System requirements

This page describes various software components to get Pulser running.

The software we use to control Pulser has many components to it. While this might seem a bit of a hassle compared to a usual one-click installation of commercial software, this allows a lot of flexibility which is required in various lab setting. Different labs have different preference in the choice of software used to control experiment. Many labs are using LabView while a number of labs use in-house software written in Python, Delphi or C.

For us, we use a framework called LabRAD (developed first by Martinis' group at UC Santa Barbara). Briefly, LabRAD is a server/client framework that makes multi-platform and multi-programming-language possible with minimal complexity. To make the story short, our goal is to get LabRAD and the Pulser server running. Then we will use a LabVIEW client to access the server and get Pulser to output a pulse sequence.

So in terms of system requirement, your computer needs to be able to run LabRAD manager. This can be done in Linux or Mac via Wine (tested). The you have to run the Pulser server, which is written in Python and can be any OS. The client can also be written in Python or LabVIEW. In this guide, we focus on using LabVIEW so you will have a Windows (or Linux?) computer to run LabVIEW. If you hate LabVIEW, you can use Python client (like we did in Berkeley).

We we will guide you through the installation process in the following page.

Installations