the job object to view the output or the returned error message:
job.get_results()
  • In your Azure Portal workspace, select Operations > Job Management, and then select the job Name to open a detail pane.
  • In your Azure Portal workspace, selecd Operations > Providers. Verify the availibility of the target machine. Jobs submitted to targets with a status of Degraded may stay in the queue longer than usual. Sometimes the jobs get processed, but sometimes they time out and return an error of target unavailable.

Issue: I keep being asked to authenticate when programmatically connecting to my workspace

If you are using the Azure Quantum Python SDK (within Jupyter notebooks for instance) and are connecting to your workspace using the AzureQuantumProvider class, you may experience a pop-up to authenticate to Azure every time you run your script.

This happens because your security token is being reset every time you run the script.

You can resolve this issue by running az login using the Azure CLI. For more information, see az login.

Issue: After updating the azure-quantum package, I get the error "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named qiskit.tools" when monitoring a job

As of Qiskit 1.0, the qiskit.tools module, which is required for the job_monitor() function, has been deprecated. To monitor jobs, use the wait_for_final_state() or the result functions.

job = MyTarget.run(circuit, shots=100)

# to wait until the job is complete
job.wait_for_final_state() 

# to return the results of the job
result = job.result()

Azure Quantum Resource Estimator

The following common scenarios may prevent resource estimation jobs to complete. See how to resolve them.

Issue: Quantum algorithm must contain at least one T state or measurement

To account for mapping an arbitrary quantum program to a 2D array of logical qubits, the Resource Estimator assumes that Parallel Synthesis Sequential Pauli Computation (PSSPC) (see arXiv:2211.07629, Appendix D) is performed on the inputprogram. In that approach, all Clifford operations are commuted through all T gates, rotation gates, and measurement operations, leaving a single Clifford operation that can be efficiently evaluated classically. Therefore, a quantum program that contains neither T states, for example from T gates or rotation gates, nor measurement operations does not require any physical quantum computing resources.

Error message: Algorithm requires at least one T state or measurement to estimate resources

Issue: Physical T gate error rate is too high

The logical T state error rate depends on the error budget and the number of T states in the quantum program. T factories are used to create T states with the required logical T state error rate from physical T gates, which have a physical T gate error rate. Typically, the physical T gate error rate is much higher than the required logical T gate error rate. In some scenarios, the physical T gate error rate is that much higher compared to the required logical T state error rate, such that no T factory can be found that can produce logical T states of sufficient quality.

Error message: No T factory can be found, because the required logical T state error rate is too low

Here is what you could do in such a scenario:

  • Increase the error budget, either total or the part for T states.
  • Reduce the physical T gate error rate in the qubit parameters.
  • Reduce the number of T states in the quantum program by reducing T gates, rotation gates, and Toffoli gates.

Issue: Physical T gate error rate is too low

There is also the opposite scenario, in which the physical T gate error rate is lower than the required logical T state error rate. In such cases, no T factory is required, because the physical T gate error rate is already of sufficient quality. However, this requires a careful consideration of the impact of transfer units that transfer the physical T states from code distance 1 to the code distance of the algorithm (see arXiv:2211.07629, Appendix C). In general, in the presence of T factories, the cost of transfer units is negligible.

Error message: No T factory can be found, because the required logical T state error rate is too high; transfer units are necessary to perform a resource estimation accurately. One possibility to circumvent this problem is to increase the physical T gate error rate of the qubit parameters.

Here is what you could do in such a scenario:

  • Increase the physical T gate error rate in the qubit parameters to the required logical T state error rate.
  • Reduce the error budget or just the part for the T states.

Issue: Error rate must be a number between 0 and 1

Error rates should always be values between 0 and 1. In addition, for error correction to be effective, the physical error rate for gates and measurements must be below a value that depends on the properties of the error correction code and the required logical error rate.

Here is what you could do in such a scenario:

  • Increase the error budget, either total or the part for logical errors.
  • Reduce the physical error rates in the qubit parameters.

Issue: Constraints maximum runtime and maximum number of physical qubits are mutually exclusive

The Resource Estimator accepts only one of maxDuration or maxPhysicalQubits constraints at the time but not two. If your provide both maxDuration and maxPhysicalQubitsconstraints for a single job, it returns the BothDurationAndPhysicalQubitsProvided error.

Issue: Run QIR estimate counts container: undefined symbol __quantum__rt__result_record_output

This error results from generating QIR for Qiskit circuits via the qiskit_qir Python package without setting the record_output parameter to False.

To avoid this error, do one of the following:

  • Use the azure_quantum Python package to submit Qiskit circuits to Azure Quantum (recommended).
  • When using the qiskit_qir Python package, be sure to set the record_output parameter to False before submitting your circuit.

Creating an Azure Quantum workspace

The following issues may occur when you use the Azure portal to create a workspace.

Issue: You can't access the workspace creation form in the Azure portal; you are asked to sign up for a subscription instead

This issue occurs because you don't have an active subscription.

For example, you may have signed up for the 30 day free trial Azure subscription, which includes $200 (USD) free Azure Credits to use on Azure services. Note that these Azure credits aren't the same as Azure Quantum Credits and aren't eligible to use on quantum hardware providers. After 30 days of sign-up or once you've consumed the $200 of free Azure credits (whichever occurs first), you must upgrade to a pay-as-you-go subscription to continue using Azure Quantum services. Once you have an active subscription, the Azure portal will allow you to access the workspace creation form.

To see a list of your subscriptions and associated roles, see Check your subscriptions.

Issue: The Quick create option is unavailable

You must be an Owner of the subscription you select in order to use the Quick create option. To see a list of your subscriptions and associated roles, see Check your subscriptions. If you're a subscription Contributor, you can use the Advanced create option to create a workspace.

Issue: You're unable to create or select a resource group or storage account

This issue occurs because you don't have the authorization required at the subscription, resource group, or storage account level. For more information on required access levels, see Role requirements for creating a workspace.

Issue: "Deployment Validation Failed" error message appears after you select Create

This error message may include more details such as "The client does not have authorization to perform action."

This issue occurs because you don't have the authorization required at the subscription, resource group, or storage account level. For more information on required access levels, see Role requirements for creating a workspace.

If access was recently granted, you may need to refresh the page. It can sometimes take up to one hour for new role assignments to take effect over cached permissions across the stack.

Issue: You don't see a specific quantum hardware provider on the Providers tab

This issue occurs because the provider doesn't support the billing region your subscription is set in. For example, if your subscription is set in Israel, the Providers tab won't list Rigetti as an available provider. For a list of providers and their availability by country/region, see Global availability of Azure Quantum providers.

Issue: Workspace creation or adding/removing providers fails with "ResourceDeploymentFailure" or "ProviderDeploymentFailure"

This issue may include more details such as "ResourceDeploymentFailure - The 'AzureAsyncOperationWaiting' resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'.", or "ProviderDeploymentFailure - Failed to create plan for provider: <Name of the provider>".

This occurs because the tenant has not enabled Azure Marketplace purchases. Follow the steps in Enabling Azure Marketplace purchases to enable Azure Marketplace purchases.

Azure Quantum portal

Issue: Saved notebooks don't load

After selecting Notebooks in your workspace, the list of your saved notebooks displays a progress bar but never loads.

This can happen for two reasons:

  1. If the storage account no longer exists. This can happen if the storage account linked to the workspace was deleted. To verify, select the Overview page for the workspace and select the link to the storage account. If the storage account has been deleted, you will see a 404 - Not found error.

  2. If the managed identity of the workspace is not a Contributor to the storage account. Check that the workspace identity (which uses the same name as the workspace) still has the Contributor role assignment to the storage account. To verify, select the Overview page for the workspace and select the link to the storage account. On the Overview page for the storage account, select Access control (IAM) and verify that the workspace is listed under Contributor.