He has an ambitious plan to help ordinary coders write quantum computing software

Computers have come a long way. You’re probably reading this sentence on a device that has exponentially more computational power than the Apollo rockets that went to the moon. However, there are physical limits to how much a conventional computer can do.

Quantum computing – or the use of quantum mechanics to build computers – can transcend these barriers.

Photo credit: Contact Singapore

Dr Joseph Fitzsimons, principal investigator at National University of Singapore’s Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) and founder of Horizon Quantum Computing has been tracking the nascent space for years.

And, if what Fitzsimons has in mind comes to fruition, his startup will make software development for quantum computers as easy as BASIC, FORTRAN, and C++.

Into the quantum realm

CQT’s office space lives up to its name, with handwritten equations literally covering every wall and frosted-glass door. Researchers in white robes work in rooms filled with strange-looking machines and circuitries – these are actually quantum computers.

How do quantum computers work? In conventional computers, information is stored in bits, which take on a value of either 0 or 1. Quantum computers, on the other hand, run on qubits that can exist in a much larger number of states.

As such, quantum computers can process a lot more information than conventional computers. For example, a quantum computer can potentially run faster algorithms as well as provide more secure and more efficient computation and communication.

“But hardware is only half the picture,” Fitzsimons says. “There’s no point in having the most advanced hardware without software to run it.”

And here lies the problem. If you want to be a software developer these days, you start by learning a programming language and then write the code on conventional computers. But these languages don’t work on a quantum computer. “You can’t just hand the device to someone and say, ‘Now write a program for it’,” Fitzsimons explains. “That’s not an easy task.”

Horizon is working on a solution that will ”make it easy for someone with no quantum computing experience to write software that will be accelerated on a quantum computer,” Fitzsimons says.

He adds, “We are trying to build a programming language so any software engineer can use after just a day or two of tutorials. They will be able to write in a high-level language without having to know the details of how quantum algorithms work.”

What Horizon hopes to do is take this high-level language, identify the best way to execute it using quantum computing resources, and then prepare the lower-level code that will run the requested computation.

“This means deciding how best to represent different types of data, how best to perform manipulations on those datatypes, and determining how best to implement the program logic and flow control, all in a way that is adapted to the available hardware resources,” Fitzsimons explains.

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