What's the main difference between Pennylane and Strawberry Fields?

PennyLane Plugins PennyLane Strawberry Fields
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Hello, I am doing a benchmark of Quantum Computing Tools, such as frameworks, cloud services and technologies. In beginning, I thought Pennylane was a framework creatred to work specially with Xanadu Photonics Computers. But later I discovered Strawberry Fields, which is the Framework to work with Xanadu Computers. I found out that Pennylane does not have devices to access directly a QPU, it has only simulators as devices. So, if I want to acess QPU s with Pennylane I would need to use a Strawberry Fields Plugin, or other Plugin which Pennylane has. So, I have two questions:

1 - Can I access directly a QPU with Pennylane?
2 - Is there some relation between Pennylane and Strawberry Fields?
3 - Is there some relation between Pennylane and Xanadu Photonic Quantum Computers? Like, Pennylane was made thinking about working with Photonic Computers?
4 - Why would I use Pennylane instead of Strawberry Fields and vice-versa?

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Hey @gabrielpires-1! Welcome to the forum :rocket:

1 - Can I access directly a QPU with Pennylane?

You can! You can use one of our many PennyLane plugins: Plugins and ecosystem | PennyLane. These plugins allow you to access hardware from other companies. We have a PennyLane-Strawberryfields plugin that allowed users to access some similar-feeling functionality in Strawberryfields but in a PennyLane-centric format. But, please be aware that this plugin is no longer being supported.

2 - Is there some relation between Pennylane and Strawberry Fields?

Strawberryfields is Xanadu’s offering for simulating and programming our photonic QPUs. Every gate, operation, measurement, etc., is in the continuous variable (CV) langauge (photons!). PennyLane is Xanadu’s cornerstone open-source software aimed at bringing together the entire quantum ecosystem. As you said, with PennyLane you can access state-of-the-art simulators. PennyLane is ever-evolving and constantly being improved upon. We want PennyLane to be the household name for quantum programming!

There used to be a non-negligible tie between Strawberryfields and PennyLane (via the PL-SF plugin I mentioned), but now they’re more separate and meant for different purposes.

3 - Is there some relation between Pennylane and Xanadu Photonic Quantum Computers? Like, Pennylane was made thinking about working with Photonic Computers?

We want PennyLane to be all-encompassing; I said that with PennyLane, we want to bring together the entire quantum ecosystem. It’s a broad-stroke statement, but that’s the goal! Actually, the reason we call “qubits” in pennylane “wires” is for photonics-related reasons :slight_smile:. There are little bits of photonic inspiration in PennyLane, but we want it to be versatile.

4 - Why would I use Pennylane instead of Strawberry Fields and vice-versa?

If you need to do CV quantum computing (be it on a simulator or real hardware), use Strawberryfields. Otherwise, PennyLane should be your go-to :slight_smile:.

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