D-Wave Systems Inc. today announced the immediate availability of Leap 2, a quantum cloud service designed for developers and organizations to easily build and deploy real-world hybrid quantum applications.

D-Wave launched the Leap cloud service first launched in 2018. Leap 2 is an even richer Leap quantum cloud service designed around practicality and ease-of-use. If the original Leap was about giving developers their first real-time access to a live quantum computer in the cloud, Leap 2 is about giving those developers the ability to go from exploration to production — making it easier than ever to build quantum applications for the real world. Leap 2 comes with new capabilities, resources, and tools.

Quantum applications will always and only be hybrid. That’s why D-Wave built the hybrid solver service (HSS), containing an arsenal of quantum-classical algorithms. The HSS gives users the ability to solve much larger real-world problems with a shorter learning curve, resulting in quicker deployment of quantum apps.

D-Wave's existing hybrid platform allows users to build and run hybrid workflows using the company's open-source Ocean software. Now, the addition of the cloud-based hybrid solver in Leap will enable developers to benefit from a professionally-run HSS in the cloud that’s maintained, upgraded, and tuned by D-Wave experts.

The HSS includes “hybrid_v1”, a solver designed based on usage patterns that D-Wave observed in open-source Ocean tools after releasing its Hybrid platform. This new hybrid solver will join the quantum processing unit (QPU) solvers in Leap that D-Wave's customers can employ in their applications. The hybrid solver provides high-quality solutions to users’ jobs, solving problems with up to 10,000 variables with no need for complex performance tuning. It is designed to support end-to-end applications with performance that is robust across a simpler set of input parameters.

The original Leap was built as a quantum application environment (QAE) meant to foster developer interactions and help them grow with learning tools, forums, and resources.

In Leap 2, D-Wave is building on that principle with a full-featured Integrated Developer Environment (IDE). The IDE unifies cloud-based tools and resources for developers in Leap. It empowers developers to build apps faster by learning from a searchable library of examples and using preinstalled Ocean tools.

For power users, Leap 2 also includes a problem inspector for debugging and visualizing calls to the quantum computer. For the first time, developers can see the whole picture — specifically, the relationships between their application problems, the quantum machine instructions, and the results returned.

The inspector produces a histogram of solutions for every problem and brings developers closer to the hardware. It’s a close-up of the quantum process and shows developers how problems look on a QPU topology at the qubit level.

Later this year, when D-Wave will release the next generation of its quantum computer, Advantage, developers will find their applications run on this advanced technology, taking full advantage of the IDE, solvers, and the problem inspector.

D-Wave said that every new Leap user will receive free time to use the company's quantum computers and hybrid systems.

Those who will join Leap today will have up to 1 minute of QPU time or 20 minutes of quantum-classical hybrid solver time to exploit the strengths of bothquantum resources and classical algorithms.