QED-C Releases Practical Intermediate Representation for Quantum (PIRQ) Report

The PIRQ subcommittee of the QED-C Standards and Performance Metrics Technical Advisory Committee today releases its new report, Practical Intermediate Representation for Quantum (PIRQ): Requirements and Near-Term Recommendations. Similar to classical computing, intermediate representations define an environment from the source code to the hardware back-end. In classical computing, there are different supporting toolchains for Windows, Linux, and Mac systems. The creation of multiple toolchains for quantum systems has resulted in different cliques of tools designed to work in different environments. Interoperability across the sets of quantum compiler toolchains would be better for everyone. Quantum computer developers want everyone to use their hardware, while quantum software engineers want to use the best available solution for their particular use cases. This report and its recommendations are is informed, in part, by a 2021 QED-C workshop that convened experts from academia, industry, national labs, and government agencies. QED-C members on the PIRQ subcommittee continue to actively explore architectural concepts of intermediate representation and fulfill the other recommendations of the report.