Coding for Qubits: How to Program in Quantum Computer Assembly Language

IEEE Spectrum  February 19, 2021
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratory are working on a project to run code provided by academic, commercial, and independent researchers around the world on their “QSCOUT” ( Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed) platform as they steadily upgrade it from 3 qubits today to as many as 32 qubits by 2023. QSCOUT consists of ionized ytterbium atoms levitating inside a vacuum chamber. Flashes of ultraviolet laser light spin these atoms about, executing algorithms written in the team’s quantum assembly code JAQAL (Just Another Quantum Assembly Language). JACQAL includes commands to initialize the ions as qubits, rotate them individually or together into various states, entangle them into superpositions, and read out their end states as output data. According to the researchers QSCOUT is more stable than Google or IBM quantum machines. It allows users to control as much or as little of the computer’s operation as they want to—even adding new or altered operations to the basic instruction set architecture of the machine…read more.

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