The operating system is designed to manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. With the development of quantum computing, the management of quantum resources and cooperation between quantum systems and other computing resources (e.g. CPU, GPU and FPGA etc.) become the key challenge for the application of quantum computing to solve real world problems. In this paper we propose a quantum operating system, Origin Pilot. Origin Pilot includes the module of quantum task scheduling, quantum resource management, quantum program compilation and qubits' automatic calibration. With these modules, Origin Pilot can manage the quantum computing resources and solve the multi-quantum processor scheduling problem. It can also allow the parallel execution of multiple quantum programs and calibrate the quantum resource effectively. Thus, the performance of resources is guaranteed and the resource utilization is improved. By comparing the results with and without Origin Pilot, we evaluate the impact on a quantum circuit's fidelity of qubits mapping algorithm. We also evaluate the effectiveness of automatic calibration and parallel execution of multi-quantum processors. Finally, Origin Pilot can be easily customized for hybrid computing resources.
The operating system is designed to manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. With the development of quantum computing, the management of quantum resources and cooperation between quantum systems and other computing resources (e.g. CPU, GPU and FPGA etc.) become the key challenge for the application of quantum computing to solve real world problems. In this paper we propose a quantum operating system, Origin Pilot. Origin Pilot includes the module of quantum task scheduling, quantum resource management, quantum program compilation and qubits' automatic calibration. With these modules, Origin Pilot can manage the quantum computing resources and solve the multi-quantum processor scheduling problem. It can also allow the parallel execution of multiple quantum programs and calibrate the quantum resource effectively. Thus, the performance of resources is guaranteed and the resource utilization is improved. By comparing the results with and without Origin Pilot, we evaluate the impact on a quantum circuit's fidelity of qubits mapping algorithm. We also evaluate the effectiveness of automatic calibration and parallel execution of multi-quantum processors. Finally, Origin Pilot can be easily customized for hybrid computing resources.
As quantum hardware advances, integrating quantum processing units (QPUs) into HPC environments and managing diverse infrastructure and software stacks becomes increasingly essential. Pilot-Quantum addresses these challenges as a middleware designed to provide unified application-level management of resources and workloads across hybrid quantum-classical environments. It is built on a rigorous analysis of existing quantum middleware systems and application execution patterns. It implements the Pilot Abstraction conceptual model, originally developed for HPC, to manage resources, workloads, and tasks. It is designed for quantum applications that rely on task parallelism, including (i) hybrid algorithms, such as variational approaches, and (ii) circuit cutting systems, used to partition and execute large quantum circuits. Pilot-Quantum facilitates seamless integration of QPUs, classical CPUs, and GPUs, while supporting high-level programming frameworks like Qiskit and Pennylane. This enables users to efficiently design and execute hybrid workflows across diverse computing resources. The capabilities of Pilot-Quantum are demonstrated through mini-apps -- simplified yet representative kernels focusing on critical performance bottlenecks. We demonstrate the capabilities of Pilot-Quantum through multiple mini-apps, including different circuit executions (e.g., using IBMś Eagle QPU and simulators), circuit cutting, and quantum machine learning scenarios.
As quantum hardware advances, integrating quantum processing units (QPUs) into HPC environments and managing diverse infrastructure and software stacks becomes increasingly essential. Pilot-Quantum addresses these challenges as a middleware designed to provide unified application-level management of resources and workloads across hybrid quantumclassical environments. It is built on a rigorous analysis of existing quantum middleware systems and application execution patterns. It implements the Pilot Abstraction conceptual model, originally developed for HPC, to manage resources, workloads, and tasks. It is designed for quantum applications that rely on task parallelism, including (i) Hybrid algorithms, such as variational approaches, and (ii) Circuit cutting systems, used to partition and execute large quantum circuits. Pilot-Quantum facilitates seamless integration of QPUs, classical CPUs, and GPUs, while supporting high-level programming frameworks like Qiskit and Pennylane. This enables users to efficiently design and execute hybrid workflows across diverse computing resources. The capabilities of Pilot-Quantum are demonstrated through mini-apps - simplified yet representative kernels focusing on critical performance bottlenecks. We demonstrate the capabilities of Pilot-Quantum through multiple mini-apps, including different circuit execution (e.g., using IBM's Eagle QPU and simulators), circuit-cutting, and quantum machine learning scenarios.
Inspired by the ideas of quantum physics, quantum computing is a modern computational paradigm. It is one of the rapidly growing areas in computer science, mathematics, and physics. It has high speed and efficiency by making use of phenomena such as superposition, entanglement, and interference, allowing new possibilities in areas like cryptography, machine learning, and complex system simulations. Even though it has great potential, quantum computing also suffers from resource management and task scheduling issues, system design due to the differences in the foundational basis between classical and quantum computing. This study reviews the architecture and workflow of QOS (quantum operating system), emphasizing the integration of quantum and classical resources. In this study, elements such as quantum resource management, automatic qubit calibration, quantum program compilation, and hybrid task scheduling are investigated. The present study also looks at innovative architectures such as quantum FPGAs, x86-based quantum systems, and distributed quantum systems, which provide advanced quantum computations while being compatible with classical systems. The findings of this paper reveal how QOS improves fidelity, resource utilization, and task scheduling. We have also explored key quantum algorithms such as Grover’s and Shor’s algorithms, highlighting their potential in NP-hard problems[1], quantum machine learning, and optimization challenges. This research addresses the transformative power of QOS in solving real problems in computation, providing robust solutions in the management and programming of quantum resources. This research advances the development of future quantum computing systems by evaluating existing designs and suggesting improvements in task scheduling, qubit accuracy, and quantum algorithm performance. The findings in this paper seek to contribute to the advancement of understanding of QOS and inspire innovation in several fields.
Hybrid quantum-classical applications pose significant resource management challenges due to heterogeneity and dynamism in both infrastructure and workloads. Quantum-HPC environments integrate quantum processing units (QPUs) with diverse classical resources (CPUs, GPUs), while applications span coupling patterns from tightly coupled execution to loosely coupled task parallelism with varying resource requirements. Traditional HPC schedulers lack visibility into application semantics and cannot respond to fluctuating resource availability at runtime. This paper presents a middleware-based approach for adaptive resource, workload, and task management in hybrid quantum-HPC systems. We make four contributions: (i) a conceptual four-layer middleware architecture that decomposes management across workflow, workload, task, and resource levels, enabling application-aware scheduling over heterogeneous quantum-HPC resources; (ii) a set of execution motifs capturing interaction and coupling characteristics of hybrid applications, realized as quantum mini-apps for systematic workload characterization; (iii) Pilot-Quantum, a middleware framework built on the pilot abstraction that enables late binding and dynamic resource allocation, adapting to resource and workload dynamics at runtime; and (iv) Q-Dreamer, a performance modeling toolkit providing reusable components for informed workload partitioning, including a circuit-cutting optimizer that analytically derives optimal partitioning strategies. Evaluation on heterogeneous HPC platforms (Perlmutter, NVIDIA DGX with H100/B200 GPUs) demonstrates efficient multi-backend orchestration across CPUs, GPUs, and QPUs for diverse execution motifs. Q-Dreamer predicts optimal circuit cutting configurations with up to 82% accuracy.
Quantum computers face challenges due to hardware constraints, noise errors, and heterogeneity, and face fundamental design tradeoffs between key performance metrics such as \textit{quantum fidelity} and system utilization. This substantially complicates managing quantum resources to scale the size and number of quantum algorithms that can be executed reliably in a given time. We introduce QOS, a cloud operating system for managing quantum resources while mitigating their inherent limitations and balancing the design tradeoffs of quantum computing. QOS exposes a hardware-agnostic API for transparent quantum job execution, mitigates hardware errors, and systematically multi-programs and schedules the jobs across space and time to achieve high quantum fidelity in a resource-efficient manner. To achieve this, it leverages two key insights: First, to maximize utilization and minimize fidelity loss, some jobs are more compatible than others for multi-programming on the same quantum computer. Second, sacrificing minimal fidelity can significantly reduce job waiting times. We evaluate QOS on real quantum devices hosted by IBM, using 7000 real quantum runs of more than 70.000 benchmark instances. We show that the QOS achieves 2.6--456.5× higher fidelity, increases resource utilization by up to 9.6×, and reduces waiting times by up to 5× while sacrificing only 1--3\% fidelity, on average, compared to the baselines.
Quantum Computer Operating Systems, Architecture Analysis and Proposed Enhancements Quantum Computing Systems are transitioning from laboratory curiosities into cloud-accessible platforms that serve thousands of concurrent users across heterogeneous hardware modalities. The software stack has not kept pace. No mature, general-purpose quantum operating system (QOS) exists that offers real-time scheduling guarantees, cross-vendor circuit portability, and integrated security in the manner that classical operating systems provide for conventional computing. This research examines the architectural foundations, design trade-offs, and practical limitations of the principal quantum software stacks deployed at scale today, including IBM Qiskit Runtime, Google Cirq, Microsoft Azure Quantum, and Origin Quantum’s Origin Pilot. Origin Pilot, developed by Origin Quantum Computing Technology (Hefei, China), reached Version 4.0 in February 2026 as an open-source release and has processed more than 339,000 quantum jobs for users in over 120 countries—the most geographically distributed quantum operating system deployment studied here. Beyond cataloguing these systems, three concrete architectural enhancements are proposed: (1) an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven workload prediction layer that reduces mean queue latency by formulating scheduling as a multi-armed bandit problem, (2) a cross-platform circuit portability layer (CPPL) built on a hardware-agnostic intermediate representation (IR), and (3) a federated quantum processing unit (QPU) resource pooling mechanism that coordinates geographically distributed quantum hardware through consensus-based admission control. A structured gap analysis across seven dimensions confirms that no existing system satisfies more than four simultaneously. The findings argue that quantum operating system design must treat heterogeneity and latency as first-class design concerns, not afterthoughts.