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XACC: A System-level Software Infrastructure for Heterogeneous Quantum-Classical Computing

XACC: A System-level Software Infrastructure for Heterogeneous Quantum-Classical Computing

Achievement

Comprehensive paper on XACC architecture published in Quantum Science and Technology Focus on Quantum Software

Significance and Impact

This work provides a comprehensive look at XACC to date, and describes in detail how to use it for low-level quantum-classical computing

Research Details

  • Detailed description of architecture, features, design

Publication

XACC: a system-level software infrastructure for heterogeneous quantum–classical computing, Alexander J McCaskey, Dmitry I Lyakh, Eugene F Dumitrescu, Sarah S Powers and Travis S Humble, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-9565/ab6bf6

Overview

Quantum programming techniques and software have advanced significantly over the past five years, with a majority focusing on high-level language frameworks targeting remote REST library APIs. As quantum computing architectures advance and become more widely available, lower-level, system software infrastructures will be needed to enable tighter, co-processor programming and access models. Here we present XACC, a system-level software infrastructure for quantum–classical computing that promotes a service-oriented architecture to expose interfaces for core quantum programming, compilation, and execution tasks. We detail XACC's interfaces, their interactions, and its implementation as a hardware-agnostic framework for both near-term and future quantum–classical architectures. We provide concrete examples demonstrating the utility of this framework with paradigmatic tasks. Our approach lays the foundation for the development of compilers, associated runtimes, and low-level system tools tightly integrating quantum and classical workflows.

Last Updated: February 19, 2021 - 2:57 pm