Flipping a Coin With a Quantum Computer

Anyone with an AWS account can flip a coin using quantum mechanics

Steven Heidel
5 min readAug 25, 2020

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An ion trap quantum computer.

Amazon recently announced its latest AWS offering: Quantum computing as a service. It’s called Amazon Braket (pronounced “bracket”). Last week it moved from a closed beta to general availability.

Here’s how you can run your first quantum program in just a few minutes.

Step 1: Set Up Your Account

The first thing you need to do is create an AWS account if you don’t have one already. Go to https://aws.amazon.com and follow the instructions.

Next, you’ll need to activate Amazon Braket by going to https://aws.amazon.com/braket/ and clicking “Get Started with Amazon Braket.”

This will walk you through some terms and conditions, which you’ll need to agree with to proceed. You’ll also be prompted to create an S3 bucket for storing the results of quantum programs. You’ll also have to set up access rules for the account. Fortunately, there are default settings filled in for you already. I just left every option alone. Make a note of the name of the S3 bucket for later.

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