Intel: Driving software development for the quantum era

Intel Labs launches beta version of Intel Quantum Software Development Kit

Quantum computing has the potential to significantly speed up the solution of complex problems and may also enable major breakthroughs in materials, chemicals and drug design, financial and climate modeling, and cryptography. While progress in qubits is an important step towards practical applications of quantum computing, significant progress will be needed across the entire hardware and software stack to fully realize the potential of this technology.

Intel takes a full system architecture approach that involves the entire computing stack, from qubit architecture and algorithm research to control electronics, interconnects, quantum software toolchains and compilers, all the way to the application layer. (Image source: Intel Corporation)

To advance this process, Intel Research has developed a full-stack software development kit called the Intel® Quantum Software Development Kit (Intel® Quantum SDK) that connects to Intel's quantum computing stack. The toolkit allows developers to write new quantum algorithms so that qubits can be run on simulated and real quantum hardware in the future. Currently, beta users are using it to explore chemical, material and fluid dynamics simulations, as well as algorithms for solving linear equations, which can be used in real-world scenarios such as financial modeling.

The Intel Quantum Software Development Kit has an intuitive user interface, provides a C++ compiler toolchain based on LLVM, a quantum operating environment optimized specifically for hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, and a high-performance Intel® Quantum Simulator (IQS) as a qubit target backend. Future versions of the toolkit will use different qubit target backends, including a quantum dot qubit simulator, and will eventually provide a backend with Intel quantum dot qubit devices as the target code.

The Intel Quantum Software Development Kit (SDK) has an intuitive user interface, provides a C++ language compiler toolchain based on LLVM, optimizes the quantum operating environment specifically for hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, and uses the high-performance Intel quantum simulator as the target code with quantum bits as the backend. In the future, this software development kit will be connected to Intel quantum bit hardware. (Image source: Intel Corporation)

In addition, Intel is also committed to building a quantum ecosystem. By using the industry-standard LLVM compiler, Intel is lowering the threshold for quantum developers because the LLVM compiler has a more user-friendly interface and is familiar to traditional computing developers. Users of the Intel Quantum Software Development Kit beta include the University of Applied Sciences Deggendorf and Leidos in Munich, Germany. The University of Applied Sciences Deggendorf is using the Intel Quantum Software Development Kit to study fluid dynamics problems that are important for aerodynamics and fluid mechanics, and Leidos is exploring application areas including computational chemistry and material modeling, as well as privacy protection and security of distributed computing.

A dilution refrigerator in the QuTech quantum computing lab. QuTech at TU Delft is Intel's quantum computing research partner in the Netherlands. (Image credit: Intel)

Intel is also supporting curriculum development and promoting the construction of a developer ecosystem to explore the application of quantum computing in programming. Universities will develop and share quantum course content to expand the use of Intel's quantum software development kit. Universities supported by Intel this year include Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Pennsylvania, Deggendorf University of Applied Sciences, and Keio University.

The launch of the Intel Quantum Software Development Kit is Intel's initial effort to advance full-stack quantum development. As part of the testing process, Intel will collect user feedback and adjust the 1.0 version planned to be launched early next year. The test version of the Intel Quantum Software Development Kit is now available on the Intel Developer Cloud platform (Intel Dev Cloud).