Quantum computing (QC) is an emerging computing paradigm with potential to revolutionize the field of computing. QC is a field that is quickly developing globally and has high barriers of entry. In this paper we explore both successful contributors to the field as well as wider QC community with the goal of understanding the backgrounds and training that helped them succeed. We gather data on 148 contributors to open-source quantum computing projects hosted on GitHub and survey 46 members of QC community. Our findings show that QC practitioners and enthusiasts have diverse backgrounds, with most of them having a PhD and trained in physics or computer science. We observe a lack of educational resources on quantum computing. Our goal for these findings is to start a conversation about how best to prepare the next generation of QC researchers and practitioners.
Quantum computing is still a very young field, with software projects constantly pushing the boundary of human knowledge. As such, quantum computing software projects have to deal with all the problems that plague scientific software projects: unforeseen changes in the requirements, lack of software development expertise and limited budgets @cite_23 . The cross-disciplinary nature of quantum computing adds to the complexity of the domain.
@cite_23
2903998642 2755920271 1490521149 2748080430
Computational quantum technologies are entering a new phase in which noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers are available, but are still too small to benefit from active error correction. Even with a finite coherence budget to invest in quantum information processing, noisy devices with about 50 qubits are expected to experimentally demonstrate quantum supremacy in the next few years. Defined in terms of artificial tasks, current proposals for quantum supremacy, even if successful, will not help to provide solutions to practical problems. Instead, we believe that future users of quantum computers are interested in actual applications and that noisy quantum devices may still provide value by approximately solving hard combinatorial problems via hybrid classical-quantum algorithms. To lower bound the size of quantum computers with practical utility, we perform realistic simulations of the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm and conclude that quantum speedup will not be attainable, at least for a representative combinatorial problem, until several hundreds of qubits are available. To enable a quantum computer to solve practical problems more efficiently than classical computers, quantum programming languages and compilers are required to translate quantum algorithms into machine code; here the currently available software is reviewed. Algorithms such as quantum factoring1 and quantum search2 illustrate the great theoretical promise of quantum computers; but the practical implementation of such devices will require careful consideration of the minimum resource requirements, together with the development of procedures to overcome inevitable residual imperfections in physical systems3,4,5. Many designs have been proposed, but none allow a large quantum computer to be built in the near future6. Moreover, the known protocols for constructing reliable quantum computers from unreliable components can be complicated, often requiring many operations to produce a desired transformation3,4,5,7,8. Here we show how a single technique—a generalization of quantum teleportation9—reduces resource requirements for quantum computers and unifies known protocols for fault-tolerant quantum computation. We show that single quantum bit (qubit) operations, Bell-basis measurements and certain entangled quantum states such as Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states10—all of which are within the reach of current technology—are sufficient to construct a universal quantum computer. We also present systematic constructions for an infinite class of reliable quantum gates that make the design of fault-tolerant quantum computers much more straightforward and methodical. Quantum computers promise to solve certain problems that are intractable for classical computers, such as factoring large numbers and simulating quantum systems. To date, research in quantum computer engineering has focused primarily at opposite ends of the required system stack: devising high-level programming languages and compilers to describe and optimize quantum algorithms, and building reliable low-level quantum hardware. Relatively little attention has been given to using the compiler output to fully control the operations on experimental quantum processors. Bridging this gap, we propose and build a prototype of a flexible control microarchitecture supporting quantum-classical mixed code for a superconducting quantum processor. The microarchitecture is based on three core elements: (i) a codeword-based event control scheme, (ii) queue-based precise event timing control, and (iii) a flexible multilevel instruction decoding mechanism for control. We design a set of quantum microinstructions that allows flexible control of quantum operations with precise timing. We demonstrate the microarchitecture and microinstruction set by performing a standard gate-characterization experiment on a transmon qubit. CCS CONCEPTS. • General and reference → General conference proceedings; • Computer systems organization → Quantum computing; • Hardware → Quantum technologies;