2^nd Quantum Software Engineering and Technology Workshop

Program

Tuesday, October 19, 2021 (Mountain Time (MDT) — UTC-6)

Presentation Guidelines

Session 1. 10:45 - 12:15

• 10:45-11:00
  Opening

  Workshop presentation by the organizers

  Ricardo Pérez del Castillo, Mario Piattini, Manuel A. Serrano

  Welcome and brief outlook to the Talavera Manifesto on Quantum Software Engineering & Programming, its main commitments and call for action

• 11:00-11:45
  Keynote: "Quantum Service Oriented Computing. Current Landscape and Challenges"

  Juan Manuel Murillo

  Professor of Advanced Software Engineering Techniques at the University of Extremadura.

  abstract ▼ Abstract. The last two decades have meant a radical change in the way information systems are built and consumed. Indeed, the development of the Internet and the cloud computing paradigm has allowed developers to create information systems at different service levels: infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) and software (SaaS). Service Oriented Computing (SOC) has enabled the construction of systems based on the composition of services deployed at different levels.
  
  The rise of quantum computing now poses a new challenge for cloud computing and SOC. Future information systems will be hybrids made up of computing elements running both classical and quantum programs that interact with each other. Thanks to the progress of the last two decades, we know that a viable way to integrate such systems is to encapsulate the different computing elements as services. However, while it is now natural to build complex classical information systems by composing services, the procedures for deploying and integrating quantum services are not yet defined. The reasons for the different treatment of quantum and classical services have multiple causes. On the one hand, different vendors offer their cloud-deployed architectures as IaaS in which quantum programs can be deployed and executed. However, the differences between the architectures and platforms of the different vendors prevent the construction of quantum programs that could be deployed later on a different vendor infrastructure. On the other hand, deploying a quantum program on a current quantum computer as a service is not possible. First, the operating system of quantum computers does not yet support the possibility of having multiple active programs at the same time, so it makes it impossible to replicate the common situation in classical SOC of having several services provided by the same server. This fact supposes a huge limitation for using quantum infrastructures and platforms. In addition, a quantum service would require encapsulated code to be deployed and actively waiting for interactions. We are still far from considering this kind of behavior in quantum computing entities. Thus, having quantum services deployable in different providers and that can be consumed by different users still seems a remote possibility. Finally, the inherent characteristics of quantum computing such as entanglement, superposition or collapse are not addressed by either Cloud Computing or classical SOC. New mechanisms will be needed to handle these features, for example to entangle qbits in a service, in its different instances, in its different executions, or simply to make service orchestration possible without quantum services collapsing.
  
  This keynote provides an overview of the current state of development of Quantum Service Oriented Computing, the difficulties it faces in achieving hybrid classical-quantum information systems, and the efforts being made to overcome these challenges.



• 11:45-12:15
  An Exploratory Study on the Challenges of Engineering Quantum Applications in the Cloud

  Daniel Vietz, Johanna Barzen, Frank Leymann, Benjamin Weder and Vladimir Yussupov

  abstract ▼

  The rapid evolution of quantum computation in the cloud creates considerable opportunities for multiple real-world application scenarios, including chemical simulation, optimization, and machine learning. Typical quantum applications are hybrid as they rely on both classical software parts and quantum algorithms that must be executed on quantum devices, which are often off ered as cloud service off erings. Thus, to implement quantum applications, developers need to have expertise in integration of quantum and classical parts of the application, as well as understanding the relevant cloud-specifi c challenges and limitations. In this work, we analyze which challenges could be encountered when designing and implementing hybrid quantum applications in the cloud and identify which limitations of current quantum cloud services make such integration complex. To achieve this, we (i) implemented four quantum applications highlighting diff erent scenarios of using quantum software components in cloud applications and (ii) analyzed the challenges and limitations encountered during the implementation process and documented the key observations. In addition, we discuss open research questions and ways to address them, which can help to improve the process of developing quantum applications in the cloud.

12:15 - 13:00 Break & Exhibits

Session 2. 13:00 - 14:30

• 13:00-13:20
  QuantumPath´s Annealer Compositor

  Jose Luis Hevia, Guido Peterssen, Ezequiel Murina, Aurelio Martínez and Mario Piattini

  abstract ▼

  Among the various challenges that quantum computing faces to become a widespread reality are, on the one hand, the need to research and apply the existing software engineering processes; and on the other hand, the shortage of specialized workforce. QPath® is a tool that solves these two challenges, in addition to presenting other advantages for the development of hybrid information systems. In this paper we present the Annealer Compositor that facilitates the definition and execution of annealing algorithms in either quantum annealing or digital annealing computers.



• 13:20-13:40
  Cybersecurity for Quantum Computing

  Natalie Kilber

  abstract ▼

  Cybersecurity is preparing for what is next, yet it is often an afterthought. With the regularity of security breaches and the rising cyberattack frequency and range impacting academia and especially, an array of industries, Quantum Computing groups, companies and institutions may become targets for nation-state actors, APTs or cybercriminals for ransomware and data theft as the Quantum computing race intensifies. It is an imperative to build in security during the design phase and therefore shift security left to ensure Quantum Computing ecosystems, services, as well as promising technologies are reliable and secure to use. This session will bring you up-to-speed on the field of cybersecurity, including types of cyberattacks and it’s growing global importance in a digital world bridging from research to industry. This workshop raises questions on how to secure the future of Quantum Software Engineering



• 13:40-14:00
  Engineering Reliable Hybrid Quantum Software: An Architectural-driven Approach

  Max Scheerer, Jonas Klamroth, Oliver Denninger

  abstract ▼

  In the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era, quantum computers exhibit short decoherence times (i.e., the time to maintain a stable quantum state) and limited accuracy of gate operations. Hence, the depth of a quantum circuit must be kept small to avoid erroneous execution. This forces quantum software engineers to embed small quantum software components into software architectures designed for classical hardware, actually transforming them into hybrid quantum software architectures. In this paper, we present a model-based approach to describe and analyze hybrid quantum software architectures. We discuss the extension of an existing Architecture Description Language (ADL) for modeling classical software architectures to a quantum ADL (qADL) to support software engineers in making architectural design decisions. Finally, we discuss how the reliability of such qADL models can be analyzed and design decisions can be automatically explored.



• 14:00-14:15
  Trials and Tribulations of Developing Hybrid Quantum-Classical Microservices Systems

  Javier Rojo, Enrique Moguel, David Valencia, Javier Berrocal, Jose García-Alonso and Juan M. Murillo

  abstract ▼

  Quantum computing holds great promise to solve to problems where classical computers cannot reach. It is expected that hybrid systems will start to appear where quantum software interacts with classical systems. Such coexistence can be fostered by service computing. Unfortunately, the way in which quantum code can be offered as a service still misses out on many of the potential benefits of service computing. This work helps to measure the distance between the current state of technology and the state that would be desirable in order to have a real quantum service engineering.



• 14:15-14:30
  Testing Quantum Programs using Q# and Microsoft Quantum Development Kit

  Mariia Mykhailova and Mathias Soeken

  abstract ▼

  As the quantum software matures, the quantum codebases grow in size and complexity, and so does the task of testing them and verifying their correctness. In this session we’ll show how to test and validate several common types of quantum programs written in the quantum programming language Q# using the tools provided by the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit. Our approach uses multiple simulators and library tools for program testing and resource estimation, performing these steps before running the programs on quantum hardware. The demonstrated approach is illustrated with code examples from the Quantum Katas, a collection of quantum programming tutorials that provide immediate feedback for the learner’s solution.

14:30 - 15:15 Break & Exhibits

Session 3. 15:15 - 16:45

• 15:15-15:35
  Software Quality Issues in Quantum Information Systems

  Javier Verdugo, Moisés Rodríguez and Mario Piattini

  abstract ▼

  Quantum computing is the technology of the 21st century. Quantum computers and environments are already offering great advantages when building advanced applications in finance, health, or logistics. However, if industry is to boost the large-scale production of quantum software, an adequate quality level must be achieved and assured. In this sense, it is very important to consider quantum software quality platforms and products, and to create an effective quality environment for quantum software. This paper summarises some of these issues.



• 15:35-15:55
  Constraints for executing quantum programs in real quantum devices

  Lorenzo Saraiva, Edward Hermann Haeusler, Vaston Costa and Marcos Kalinowski

  abstract ▼

  Quantum software engineering is still a new area, with different amount of research dedicated to each subarea, with very little for requirements reasearch. We'll cover some low level constraints that have to be taken into account when developing quantum programs for real quantum devices that can be potentially translated into non-functional requirements. Then, we'll proceed to review the different approaches for high level abtractions that deal with these constraints when executing on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computing (NISQs), such as quantum volume, quantum provenance, compilers and transpilers.



• 15:55-16:15
  Formal Quantum Software Engineering

  Carmelo R. Cartiere

  abstract ▼

  This talk introduces the formal methods of software engineering to quantum computing.



• 16:15-16:35
  Towards a quantum algorithm for evaluating WCETs

  Gabriella Bettonte, Stéphane Louise and Renaud Sirdey

  abstract ▼

  This talk investigates a simplified variant of the problem which consists in determining the number of cache hits during the execution of a program. The choice for this application comes from the fact that it is an important issue in the design of real-time systems and that this fi eld has already seen the development of “quantum-inspired” classical algorithms which are competitive with the state of the art. Our contribution consists, starting from a polynomial-time dynamic programming algorithm for computing the lowest number of cache hits realized by a deterministic sequence of memory accesses in the presence of preemptions, in porting that algorithm to the quantum computing formalism.

16:35-16:45 Closure