论文标题

peel $ \中$堆?量子软件的跨框架可移植性

Peel $\mid$ Pile? Cross-Framework Portability of Quantum Software

论文作者

Schönberger, Manuel, Franz, Maja, Scherzinger, Stefanie, Mauerer, Wolfgang

论文摘要

近年来,各种供应商都制造了量子软件框架。然而,借助特定于供应商的框架,代码可移植性似乎有风险,尤其是在硬件和软件库尚未达到合并状态的领域,甚至技术的基础方面仍然处于不变状态。因此,通常建议开发与供应商无关的量子编程语言和框架。这遵循既定的建筑模式,将其他水平的抽象级别引入软件堆栈中,从而堆积在抽象层上。然而,软件体系结构也提供了似乎不那么抽象的替代方法,即专注于剥离不必要层的问题的特定于硬件的公式。在本文中,我们对这些战略替代方案进行了定量和实验性探索,并从软件实施的角度比较了流行的量子框架。我们发现,对于几个特定但可普遍的问题,要解决的问题的数学表述不仅足够抽象,而且还可以作为精确的描述,而且同样具有具体的具体,可以允许在很少努力的情况下得出特定于框架的实现。此外,我们认为,基于分析数十个现有量子代码,在框架之间的移植实际上是低效率的,因为量子和特定于框架的部分在大小方面非常易于管理,通常按照数百行代码的顺序。鉴于量子编程实践中当前的最新作品,这使我们争辩说剥夺了不必要的抽象水平。

In recent years, various vendors have made quantum software frameworks available. Yet with vendor-specific frameworks, code portability seems at risk, especially in a field where hardware and software libraries have not yet reached a consolidated state, and even foundational aspects of the technologies are still in flux. Accordingly, the development of vendor-independent quantum programming languages and frameworks is often suggested. This follows the established architectural pattern of introducing additional levels of abstraction into software stacks, thereby piling on layers of abstraction. Yet software architecture also provides seemingly less abstract alternatives, namely to focus on hardware-specific formulations of problems that peel off unnecessary layers. In this article, we quantitatively and experimentally explore these strategic alternatives, and compare popular quantum frameworks from the software implementation perspective. We find that for several specific, yet generalisable problems, the mathematical formulation of the problem to be solved is not just sufficiently abstract and serves as precise description, but is likewise concrete enough to allow for deriving framework-specific implementations with little effort. Additionally, we argue, based on analysing dozens of existing quantum codes, that porting between frameworks is actually low-effort, since the quantum- and framework-specific portions are very manageable in terms of size, commonly in the order of mere hundreds of lines of code. Given the current state-of-the-art in quantum programming practice, this leads us to argue in favour of peeling off unnecessary abstraction levels.

扫码加入交流群

加入微信交流群

微信交流群二维码

扫码加入学术交流群,获取更多资源