Quantinuum simplifies quantum algorithm development with ‘compiler’
The QIR Alliance has released an interoperable specification for quantum programs, including a hardware profile for Quantinuum’s H-Series quantum computers.
This opens up the use of high level languages such as Q# in the same way that C is used with compilers for different types of classical hardware today.
Quantinuum, based in the UK and US, is a QIR steering member alongside partners including Nvidia, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Quantum Circuits and Rigetti Computing. Quantinuum supports multiple open-source eco-system tools including its own family of open-source software development kits and compilers, such as TKET for general purpose quantum computation and lambeq for quantum natural language processing.
Quantinuum worked with Microsoft Azure Quantum and KPMG on a project that involved Microsoft’s Q# quantum programming language and its Honeywell-based System Model H1 trapped-ion quantum computer.
The Q# language provides a high-level of abstraction enabling developers to blend classical and quantum operations, significantly simplifying the design of hybrid algorithms.
KPMG’s quantum team wanted to translate an existing algorithm into Q#, and to take advantage of Quantinuum’s H-series hardware, particularly qubit reuse, mid-circuit measurement and all-to-all connectivity.
Q# and QIR offered an abstraction from hardware specific instructions, allowing the KPMG team to access the H1-1 QPU with 20 fully connected qubits and take advantage of runtime support for measurement-conditioned program flow control, and classical calculations within runtime. This is the first time that code from a third party will be available for end users on Microsoft’s Azure portal.
The algorithm was compiled into quantum circuits from code written in a Q# environment with the QIR toolset, producing a circuit with approximately 500 gates, including 111 2-Qubit gates. These ran across three qubits with one reused three times with a fidelity of 0.92. This is possible because of the high gate fidelity and the low error which enables qubit reuse.
