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arXiv:2205.06973 · IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (CLUSTER)

Efficient Hierarchical State Vector Simulation of Quantum Circuits via Acyclic Graph Partitioning

Bo Fang, M. Yusuf Özkaya, Ang Li, Ümit V. Çatalyürek, Sriram Krishnamoorthy

Published Sep 1, 2022• 16 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Early but promising results in quantum computing have been enabled by the concurrent development of quan-tum algorithms, devices, and materials. Classical simulation of quantum programs has enabled the design and analysis of algorithms and implementation strategies targeting current and anticipated quantum device architectures. In this paper, we present a graph-based approach to achieving efficient quantum circuit simulation. Our approach involves partitioning the graph representation of a given quantum circuit into acyclic sub-graphs/circuits that exhibit better data locality. Simulation of each sub-circuit is organized hierarchically, with the iterative construction and simulation of smaller state vectors, improving overall performance. Also, this partitioning reduces the number of passes through data, improving the total computation time. We present three partitioning strategies and observe that acyclic graph partitioning typically results in the best time-to-solution. In contrast, other strategies reduce the partitioning time at the expense of potentially increased simulation times. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.

DOI
10.1109/cluster51413.2022.00041

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Efficient quantum circuit simulation.

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Quantum-mechanical phenomena are playing an increasing role in information processing as transistor sizes approach the nanometer level, while the securest forms of communication rely on quantum data encoding. When they involve a finite number of basis states, these phenomena can be modeled as quantum circuits, the quantum analogue of conventional or classical logic circuits. Simulation of quantum circuits can therefore be used as a tool to evaluate issues in the design of quantum information processors. Unfortunately, simulating such phenomena efficiently is exceedingly difficult. The matrices representing quantum operators (gates) and vectors modeling quantum states grow exponentially with the number of quantum bits. The information represented by quantum states and operators often exhibits structure that can be exploited when simulating certain classes of quantum circuits. We study the development of simulation methods that run on classical computers and take advantage of such repetitions and redundancies. In particular, we define a new data structure for simulating quantum circuits called the quantum information decision diagram (QuIDD). A QuIDD is a compressed graph representation of a vector or matrix and permits computations to be performed directly on the compressed data. We develop a comprehensive set of algorithms for operating on QuIDDs in both the state-vector and density-matrix formats, and evaluate their complexity. These algorithms have been implemented in a general-purpose simulator program for quantum-mechanical applications called QuIDDPro. Through extensive experiments conducted on representative quantum simulation applications, including Grover's search algorithm, error characterization, and reversible circuits, we demonstrate that QuIDDPro is faster than other existing quantum-mechanical simulators such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology's QCSim program, and is far more memory-efficient. Using QuIDDPro, we explore the advantages of quantum computation over classical computation, simulate quantum errors and error correction, and study the impact of numerical precision on the fidelity of simulations. We also develop several novel algorithms for testing quantum circuit equivalence and compare them empirically. The QuIDDPro software is equipped with a user-friendly interface and is distributed with numerous example scripts. It has been used as a laboratory supplement for quantum computing courses at several universities.

•Jan 1, 2007•15 citations
Early but promising results in quantum computing have been enabled by the concurrent development of quan-tum algorithms, devices, and materials. Classical simulation of quantum programs has enabled the design and analysis of algorithms and implementation strategies targeting current and anticipated quantum device architectures. In this paper, we present a graph-based approach to achieving efficient quantum circuit simulation. Our approach involves partitioning the graph representation of a given quantum circuit into acyclic sub-graphs/circuits that exhibit better data locality. Simulation of each sub-circuit is organized hierarchically, with the iterative construction and simulation of smaller state vectors, improving overall performance. Also, this partitioning reduces the number of passes through data, improving the total computation time. We present three partitioning strategies and observe that acyclic graph partitioning typically results in the best time-to-solution. In contrast, other strategies reduce the partitioning time at the expense of potentially increased simulation times. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.
Quantum-mechanical phenomena are playing an increasing role in information processing, as transistor sizes approach the nanometer level, and quantum circuits and data encoding methods appear in the securest forms of communication. Simulating such phenomena efficiently is exceedingly difficult because of the vast size of the quantum state space involved. A major complication is caused by errors (noise) due to unwanted interactions between the quantum states and the environment. Consequently, simulating quantum circuits and their associated errors using the density matrix representation is potentially significant in many applications, but is well beyond the computational abilities of most classical simulation techniques in both time and memory resources. The size of a density matrix grows exponentially with the number of qubits simulated, rendering array-based simulation techniques that explicitly store the density matrix intractable. In this work, we propose a new technique aimed at efficiently simulating quantum circuits that are subject to errors. In particular, we describe new graph-based algorithms implemented in the simulator QuIDDPro/D. While previously reported graph-based simulators operate in terms of the state-vector representation, these new algorithms use the density matrix representation. To gauge the improvements offered by QuIDDPro/D, we compare its simulation performance with an optimized array-based simulator called QCSim. Empirical results, generated by both simulators on a set of quantum circuit benchmarks involving error correction, reversible logic, communication, and quantum search, show that the graph-based approach far outperforms the array-based approach for these circuits.
Simulating quantum circuits (QC) on high-performance computing (HPC) systems is essential for validating quantum algorithms and probing the potential of large-scale quantum computation before the advent of scalable quantum hardware. However, state vector simulations are resource-intensive, often requiring large clusters with thousands of compute nodes and large amounts of memory. To address this, we introduce C-3PQ, an end-to-end framework that minimizes inter-node data movement through an efficient circuit partitioning scheme alongside a flexible code generator to offer a portable simulation solution. By formulating the distribution of the state vector and circuit over multiple nodes as a graph problem, we utilize closeness centrality to assess gate importance and design a fast, scalable partitioning method. C-3PQ compiles the resulting partitions into highly optimized kernels targeting a wide range of hardware platforms from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and ARM. Moreover, compared to a state-of-the-art implementation specific for NVIDIA platforms, C-3PQ achieves a speedup of up to 40%40\%40% at a fraction of the cost when partitioning the state vector.
Quantum-mechanical phenomena are playing an increasing role in information processing, as transistor sizes approach the nanometer level, and quantum circuits and data encoding methods appear in the securest forms of communication. Simulating such phenomena efficiently is exceedingly difficult because of the vast size of the quantum state space involved. A major complication is caused by errors (noise) due to unwanted interactions between the quantum states and the environment. Consequently, simulating quantum circuits and their associated errors using the density matrix representation is potentially significant in many applications, but is well beyond the computational abilities of most classical simulation techniques in both time and memory resources. The size of a density matrix grows exponentially with the number of qubits simulated, rendering array-based simulation techniques that explicitly store the density matrix intractable. In this work, we propose a new technique aimed at efficiently simulating quantum circuits that are subject to errors. In particular, we describe new graph-based algorithms implemented in the simulator QuIDDPro/D. While previously reported graph-based simulators operate in terms of the state-vector representation, these new algorithms use the density matrix representation. To gauge the improvements offered by QuIDDPro/D, we compare its simulation performance with an optimized array-based simulator called QCSim. Empirical results, generated by both simulators on a set of quantum circuit benchmarks involving error correction, reversible logic, communication, and quantum search, show that the graph-based approach far outperforms the array-based approach.
The classical simulation of quantum algorithms is a crucial tool for circuit development, testing, and validation. Although acceleration using GPUs significantly reduces simulation time, most high-performance simulators rely on vendor-specific frameworks that target data-center hardware. To broaden access to quantum simulation, this work proposes a vendor-agnostic approach targeting the integrated GPUs commonly found in consumer-grade laptops. A primary challenge in state-vector simulation is its inherently poor spatial locality, which creates a memory bandwidth bottleneck. Consequently, baseline implementations experience a severe degradation in relative GPU speedup as the number of simulated qubits increases. To address this limitation, we introduce a state partitioning optimization that reorganizes the quantum state vector to maximize the last-level cache locality and minimize costly main memory fetches. We evaluate this strategy using a Quantum Phase Estimation algorithm across diverse architectures from Intel, AMD, and Apple. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimization successfully mitigates performance degradation at larger qubit scales. In particular, for a 28-qubit simulation, the optimization reversed a performance deficit on an Intel Core i5, improving the GPU speedup over the CPU from 0.95x to 1.89x, and increased the Apple M1 Pro speedup from 3.71x to 5.88x. Overall, this approach yields consistent execution time improvements, demonstrating the viability of integrated GPUs for efficient quantum circuit simulation.
Owing to the exponential increase in computational complexity, the fast simulation of the large quantum circuit has become very difficult. This is an important challenge for the utilization of quantum computers because it is closely related to the verification of quantum computation by classical machines. The Hybrid Schrödinger-Feynman simulation seems to be a promising solution, but its application is very limited. To solve this drawback, we propose an improved simulation method based on graph partitioning. Experimental results show that our approach significantly reduces the simulation time of the Hybrid Schrödinger-Feynman simulation.
Quantum-mechanical phenomena are playing an increasing role in information processing as transistor sizes approach the nanometer level, while the securest forms of communication rely on quantum data encoding. When they involve a finite number of basis states, these phenomena can be modeled as quantum circuits, the quantum analogue of conventional or classical logic circuits. Simulation of quantum circuits can therefore be used as a tool to evaluate issues in the design of quantum information processors. Unfortunately, simulating such phenomena efficiently is exceedingly difficult. The matrices representing quantum operators (gates) and vectors modeling quantum states grow exponentially with the number of quantum bits. The information represented by quantum states and operators often exhibits structure that can be exploited when simulating certain classes of quantum circuits. We study the development of simulation methods that run on classical computers and take advantage of such repetitions and redundancies. In particular, we define a new data structure for simulating quantum circuits called the quantum information decision diagram (QuIDD). A QuIDD is a compressed graph representation of a vector or matrix and permits computations to be performed directly on the compressed data. We develop a comprehensive set of algorithms for operating on QuIDDs in both the state-vector and density-matrix formats, and evaluate their complexity. These algorithms have been implemented in a general-purpose simulator program for quantum-mechanical applications called QuIDDPro. Through extensive experiments conducted on representative quantum simulation applications, including Grover's search algorithm, error characterization, and reversible circuits, we demonstrate that QuIDDPro is faster than other existing quantum-mechanical simulators such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology's QCSim program, and is far more memory-efficient. Using QuIDDPro, we explore the advantages of quantum computation over classical computation, simulate quantum errors and error correction, and study the impact of numerical precision on the fidelity of simulations. We also develop several novel algorithms for testing quantum circuit equivalence and compare them empirically. The QuIDDPro software is equipped with a user-friendly interface and is distributed with numerous example scripts. It has been used as a laboratory supplement for quantum computing courses at several universities.