Transpilation

Introduction

Most circuits need to be transpiled to a suitable format before the pilots can execute them. Each format is identified by a unique format string (e.g., “QISKIT”, “QASM2”, “QASM3”, etc.). The format conversions (transpilation) are done by CircuitTranslators that convert from one format to another. Multiple CircuitTranslators may be chained to reach a specific target format.

Available Formats and Translators

Available CircuitTranspilers

The graph shows all available formats (the nodes) and transpilation paths between these formats (the edges). Some transpilation paths have a higher cost, meaning that they are less likely to be used. Unsafe transpilation paths can be enabled explicitly but are disabled by default.

Adding new CircuitTranspilers

To add a new transpiler, create a class inheriting from CircuitTranspiler and implement the transpile_circuit method. The new transpiler should specify the source and target format in the class definition.

class DemoTranspiler(CircuitTranspiler, source="source-format", target="target-format", cost=1):
    unsafe = False  # set to True if transpilation may execute unsafe code

    def transpile_circuit(self, circuit: Any) -> Any:
        ...

Hint

A transpiler class must be imported to be registered for transpilation! If a transpiler does not show up in the graph above, make sure that it is always imported.