Software demo: QGL

While quantum computers will need high-level, scalable programming languages in the upcoming decades, we need abstract, low-level programming languages now for the sophisticated experiments being performed with current quantum systems. Our quantum systems and associated experiments with tens of qubits have outstripped manual specification of the waveforms required to execute these sophisticated experiments. These experiments require sequences of 1000s of gates comprising 10s of waveforms with precise, synchronized execution across the qubits. Further, at the current time, qubit systems are a “sea of gates” over which many architectures are being designed and analyzed and every qubit needs a control signal at every clock cycle. In addition, we do not have the luxury of Von Neumann and other standard architecture concepts that greatly simplify the design of compilers, yet we desire the same abstract programming paradigms. With the QGL programming language, we are tackling this challenge. We are developing, and using, an abstract language with python-like programming constructs that we can compile to existing hardware and execute programs (experiments to physicists) on today’s qubit systems. Further, we can accommodate the “plug and play” of hardware components (e.g., AWGs and digitizers) with standard driver APIs.Non UBCUnreviewedAuthor affiliation: Raytheon BBN TechnologiesFacult