The QPath Blog
Functionalities and scalability of graphical
development of quantum circuits with QuantumPath®
Authors
QuantumPath® has just released version 2.0 of Q Assets Compositor®, which features a completely new version of its visual quantum circuit editor. This important new release marks a new milestone in the product roadmap for two reasons:
· It provides an original component, designed and developed entirely for QPath®, so it is 100% adapted to its architecture and capabilities, which guarantees that it will be able to grow harmoniously with it by incorporating, progressively, new dimensions of functionalities and, most importantly, it breaks the limit of scalability of quantum circuits in graphical designs.
· It naturally replaces the fork that we developed for the Quirk project, which was used to graphically prototype circuits limited in qubits (although we took it to support around 30 qubits, depending on the capacity of the user’s machine), which was so useful until now for QuantumPath®. This is a logical and necessary evolution to have a tool more oriented to industrial production, especially when there are already suppliers that have already broken the 400-qubit barrier and for next year are announced to overcome the 1000-qubit barrier. We open, therefore, a window to a new concept of circuit designer able to support with solvency, both the complexities of the dynamic management needs of the real world (variables, data, etc.), and the technological reality of the scaling rate expected for current and future QPUs.
Figure 1 QPath Asset Compositor for Quantum Gate Circuits version 2
As a product aimed at applying software engineering best practices to the development of quantum algorithms and solutions, QuantumPath® provides tools that simplify the adoption of quantum technology. From design to execution, professional quantum software engineers and developers must have the tools to efficiently do their jobs. And within the product framework, an efficient, practical, and scalable designer is critical to meet this goal and therefore must offer them added value to the engineering process.
The concept of scalability at all levels is clearly defined in the QuantumPath® DNA. From the scalable BPMS backend by design, to the intermediate language and its application in all CORE services, to the qSOA® API, to give just a few examples, everything is designed and developed with the necessary elements to support scaling, which in this case is associated with quantum technology defined by the number of qubits. The advances and forecasts of certain vendors in this regard, and quantum technology itself, determine this direction. Therefore the new editor -100% DHTML- emphasizes the use of rows/columns/cells in the purest spreadsheet style… and its limits will be determined by the quantum hardware available.
Figure 2. Rows and columns on demand. A new concept of circuit design.
The higher the qubit resolution, the higher the processing capacity… but, inevitably, the greater the complexity of the circuits and, therefore, the greater the need for tools to design them in an efficient and controllable way by the design and development team. We agree that the graphical design of quantum circuits, as we know it up to now, from “n” qubits onwards could cease to make practical sense… but, the truth is that – in absolute terms – it will not be quite like that. In our opinion, even if it is for a circuit of thousands of qubits, the graphical representation of it will not only be “pleasing to the eye” but, as we visualize it, it will also be useful for different tasks in the complex process of design, development, and testing of circuits with a very high number of qubits. This vision is contained in the architecture of Q Asset Compositor® 2.0.
Using as an example the design of a CPU, GPU, or a car -why not- as complex objects, composed of many parts, in the end they need tools to be conceived, analysed, tested, validated…. And finally scaled. And beyond a certain point, computer aided. How the engineering steps are performed is directly determined by the tools at our disposal. If an editor facilitates certain design processes, it will be useful and will robustly withstand the passage of time and the inevitable changes in demand that the environment will exert. And this is our bet in the general engineering process. QuantumPath® provides scalable tools, and editors could not be less. In this context, version 2 of the Q Assets Compositor® for quantum gate circuits offers a totally new designer, integrated with CORE, which has all these principles by design and, thanks to this, is designed to evolve and offer better functionalities to make the engineering process of scalable quantum circuits more viable, essential to offer greater protection to the industry’s investment in its developments.
QuantumPath®, with the qSOA® API, supports the creation of dynamically scaled circuits to many qubits, but what happens if we want to visualize their implementation? In this situation, with traditional tools, either we make the effort to read the code and mentally abstract the circuit, or we will not have the picture of the final product. With Q Asset Compositor® 2.0’s new quantum gate circuit editor, regardless of the number of qubits, the circuit can be visually displayed, manipulated and edited. And this is because in QuantumPath® everything is part of a 360 view: the quantum asset can be viewed from different points of view. Modelling will also be critical for the work of engineers and developers: sharing ideas with the team, generating documentation, formatting for review, etc.
The new quantum gate circuit editor version 2.0, instead of involving added drawing effort, focuses on a table where the steps (columns), qubits (rows) and cell as instantiation of quantum gates, as objects, with which the user can interact, are clearly defined. The instances of the gates thanks to the use of “drag and drop” from the “forge” or directly on the cell by assisted writing, allow to create the circuit in a very agile and efficient way. The same spirit of the Quirk fork that we developed has been maintained, so that there is no radical change of functionality, but it evolves taking advantage of the new functionalities of the tool.
Figure 3. Initializing qubits with a click, drag and drop, assisted writing, colour codes… simplify the construction of the circuit.
All this added to an internal architecture change that, as we said at the beginning, makes it a 100% integrated component of the system, which allows to take advantage of it in additional contexts. And all this, of course, with 100% compatibility with the QpVL (visual language) model.
Q Assets Compositor® 2.0 enhances the functionality of QuantumPath® visual design tools. Both the Q Assets Compositor® for annealing and this new version for quantum gate circuits accelerate the design and construction of scalable circuits, highlighting our commitment to the benefits of the visual design tool concept and enhancing the platform-agnostic capabilities of the platform.
The new quantum gate circuit designer in Q Assets Compositor® 2.0 makes it easy for developers to start making the leap from lab testing and exploring circuits with hundreds of gates, to developing real-world quantum circuits using the highest-qubit quantum computers available today (and more to come) and build up expertise in developing industry-ready quantum circuits with thousands of qubits.
With the release of Q Assets Compositor® 2.0, we are once again fulfilling our main goal of providing tools for professional industry-ready quantum software development, of facilitating workforce access to professional quantum software development, and thus contributing to the democratization of access to quantum computing following the principles of the Talavera Manifesto.
We are aware of the complexity involved in managing the design and development of quantum gate circuits dynamically scaled to hundreds and/or thousands of qubits. But, as providers of quantum software tools and services, we are also convinced that the reality around us, quantum hardware technology trends and real business needs require a different way of designing and developing quantum gate circuits. In the search for solutions to this complex problem our R&D has resulted in a new visual editor for quantum circuits that, as part of Q Assets Compositor® 2.0, advances our tools for the management and development of these complex processes. This release is only the starting point, as the product development roadmap is extensive and with a variety of solutions and functionalities that we consider crucial for the efficiency of professional development of quantum gate circuits for the real world today and tomorrow. In the coming days and months, we will be releasing new features planned in the product development roadmap. We will report on each of these releases.
