TANQ-Sim: Tensorcore Accelerated Noisy Quantum System Simulation via QIR on Perlmutter HPC

TL;DR

TANQ-Sim is a GPU-accelerated quantum circuit simulator that efficiently models noisy quantum systems using tensor cores, enabling large-scale, practical simulations for quantum algorithm validation and noise impact analysis.

Contribution

The paper introduces TANQ-Sim, a novel density matrix simulator leveraging double-precision tensor cores and optimized GPU communication for scalable noisy quantum system simulation.

Findings

Achieves high performance on NVIDIA GPUs with tensor cores.

Successfully simulates complex quantum protocols like teleportation and entanglement.

Demonstrates scalability on the Perlmutter supercomputer.

Abstract

Although there have been remarkable advances in quantum computing (QC), it remains crucial to simulate quantum programs using classical large-scale parallel computing systems to validate quantum algorithms, comprehend the impact of noise, and develop resilient quantum applications. This is particularly important for bridging the gap between near-term noisy-intermediate-scale-quantum (NISQ) computing and future fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). Nevertheless, current simulation methods either lack the capability to simulate noise, or simulate with excessive computational costs, or do not scale out effectively. In this paper, we propose TANQ-Sim, a full-scale density matrix based simulator designed to simulate practical deep circuits with both coherent and non-coherent noise. To address the significant computational cost associated with such simulations, we propose a new density-matrix simulation approach that enables TANQ-Sim to leverage the latest double-precision tensorcores (DPTCs) in NVIDIA Ampere and Hopper GPUs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of double-precision tensorcores for non-AI/ML workloads. To optimize performance, we also propose specific gate fusion techniques for density matrix simulation. For scaling, we rely on the advanced GPU-side communication library NVSHMEM and propose effective optimization methods for enhancing communication efficiency. Evaluations on the NERSC Perlmutter supercomputer demonstrate the functionality, performance, and scalability of the simulator. We also present three case studies to showcase the practical usage of TANQ-Sim, including teleportation, entanglement distillation, and Ising simulation. TANQ-Sim will be released on GitHub.