On the Co-Design of Quantum Software and Hardware

Abstract

A quantum computing system naturally consists of two components, the software system and the hardware system. Quantum applications are programmed using the quantum software and then executed on the quantum hardware. However, the performance of existing quantum computing system is still limited. Solving a practical problem that is beyond the capability of classical computers on a quantum computer has not yet been demonstrated. In this review, we point out that the quantum software and hardware systems should be designed collaboratively to fully exploit the potential of quantum computing. We first review three related works, including one hardware-aware quantum compiler optimization, one application-aware quantum hardware architecture design flow, and one co-design approach for the emerging quantum computational chemistry. Then we discuss some potential future directions following the co-design principle.