Eur. Phys. J. D 25, 181-200 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00242-2

Toward an architecture for quantum programming

¹ Laboratoire de Physique Quantique, Université Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Cedex Toulouse, France
² National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8423, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8423, USA
³ ECT*, European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas, Villa Tambosi, Strada delle Tabarelle 286, 38050 Villazzano, Italy
⁴ Istituto Trentino di Cultura, Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (ITC-IRST), Via Sommarive 18 - Loc. Pantè, 38050 Povo, Italy

Corresponding authors: ^a bettelli@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr - ^b Tommaso.Calarco@nist.gov - ^c serafini@itc.it

Received: 25 June 2002
Published online: 30 July 2003

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly clear that, if a useful device for quantum computation will ever be built, it will be embodied by a classical computing machine with control over a truly quantum subsystem, this apparatus performing a mixture of classical and quantum computation. This paper investigates a possible approach to the problem of programming such machines: a template high level quantum language is presented which complements a generic general purpose classical language with a set of quantum primitives. The underlying scheme involves a run-time environment which calculates the byte-code for the quantum operations and pipes it to a quantum device controller or to a simulator. This language can compactly express existing quantum algorithms and reduce them to sequences of elementary operations; it also easily lends itself to automatic, hardware independent, circuit simplification. A publicly available preliminary implementation of the proposed ideas has been realised using the C++ language.