On the Co-Design of Quantum Software and Hardware

A quantum computing system naturally consists of two components, the software system and the hardware system. Quantum applications are programmed using the quantum software and then executed on the quantum hardware. However, the performance of existing quantum computing system is still limited. Solving a practical problem that is beyond the capability of classical computers on a quantum computer has not yet been demonstrated. In this review, we point out that the quantum software and hardware systems should be designed collaboratively to fully exploit the potential of quantum computing. We first review three related works, including one hardware-aware quantum compiler optimization, one application-aware quantum hardware architecture design flow, and one co-design approach for the emerging quantum computational chemistry. Then we discuss some potential future directions following the co-design principle.

量子计算系统自然由两个部分组成，即软件系统和硬件系统。量子应用通过量子软件进行编程，然后在量子硬件上执行。然而，现有的量子计算系统的性能仍然有限。在量子计算机上解决一个经典计算机无法解决的实际问题尚未得到证实。在这篇综述中，我们指出量子软件和硬件系统应该协同设计，以充分挖掘量子计算的潜力。我们首先回顾了三项相关工作，包括一种硬件感知的量子编译器优化、一种应用感知的量子硬件架构设计流程，以及一种针对新兴的量子计算化学的协同设计方法。然后我们按照协同设计原则讨论了一些潜在的未来方向。