Frequently Asked Questions

StrawberryFields is a software framework for photonic quantum computing. It allows the programming, execution, and simulation of photonic quantum algorithms.

Yes, Strawberry Fields can be used to execute quantum photonic algorithms on hardware, via the Xanadu Quantum Cloud platform. See our hardware page for more details.

Hardware access can be requested by contacting us.

Our focus is on photonic quantum computation. This is a universal model of quantum computing, with some unique near-term applications, and promising long-term advantages.

• Our hardware is fabricated on integrated silicon photonic chips. These chips have a very high sampling rate, allowing for millions of samples to be returned from a single job.


• Easily embed and analyze arbitrary graph structures.

Compared to qubit-based systems, photonic quantum programs use a different gate set, and have different near-term applications. Strawberry Fields is a full-stack solution for constructing, compiling, simulating, optimizing, and executing photonic algorithms on hardware.

Strawberry Fields provides high-level functions for solving practical problems, including graph and network optimization, machine learning, and chemistry. See our applications page for more details.

Strawberry Fields provides a high-performance backend written in TensorFlow, allowing quantum photonic algorithms to be trained and optimized in a simulator. See our machine learning tutorials for more details.

For a more expansive quantum machine learning framework, see our sister library PennyLane.

Yes, Strawberry Fields is open source software developed under the Apache 2.0 License.