The Intel Quantum Simulator, also known as qHiPSTER (The Quantum High Performance Software Testing Environment), is a simulator of quantum circuits coded to take maximum advantage of multi-core and multi-nodes architectures. It is based on a complete representation of the qubit register state in terms of a distributed vector, but operations and gates are never explicitely represented in terms of matrices. qHiPSTER uses MPI (message-passing-interface) protocols to handle the communication between disctributed resources that are used to store and manipulate the quantum state.
Intel Quantum Simulator builds as a static library. Its building process requires the following packages to be installed:
- CMake tools version 3.15+
- MPICH3 for distributed communication
- optional: MKL for distributed random number generation
- optional: PyBind11 (installed via conda, not pip) required by the Python bunding of Intel-QS
The first step is cloning the repository:
git clone https://github.com/intel/Intel-QS.git
cd Intel-QS
If you wish to build Intel-QS using the latest Intel compiler technologies then you need to configure your environment properly according to that tool's documentation.
Assuming that you have installed Intel Parallel Studio in the standard location on your system, you should invoke the following scripts through the source command on Linux.
source /opt/intel/bin/compilervars.sh -arch intel64 -platform linux
source /opt/intel/compiler_and_libraries/linux/mpi/intel64/bin/mpivars.sh
Now, use CMake to generate the appropriate makefiles to use the Intel Parallel Studio compilers.
The installation follows the out-of-source building and requires the creation of the directory build
.
This directory is used to collect all the files generated by the build process (both by CMake and Make).
mkdir build
cd build
CXX=mpiicpc cmake -DIqsMPI=ON -DIqsUTest=ON ..
make
By default, MKL is required when Intel compilers are used.
To re-build Intel-QS with different settings or options, we recommend to delete all content of the
build
directory and then restart from the CMake command.
If you wish to build Intel-QS using only standard GNU compilers type:
mkdir build
cd build
CXX=g++ cmake -DIqsMPI=OFF ..
make
By default, MKL is not required when GNU compilers are used.
Optionally, MPI can be included by setting the option -DIqsMPI=ON
instead. You must ensure
that you have at least version 3.1 of MPICH installed for the build to succeed.
https://www.mpich.org
The above installation enables MPI functionalities to deploy Intel-QS on High Performance
Computing and Cloud Computing infrastructures. There is the option of disabling MPI:
simply set the CMake option selection to -DIqsMPI=OFF
(or just omit the option selection since MPI is disabled by default in the CMake build).
By default, whenever MPI is disabled, the building process includes the Python binding for Intel-QS. The binding code uses the Pybind11 library which needs to be installed via 'conda' (and not simply with pip) to include the relevant information in CMake. See this page for more info on this issue.
To disable the Python wrap, even without MPI, set the CMake option selection to
-DIqsPython=OFF
.
By default, with MPI either enabled or disabled, the building process includes a suite
of unit tests written in the googletest framework.
Following the recommended integration, the CMake building process automatically downloads
the up-to-date repository of gtest and installs it in the build
path.
To disable the unit tests, set the CMake option selection to
-DIqsUtest=OFF
.
The recommended building process requires Intel Math Kernel Library and the MPI-ICPC compiler.
When the program is run in hybrid configuration (OpenMP+MPI), we recommend to manage
the OpenMP affinity directly. Affinity settings can be set using the syntax:
KMP_AFFINITY=compact,1,0,granularity=fine
.
A quick look at the options can be found at
this page.
Dockerfile
includes the instructions to build the docker image of an Ubuntu machine
with Intel-QS already installed. The image can be 'run' to create a container.
The container can be 'executed' to login into the machine.
docker build -t qhipster .
docker run -d -t qhipster
docker ps
docker exec -itd <container_id> /bin/bash
If Docker is used on a Windows host machine, the last line should be substituted by:
winpty docker exec -itd <container_id> //bin/bash
.
--TODO: Not yet implemented since environment variables and programs (like cmake) are not accessible to new users... For stability of the container, in addition to the 'root' user we create a user called 'tester'. We suggest to login as such user: Intel-QS is available from tester's home directory.
docker build -t qhipster .
docker run -d -t qhipster
docker ps
docker exec -itd --user tester <container_id> /bin/bash
The simplest way of familiarize with the Intel Quantum Simulator is by exploring the tutorials
provided in the directory examples/
.
In particular, the code examples/get_started_with_IQS.cpp
provides step-by-step
description of the main commands:
define a qubit register object, perform quantum gates, measure one or multiple qubits.
If the Python bindings were enabled, the same learning can be performed using the iPython
notebook examples/get_started_with_IQS.ipynb
.
Thanks for your interest in the project! We welcome pull requests from developers of all skill levels.
If you find a bug or want to propose a new feature, open an issue. If you have written some code that should be merged, open a pull request describing your changes and why it should be merged. If you have a question or want to discuss something, feel free to send an email to Justin Hogaboam or to Gian Giacomo Guerreschi.
When using the Intel Quantum Simulator for research projects, please cite:
Mikhail Smelyanskiy, Nicolas P. D. Sawaya, Alán Aspuru-Guzik qHiPSTER: The Quantum High Performance Software Testing Environment arXiv:1601.07195