Installing Qiskit Aer on Ubuntu with Nvidia

Draft notes... 

The goal is to install Qiskit Aer 0.17.1 on a 64-bit Linux Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS with Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super.

Nvidia is already set and running on this machine, Qiskit 2 is also installed but not 2.2 yet.


Aer depends on the main Qiskit package. CUDA (10.1 or newer) and a AER GPU related package are needed to install the GPU supported simulator.

Check if CUDA is installed  with  nvcc --version

Mine is CUDA 12 and need an upgrade.

If not, follow  CUDA Quick Start Guide and CUDA Toolkit 13.1 Downloads . Upgrading CUDA and setting it up on Linux is not always straight forward process. Consult with someone in case of need of help. this guide will not cover this part.

Run the simulators for Cuda to check if it works.

In a Venv install qiskit 


python3

Python 3.11.5 (main, Sep 11 2023, 13:54:46) [GCC 11.2.0] on linux

Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> import qiskit

>>> print(qiskit.version.get_version_info())

2.2.3

>>> 

Install Q Aer 

 pip install qiskit-aer

Installing collected packages: qiskit-aer

Successfully installed qiskit-aer-0.17.2


and ear-gpu

Successfully installed cudensitymat-cu12-0.3.2 cupauliprop-cu12-0.1.0 cuquantum-cu12-25.11.1 custabilizer-cu12-0.1.0 custatevec-cu12-1.11.0 cutensor-cu12-2.4.1 cutensornet-cu12-2.10.1 nvidia-cublas-cu12-12.9.1.4 nvidia-cuda-runtime-cu12-12.9.79 nvidia-cusolver-cu12-11.7.5.82 nvidia-cusparse-cu12-12.5.10.65 nvidia-nvjitlink-cu12-12.9.86 qiskit-aer-gpu-0.15.1


try out simple program 

>>> import qiskit

>>> from qiskit_aer.primitives import SamplerV2

Error: from qiskit.providers import convert_to_target
ImportError: cannot import name 'convert_to_target' from 'qiskit.providers' 

https://www.reddit.com/r/QuantumComputing/comments/1jxkb4u/help_to_solve_the_qiskit_simulator_issue_in/

>>> import qiskit
>>> print(qiskit.version.get_version_info())
2.2.3
>>>