Subroutines on IBM Q (ERROR_RUNNING_JOB returned)

Question

I wrote following code in QASM editor on IBM Q web interface (note ccu1 is controlled-controlled U1 gate):

OPENQASM 2.0;
include "qelib1.inc";

gate ccu1 ( p ) c1, c2, t  {
  cu1 ( p / 2 ) c1, c2;
  cx c2, t;
  cu1 ( - p / 2 ) c1, t;
  cx c2, t;
  cu1 ( p / 2 ) c1, t;
}

qreg q[4];
creg c[4];

h q[0];
h q[1];
h q[2];
h q[3];

ccu1(pi) q[0],q[1],q[2];

id q[3];
measure q[3] -> c[3];

When I look to visualization of a state vector, everything is fine. However, when I tried to run the code on simulator I got error ERROR_RUNNING_JOB. There is also a status message Error in transpilation process. [1003] on results page.

I suspect that the issue is caused by subroutine (a gate statement at the beginning of the code).

Could anyone please help me solve the issue?

Note, I know that it is possible to use subroutine in Qiskit, but I am interested in QASM.

Answer 1

I don't know if this will help. I have tried the code and it worked:

I created a new file named ccu1_circuit.qasm with the instruction written in the question. Then in a separate Python file, I have written:

from qiskit import *

circuit = QuantumCircuit.from_qasm_file('/...The path.../ccu1_circuit.qasm')

backend = BasicAer.get_backend('qasm_simulator')
print(execute(circuit, backend=backend, shots=1024).result().get_counts())

Here is the output:

{'1000': 524, '0000': 500}

Also, I noticed that when I tried to run print(circuit.qasm()) I have found ccu1 in the instructions (not its decomposition written in the .qasm file).

Answer 2

I have just realized that web interface of IBM Q was updated and custom gates, i.e.

gate ccu1 ( p ) c1, c2, t  {
  cu1 ( p / 2 ) c1, c2;
  cx c2, t;
  cu1 ( - p / 2 ) c1, t;
  cx c2, t;
  cu1 ( p / 2 ) c1, t;
},

is correctly transpiled to gates used in the custom gate and subsequently to basic gate set used on IBM Q.

Overall, custom gate functionality is now available in QASM.