How to Set Up IBM Quantum Access Credentials for Prefect¶

This guide explains how to configure Prefect Qiskit integration to access IBM Quantum services from the MDX workflow server.

Prerequisites¶

Before you begin, ensure the following:

You have created a Python virtual environment by following How to Set Up Python Environment on Fugaku.
You have generated an API Key for the IBM Quantum Platform.

If you use Prefect Cloud for workflow management, also ensure:

You have created an API Key for the Prefect Cloud workspace.

Instructions¶

Step 1: Execute the interact session for Pre/Post Node.¶

Execute the interact session for Pre/Post Node.

srun -p mem2 -n 1 --mem 4G --time=60 --pty bash -i

Step 2: Install Prefect Qiskit Package¶

Activate your virtual environment:

source ~/venv/prefect/bin/activate

Install the Prefect Qiskit integration:

uv pip install prefect-qiskit
export SSL_CERT_FILE=$(python -c 'import certifi; print(certifi.where())')

If SSL_CERT_FILE is not set, IBM Quantum access may fail with [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] unable to get local issuer certificate.

Step 3: Configure Prefect Profile¶

Create API Key in Prefect Cloud. Settings -> API Keys

Create API Keys

Create and switch to a new Prefect profile:

prefect profile create cloud-fugaku && prefect profile use cloud-fugaku

Log in to your Prefect Cloud workspace using your API key:

prefect cloud login -k '<my-api-key>'

Step 4: Register IBM Quantum Blocks¶

Register the block schemas for Qiskit integration:

prefect block register -m prefect_qiskit
prefect block register -m prefect_qiskit.vendors

Create the IBM Quantum Credentials block:

prefect block create ibm-quantum-credentials

This command will display a URL to the Prefect console. Open it in your browser and enter your IBM Quantum instance's CRN and API Key to create the block.

Setup IBM Quantum Credentials

Then, enter the following:

prefect block create quantum-runtime

Follow the URL shown to configure the runtime block. Specify the IBM Quantum backend name and link the credentials block you created above. You can also configure preferences for Qiskit primitive execution.

Setup Quantum Runtime

[!NOTE] If a real IBM Quantum backend such as ibm_kobe is not available, you can configure Qiskit Aer as an alternative backend. Follow the official prefect-qiskit tutorial here: Use Qiskit Aer

In the Aer setup, create a Qiskit Aer Credentials block and configure the QuantumRuntime block with Resource Name = aer_simulator. If you already created the tutorial Variable for the Fugaku workflow, delete it from Prefect before switching to Aer because it cannot be used in this setup: fugaku-bitcount-options

Confirm you have access to the blocks you created:

prefect block ls

Example output:

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ ID                     ┃ Type      ┃ Name        ┃ Slug                             ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ 9d87e2a8-e7b8-4e3b-98… │ IBM Quan… │ ibm-quantu… │ ibm-quantum-credentials/ibm-qua… │
│ 8c9e4ff7-b09a-4f11-bc… │ Quantum … │ ibm-runner  │ quantum-runtime/ibm-runner       │
└────────────────────────┴───────────┴─────────────┴──────────────────────────────────┘

If the blocks don't appear, it's likely that the Prefect profile setup failed. Go back to Step 3 and ensure you have successfully logged in to the Prefect Cloud workspace.