---
title: "Is the OPX+ a Digitizer + AWG combo?"
date: "2021-02-24T16:46:12+00:00"
modified: "2023-06-21T17:36:47+00:00"
url: "https://www.quantum-machines.co/faq/is-the-opx-a-digitizer-awg-combo/"
description: "Not at all! The QOP calculates the waveform on the fly, only the minimum necessary part of it is kept in the memory but most of it is calculated on the fly by the pulse processor."
---

# Is the OPX+ a Digitizer + AWG combo?

Not at all! The QOP calculates the waveform on the fly, only the minimum necessary part of it is kept in the memory but most of it is [calculated on the fly by the pulse processor](https://www.quantum-machines.co/technology/pulse-processing-unit/). This greatly reduces memory needs. Memory is used exclusively for the definition of the baseband.

[The Quantum Orchestration Platform](https://www.quantum-machines.co/products/quantum-control-systems/) is not an Arbitrary Waveform Generator+digitizers combo, but a whole new paradigm for the control of quantum processors. [The OPX+ is a custom pulse processor](https://www.quantum-machines.co/products/opx/) with a real-time programming language that allows describing those pulses. There is nothing arbitrary about quantum protocols. If you think of a Ramsey measurement or a power-rabi, for example, it would take you no more than 2-5 sentences to describe them to a physicist. Therefore, you require a processor that can run quantum sequences (from the simple [Ramsey to Quantum Error Correction](https://www.quantum-machines.co/solutions/superconducting-qubits/)), and not an arbitrary-waveform-generator.

The Quantum Orchestration Platform allows you to formulate even the most complex quantum experiments in a natural and compact manner, proportional to the amount of information in the sequence, not the number of points in the total played waveforms. QM’s quantum control hardware was tailor-made to be able to run such complex protocols.