intellabs/intel_quantum_sdk repository overview

⁠Intel® Quantum SDK

⁠Introduction

This docker image is for Intel® Quantum SDK.
Details: Intel® Quantum Computing⁠. Get help: Intel® Quantum SDK - Intel Community⁠.

⁠How To Cite

If you want to incorporate results from the Intel® Quantum SDK in your work, please cite:

Khalate, P., Wu, X.-C., Premaratne, S., Hogaboam, J., Holmes, A., Schmitz, A., Guerreschi, G. G., Zou, X. & Matsuura, A. Y., arXiv:2202.11142 (2022)⁠.

⁠Overview

Intel® Quantum SDK (Software Development Kit) is a software package which allows users to interface with the Intel quantum computing stack. This includes:

1. An intuitive user interface based on the C++ programming language.

2. A sequence of optimizations and decompositions based on the LLVM compiler framework and specifically targeted at the Intel(R) Quantum Computing Stack.

3. A full compilation flow that produces an executable using the user's choice of backends compatible with Intel quantum hardware.

Authoring a quantum-accelerated application in the Intel® Quantum SDK closely follows the programming paradigm of other hardware accelerator development environments. Quantum programs are written in a C++ imperative programming environment that has been extended to allow the user to express quantum circuits at the level of primitive quantum logical operations. Depending on whether the user is targeting a simulation environment or qubit hardware, our quantum runtime library will direct the quantum workloads to the appropriate backend during runtime execution. There are currently two backends available to be built into the binary, the Intel® Quantum Simulator (IQS) and the Quantum Dot (QD) simulator. IQS provides a full-state-vector qubit simulation with a complete description of the quantum state of the qubits defined. The Quantum Dot simulator couples an equivalent state-vector simulation to a simulation of the physical quantum operations thereby offering a more realistic but computationally intense result.

⁠Fundamentals

To find out more about the core concepts of quantum computing, such as qubit mathematics and logic or quantum circuit representation, we recommend using an introductory textbook like "Quantum Computation and Quantum Information" by Nielsen and Chuang or "Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists" by Yanofsky and Mannucci.

To brush up on C++, we recommend the latest edition of "Tour of C++" by Bjarne Stroustrup. In our code, we strive to adhere to the LLVM style standard⁠ to simplify working with our APIs.

⁠Container Quick Start

The Intel® Quantum SDK container is designed to be operated in a terminal, like using SSH to login to a remote system. Typically, users run a container image with the Docker engine. When starting your container image from a terminal on your system the following command will optionally retrieve then start a container image interactively to provide a shell in your Intel® Quantum SDK container instance.

~/$ docker run --name myIQSDK -it intellabs/intel_quantum_sdk /bin/bash

Alternatively, you can use a graphical application like Docker Desktop to handle container management and expose an interactive command line interface. For Docker Desktop help please see the documentation on integrated terminal use⁠.

Note: A full discussion on container use is outside the scope of this document, please explore the documentation of your preferred container engine for useful tips and techniques.

⁠The Command Line

Your session will start in the container's empty /home directory with the shell environment already set to use the Intel® Quantum SDK. A nice first step is to list the installed components of the Intel® Quantum SDK:

/home# ls ${IQSDK_ROOT}

First, note that ${IQSDK_ROOT} is an environment variable that points to the current installation folder of the Intel® Quantum SDK. Please take a moment to explore the contents, in particular note the quantum-examples folder. From there you can copy one of the example source files to your working directory (/home), compile it using the Intel® Quantum Compiler and execute the quantum algorithm by issuing the following commands:

/home# cp ${IQSDK_ROOT}/quantum-examples/teleport.cpp .
/home# intel-quantum-compiler teleport.cpp
/home# ./teleport

Editing your C++ source files in the container can be facilitated by using the VS Code development environment attached to your container, please see the Dev Containers section on terminal use⁠

Note: The Intel® Quantum SDK container image does not come with an editor installed. To edit the source code of teleport.cpp while inside the container; you can install an editor like nano, emacs or vim (for simple viewing, use the built-in 'more' pager):

/home# more teleport.cpp
...

or

/home# apt update && apt install nano
...
/home# nano teleport.cpp
...

⁠Accessing Your Files

You may notice that all your work stays inside the container and can be easily lost, depending on the way that your container has been started. To maintain access to your files you can copy a file from the container⁠ one at a time or you may find it more convenient to bind a host system folder⁠ to a container folder. From inside the container create a folder called 'my_share' then exit the container and create a corresponding folder on your system:

/home# mkdir my_shared
/home# exit
~/$ mkdir my_iqsdk_data

Now add the following option to your container run command:

~/$ docker run --name myIQSDK -it -v ./my_iqsdk_data:/home/my_shared intellabs/intel_quantum_sdk /bin/bash

Now that you can persist your work you may find it convenient to copy the PDF reference documents from the installed path of your container to your shared folder for easy viewing on your system.

/home# cp ${IQSDK_ROOT}/*.pdf my_shared/

This concludes the quick start: Enjoy exploring the realm of quantum computing with the Intel® Quantum SDK.

⁠Computing Eco-system

⁠Hardware

The state vector simulation requires an amount of memory increasing with the number of qubits, approximately 1.5x the size of the state vector. As a complex double value requires 16 bytes, the single-node memory required is

$16 bytes * 1.5 * 2^{num_qubits}$

Keep in mind that the data structures of the C++ logic also have their own memory requirements in addition to the simulation requirements above.

⁠Contribute

You can contribute to the development of the Intel® Quantum Compiler frontend by sharing your ideas and innovations at our open sourced https://github.com/intel/quantum-intrinsics⁠ repository. We have created another open-source project dedicated to exposing the intermediate representation for novel features and optimization opportunities at the https://github.com/intel/quantum-passes⁠ repository. We look forward to your participation.

⁠Support and Bug Reports

You can get technical support and report any bugs encountered by visiting Intel Communities at the following url: https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Quantum-SDK/bd-p/intel-quantum-sdk⁠, we also host a Discord channel for real time chats about quantum computing at https://discord.gg/b8bJAbr34z⁠ These are great places to ask questions and share ideas.

⁠License

This docker image installs third party components licensed under various open source licenses. The terms under which those components may be used and distributed can be found with the license document that is provided with those components. Please familiarize yourself with those terms to ensure your distribution of those components complies with the terms of those licenses.

Image Tag intellabs/intel_quantum_sdk:v1.1-source provides sources for GPL/LGPL/MPL components.

As for any pre-built image usage, it is the image user's responsibility to ensure that any use of this image complies with any relevant licenses and potential fees for all software contained within. We will have no indemnity or warranty coverage from suppliers.

Intel® Quantum SDK BINARY SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT

IMPORTANT NOTICE -- PLEASE READ AND AGREE BEFORE DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, COPYING OR USING THE SOFTWARE

This agreement (the "Agreement") is between you, or the company or other legal entity ("Legal Entity") that you represent and warrant you have the legal authority to bind, (each, "You" or "Your") and Intel Corporation and its subsidiaries (collectively, "Intel") regarding Your use of the Software. By downloading, installing, copying or otherwise using the Software, You agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. If You do not agree to the terms of this Agreement, or do not have legal authority or required age to agree to them, do not download, install, copy or otherwise use the Software.

1. DEFINITIONS. "Derivative Work" means a derivative work of the Software as defined in 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq. "Evaluation Term" means the period from when the Software is provided to You by Intel (the "Effective Date") and the date that the Agreement is terminated pursuant to Section 10. "Software" means the Intel® Quantum SDK software in binary form, and any updates or releases thereto provided to You by Intel under this Agreement. The Intel® Quantum SDK may not be fully functional or tested and may contain bugs or errors, which Intel may substantially modify in its development. Software does not include Third Party Programs. "Reciprocal Open Source Software" means any software that is subject to a license which requires that (a) it must be distributed in source code form; (b) it must be licensed under the same open source license terms; and (c) its Derivative Works must be licensed under the same open source license terms. Examples of this type of license are the GNU General Public License or the Mozilla Public License. "Third Party Programs" mean the third party software (if any) listed in the "third-party-programs.txt" or other similarly-named text file that may be included in the Software.

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