Benchmarking Quantum Computer Simulation Software Packages: State Vector Simulators

TL;DR

This paper systematically benchmarks various quantum computer simulation software packages on HPC platforms, evaluating their performance and scalability for different quantum tasks to guide users in selecting appropriate tools.

Contribution

It introduces a containerized benchmarking framework for quantum simulators and provides a comparative analysis of their HPC performance and scalability.

Findings

Identifies performance differences among simulation packages

Provides insights into system size-scaling for quantum simulations

Establishes a foundation for community benchmarking efforts

Abstract

Rapid advances in quantum computing technology lead to an increasing need for software simulators that enable both algorithm design and the validation of results obtained from quantum hardware. This includes calculations that aim at probing regimes of quantum advantage, where a quantum computer outperforms a classical computer in the same task. High performance computing (HPC) platforms play a crucial role as today's quantum devices already reach beyond the limits of what powerful workstations can model, but a systematic evaluation of the individual performance of the many offered simulation packages is lacking so far. In this Technical Review, we benchmark several software packages capable of simulating quantum dynamics with a special focus on HPC capabilities. We develop a containerized toolchain for benchmarking a large set of simulation packages on a local HPC cluster using different parallelisation capabilities, and compare the performance and system size-scaling for three paradigmatic quantum computing tasks. Our results can help finding the right package for a given simulation task and lay the foundation for a systematic community effort to benchmark and validate upcoming versions of existing and also newly developed simulation packages.