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Resource estimation

The Resource Estimator answers the question a working algorithm eventually runs into: to run this circuit fault-tolerantly, how many physical qubits and how much wall-clock time would it actually take? It wraps the Azure Quantum Resource Estimator shipped in the qdk package.

Open the Resource Estimator view in the Research rail (or -jump to it). It estimates the active editor buffer:

  • Q# — the entry operation is compiled and estimated directly.
  • Qiskit — the circuit is exported to OpenQASM 3 kernel-side and estimated.
  • Other frameworks (Cirq, CUDA-Q, Stim) aren’t supported; the panel says so rather than sending a request that can only fail.

Set three assumptions, then Run estimate:

  • Qubit parameters — a hardware profile preset (gate-based ns/µs at 10⁻³ or 10⁻⁴, or Majorana ns at 10⁻⁴/10⁻⁶).
  • QEC schemesurface_code or floquet_code.
  • Error budget — the total allowed failure probability (0 < ε < 1).

The panel leads with the headline fault-tolerant cost — physical qubits, runtime, code distance, T-factory count, rQOPS, logical error rate — with the algorithm/T-factory qubit split beneath. The full estimator document is available under a collapsible detail and via Export JSON.

The estimate is deterministic for a given program and options, so the numbers are stable; only the assumptions change them.