Free Nonsense

was it you that ordered a quantum computer?

by Luís Soares Barbosa*

Unquestionably, quantum computing reached the news in full force. The multiplication of initiatives, the announcement of mega-support programmes like Quantum Technologies Flagship from the European Union and especially, the competitive involvement of the top players (i.e. IBM, Intel, Google, Microsoft), with the announcement of processors that already surpass 50 qubits, suggest a real change in which we can’t exactly predict the rhythm and the consequences of it.

For the first time, the viability of this kind of computing in which the quantum effects, most often not being user-friendly, are considered as computational resources, can be demonstrated in a set of very complex problems, even if not classically unmanageable. For the first time, its potential starts to be discussed in a variety of application areas across different industries.  In some sense, Feynman’s dream, in which computing unfolds itself over the quantum behaviour of the matter, definitely seems to be closer, even if a universal quantum computer’s project still has a long way to go. In the more emphatic language of the media, a “second quantum revolution” is in order.

This way, we need to understand the potential impact in terms of the computing technologies, the communications, the sensors, the materials, the cryptographic protocols. And we need a wide social debate as well, in order to explore and assess such impact on science, on industries and on society in general. We are facing a real change in paradigm that even though we don’t know much about, we can already identify several trends in its edges. 

First and foremost, its impact on basic science, namely on the simulation of complex systems. Some of these applications, like the identification of the properties of molecular groups, for example, are out of reach for the current supercomputers. Quantum processors could prove to be important whether in molecular synthesis, a critic for the pharmaceutical industry for example, or in the identification of certain behaviours in mega-sets of molecules. Secondly, in the performance acceleration of research and optimisation routines that form the core of a large number of computational problems. Maybe these machines represent the possibility to finally make a complete use of the astounding volume of data that societies generate every minute. And finally, of course, in the information security domain. It is important to remember that in 1994, Shor’s algorithm for prime factorisation deeply shook the foundations of the classic cryptography.

In that movement, the role of the software and its engineering can’t be underestimated. Classically, software is a critical factor, maybe even the weakest link, on the reliability of the information systems. And this situation will prove to be even more obvious when dealing with machines that are not only difficult to programme but that also require some imagination: a fundamental limitation on the physics makes the status of a quantum registry to simply be unclonable. The usual allocation “x takes the value of (a transformation of) x” generally doesn’t make any sense here.

We need trustworthy and scalable approaches for the development of software on quantum machines that do not compromise the performance of the new hardware. We strictly need an engineering of the quantum software that brings notions of compositionality and coordination of components, mathematical modelling and verification, assessment and correction of programs. Finally, we need to put it to the test in the approach to new algorithms and old problems.

INESC TEC took part of this race by integrating the QuantaLab partnership in 2018, along with INL, the University of Minho and CEiiA, which is responsible for the first effective access, via cloud, to quantum computational resources in Portugal. They did it with their own assets in the engineering and mathematical computation fields. Step by step, they were involved in training projects, sought companies, saw two of their youngest researchers, collaborators of HASLab doing their Master’s theses, to be distinguished with Gulbenkian grants from the New Talents in Quantum Computing programme.

For INESC TEC, this is a long road that barely even started. But this is also a bet that makes every sense. Not in a sense of what has already been done but more exactly, and paraphrasing Eduardo Prado Coelho, in the sense of actually doing it.

* Collaborator of the High Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab)