Xanadu · Schema

PennyLane Device

Logical description of a PennyLane device — the executable target for a quantum circuit. PennyLane devices abstract simulators (default.qubit, lightning.qubit, lightning.gpu, default.mixed) and hardware backends (IBM Q, IonQ, Rigetti, AWS Braket, Strawberry Fields) behind a single interface.

Quantum ComputingPhotonic Quantum ComputingQuantum Machine LearningContinuous VariableOpen SourcePythonPennyLaneStrawberry FieldsToronto

Properties

Name	Type	Description
name	string	Fully qualified device name, e.g. 'default.qubit', 'lightning.gpu', 'strawberryfields.gaussian'.
shortName	string	Human-readable short name.
plugin	string	PennyLane plugin providing the device, e.g. 'pennylane-lightning', 'pennylane-qiskit'.
wires	integer	Number of qubits or photonic modes exposed by the device.
shots	integernull	Number of measurement shots. Null indicates analytic (exact-expectation) execution where supported.
backend	string	Underlying backend identifier (for plugins that wrap multiple hardware/simulator targets).
supportsGradient	boolean	Whether the device supports a native (e.g. parameter-shift, adjoint, backprop) gradient method.
diffMethods	array	List of differentiation methods supported by the device.
capabilities	object	Free-form capability map returned by the device (model, returns_state, returns_probs, supports_finite_shots, etc.).

View JSON Schema on GitHub

JSON Schema

{
  "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
  "$id": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/xanadu/refs/heads/main/json-schema/pennylane-device-schema.json",
  "title": "PennyLane Device",
  "description": "Logical description of a PennyLane device — the executable target for a quantum circuit. PennyLane devices abstract simulators (default.qubit, lightning.qubit, lightning.gpu, default.mixed) and hardware backends (IBM Q, IonQ, Rigetti, AWS Braket, Strawberry Fields) behind a single interface.",
  "type": "object",
  "required": ["name", "wires"],
  "properties": {
    "name": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Fully qualified device name, e.g. 'default.qubit', 'lightning.gpu', 'strawberryfields.gaussian'."
    },
    "shortName": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Human-readable short name."
    },
    "plugin": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "PennyLane plugin providing the device, e.g. 'pennylane-lightning', 'pennylane-qiskit'."
    },
    "wires": {
      "type": "integer",
      "minimum": 1,
      "description": "Number of qubits or photonic modes exposed by the device."
    },
    "shots": {
      "type": ["integer", "null"],
      "minimum": 1,
      "description": "Number of measurement shots. Null indicates analytic (exact-expectation) execution where supported."
    },
    "backend": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Underlying backend identifier (for plugins that wrap multiple hardware/simulator targets)."
    },
    "supportsGradient": {
      "type": "boolean",
      "description": "Whether the device supports a native (e.g. parameter-shift, adjoint, backprop) gradient method."
    },
    "diffMethods": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "type": "string",
        "enum": ["best", "backprop", "adjoint", "parameter-shift", "finite-diff", "spsa", "hadamard", "device"]
      },
      "description": "List of differentiation methods supported by the device."
    },
    "capabilities": {
      "type": "object",
      "additionalProperties": true,
      "description": "Free-form capability map returned by the device (model, returns_state, returns_probs, supports_finite_shots, etc.)."
    }
  },
  "additionalProperties": false
}