Simulating Quantum Systems with NWQ-Sim on HPC

TL;DR

NWQ-Sim is a versatile quantum simulation environment optimized for HPC systems, capable of simulating quantum circuits, modeling device noise, and supporting variational algorithms with competitive performance.

Contribution

This work introduces NWQ-Sim, a novel HPC-compatible quantum simulator that efficiently handles noise modeling and dynamic circuit generation for variational algorithms.

Findings

NWQ-Sim performs comparably or better than existing simulators.

It effectively models quantum device noise.

Supports variational quantum algorithms like VQE.

Abstract

NWQ-Sim is a cutting-edge quantum system simulation environment designed to run on classical multi-node, multi-CPU/GPU heterogeneous HPC systems. In this work, we provide a brief overview of NWQ-Sim and its implementation in simulating quantum circuit applications, such as the transverse field Ising model. We also demonstrate how NWQ-Sim can be used to examine the effects of errors that occur on real quantum devices, using a combined device noise model. Moreover, NWQ-Sim is particularly well-suited for implementing variational quantum algorithms where circuits are dynamically generated. Therefore, we also illustrate this with the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) for the Ising model. In both cases, NWQ-Sim's performance is comparable to or better than alternative simulators. We conclude that NWQ-Sim is a useful and flexible tool for simulating quantum circuits and algorithms, with performance advantages and noise-aware simulation capabilities.