Advantages of a modular high-level quantum programming framework

TL;DR

This paper reviews the ProjectQ quantum programming framework, demonstrating how high-level language features, annotations, and modular compilation improve circuit efficiency and adaptability for different hardware architectures.

Contribution

It introduces a modular high-level quantum programming approach with code annotations and optimized compilation strategies, enhancing circuit efficiency and hardware compatibility.

Findings

Annotations reduce logical gate counts in Shor's algorithm

Intermediate gate set choices significantly affect circuit dimensions

Modular compilation improves mapping efficiency for various architectures

Abstract

We review some of the features of the ProjectQ software framework and quantify their impact on the resulting circuits. The concise high-level language facilitates implementing even complex algorithms in a very time-efficient manner while, at the same time, providing the compiler with additional information for optimization through code annotation - so-called meta-instructions. We investigate the impact of these annotations for the example of Shor's algorithm in terms of logical gate counts. Furthermore, we analyze the effect of different intermediate gate sets for optimization and how the dimensions of the resulting circuit depend on a smart choice thereof. Finally, we demonstrate the benefits of a modular compilation framework by implementing mapping procedures for one- and two-dimensional nearest neighbor architectures which we then compare in terms of overhead for different problem sizes.