Quantum computing is still in its early stages, and developers used to high-level tools are encountering difficulties in developing hybrid classical-quantum systems. This has created the need for the adaptation of classical tools or the development of new tools to approach the quantum world and enable more efficient development. Quantum computers are accessed through cloud providers, which has led to the use of Service-Oriented Architectures. Although there are currently tools and standards available for improving the development of classical services, they need to be adapted for quantum services. In this work, we propose the adaptation of classic tools to be used in the development of hybrid systems, extending classic specifications such as OpenAPI and AsyncAPI to offer developers a set of tools closer to the environment they are used to. The provided implementation is focused on Amazon Braket as the quantum computing service provider.
Quantum computing is still in its early stages, and developers used to high-level tools are encountering difficulties in developing hybrid classical-quantum systems. This has created the need for the adaptation of classical tools or the development of new tools to approach the quantum world and enable more efficient development. Quantum computers are accessed through cloud providers, which has led to the use of Service-Oriented Architectures. Although there are currently tools and standards available for improving the development of classical services, they need to be adapted for quantum services. In this work, we propose the adaptation of classic tools to be used in the development of hybrid systems, extending classic specifications such as OpenAPI and AsyncAPI to offer developers a set of tools closer to the environment they are used to. The provided implementation is focused on Amazon Braket as the quantum computing service provider.
Abstract The development that quantum computing technologies are achieving is beginning to attract the interest of companies that could potentially be users of quantum software. Thus, it is perfectly feasible that during the next few years hybrid systems will start to appear integrating both the classical software systems of companies and new quantum ones providing solutions to problems that still remain unmanageable today. A natural way to support such integration is Service-Oriented Computing. While conceptually the invocation of a quantum software service is similar to that of a classical one, technically there are many differences and technological limitations, which refer to platform independence, decoupling, scalability, etc. To highlight these differences and the difficulties to develop quality quantum services, this paper takes a well-known problem to which a quantum solution can be provided, integer factorization, making use of the Amazon Braket quantum service platform. The exercise of trying to provide the factorization as a quantum service is carried out following the best practices, design patterns and standards existing in the implementation of classical services. This case study is used to highlight the rough edges and limitations that arise in the integration of classical-quantum hybrid systems using service-oriented computing. The conclusion of the study allows us to point out directions in which to focus research efforts in order to achieve effective quantum service-oriented computing.
As quantum computers mature, the complexity of quantum software increases. As we move from the initial standalone quantum algorithms toward complex solutions combining quantum algorithms with traditional software, new software engineering methods and abstractions are needed. Nowadays, quantum computers are usually offered in the cloud, under a pay-per-use model, leading to the adoption of the service-oriented good practices that dominate the cloud today. However, specific adaptations are needed to reap the benefits of service-oriented computing while dealing with quantum hardware limitations. In this article, we propose the Quantum API Gateway—an adaptation of the API Gateway pattern that takes into account the fact that quantum services cannot be deployed as traditional services. Instead, the Quantum API Gateway recommends the best quantum computer to run a specific quantum service at run time. As proof of concept, we provide an implementation of the Quantum API Gateway for the Amazon Braket platform.
Abstract Quantum computing is advancing by leaps and bounds to become a commercial reality. This revolutionary new technology aims to improve essential areas such as cybersecurity, financial services, and medicine. The growth of this technology has encouraged different research centers and big companies such as IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to dedicate considerable efforts to the development of new technologies that bring quantum computing to the market. However, these technologies are not yet mature and create a major problem of vendor lock-in. Therefore, new techniques and tools are needed to facilitate access to this technology and to allow developers to increase the level of abstraction at which they work. In this chapter, we perform a technical comparison between different quantum computing service providers using a case study by performing empirical tests based on the Traveling Salesman Problem. This study highlights the differences between the major providers. To address these differences and reduce the vendor lock-in effect, we made three proposals: an extension of the Quantum API Gateway to support the different vendors; a code generator making use of a modification of the OpenAPI specification; and a workflow to automate the continuous deployment of these services making use of GitHub Actions. This would allow programmers to deploy quantum code without specific knowledge of the major vendors, which would facilitate access and simplify the development of quantum applications.
The rapid advancements in quantum computing have opened new possibilities for solving complex problems in various fields, including cryptography, optimization, and simulation. However, the current approaches to quantum computing often require a deep understanding of quantum hardware and low-level programming languages, making it difficult for software developers to create and deploy quantum services. This paper argues for the adaptation of Service-Oriented Computing principles to quantum computing, enabling a level of abstraction from hardware that allows developers to focus on application development. This will allow developers to create and deploy quantum services, similarly to how Service-Oriented Computing has made it easier to develop traditional software services. This paper presents a Continuous Deployment approach for quantum service development, which involves the generation and deployment of quantum services. To do that, we propose an extension of the OpenAPI specification to generate services implementing a quantum algorithm. To validate the feasibility of the proposed process, we use a variety of quantum algorithm implementations to test their generation and deployment of quantum services.
Early advances in the field of quantum computing have provided new opportunities to tackle intricate problems in areas as diverse as mathematics, physics, or healthcare. However, the technology required to construct such systems where different pieces of quantum and classical software collaborate is currently lacking. For this reason, significant advancements in quantum service-oriented computing are necessary to enable developers to create and operate quantum services and microservices comparable to their classical counterparts. Therefore, the core objective of this work is to establish the necessary technological infrastructure that enables the application of the benefits and lessons learned from service-oriented computing to the domain of quantum software engineering. To this end, we propose a pipeline for the continuous deployment of services. Additionally, we have validated the proposal by making use of a modification of the OpenAPI specification, the GitHub Actions, and AWS.
Abstract After decades of advances, mainly theoretical, in recent years quantum computing has begun to show its first practical applications. This new and revolutionary technology aims to enhance essential areas such as cybersecurity, financial services, or medicine. The growth of this technology has encouraged different research centers and big companies such as IBM, Amazon, and Google to dedicate considerable efforts to developing new technologies that bring quantum computing to the market. However, these technologies are not yet mature and create a significant vendor lock-in problem. Therefore, new tools are needed that facilitate access to this technology and that allow developers to increase the abstraction level at which they work. Given that the integration of quantum software should not be very different from that of classical services, we can take advantage of the knowledge acquired and use current techniques of service-oriented computing. In this work, we have carried out a technical comparison between different quantum computing service providers using a case study, by performing empirical tests based on the Travelling Salesman Problem. This study highlights the differences between the main providers. To address these differences and reduce the vendor lock-in effect, we propose an extension of the Quantum API Gateway to support the different providers and the casuistry that each one presents. This would allow programmers to deploy quantum code without vendor-specific knowledge of the major providers, which would facilitate access and simplify the development of quantum applications.