The Intel Quantum Simulator, also known as qHiPSTER (The Quantum High Performance Software Testing Environment), is a simulator of quantum circuits coded to take maximum advantage of multi-core and multi-nodes architectures. It is based on a complete representation of the qubit register state in terms of a distributed vector, while operations and gates are never explicitely represented in terms of matrices. qHiPSTER uses MPI (message-passing-interface) protocols to store and manipulate the quantum state for both intra- and inter-node operations.
Intel Quantum Simulator builds as a static library. After cloning the repository, compile it via:
git clone https://github.com/intel/Intel-QS.git
cd Intel-QS
make all
The default building process requires Intel Math Kernel Library and the MPI-ICPC compiler. These choices can be personalized by editing (for example with VIM) the file:
vim make.inc
In the same file, it is also possible to include or exclude the MPI implementation by setting
(or removing) the compiler flag -DINTELQS_HAS_MPI
.
Documentation is automatically generated by running:
make docs-clean
make docs-doxy
The simplest way of familiarize with qHiPSTER is by exploring the examples provided in the tests/
folder.
In particular, the code tests/getting\_started\_example.cpp
provides step-by-step description of the main commands:
define a qubit register object, perform quantum gates, measure one or multiple qubits.
Thanks for your interest in the project! We welcome pull requests from developers of all skill levels.
If you find a bug or want to propose a new feature, open an issue. If you have written some code that should be merged, open a pull request describing your changes and why it should be merged. If you have a question or want to discuss something, feel free to send an email to Justin Hogaboam or to Gian Giacomo Guerreschi.
When using the Intel Quantum Simulator for research projects, please cite:
Mikhail Smelyanskiy, Nicolas P. D. Sawaya, Alán Aspuru-Guzik
*qHiPSTER: The Quantum High Performance Software Testing Environment*
[arXiv:1601.07195](https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07195)__(2016).