IBM Research creates new 'serverless' approach to quantum computing
Quantum computing promises magically powerful performance, but it also has many insurmountable obstacles. One of the most important points is how to express the problem to be solved as a quantum "circuit" that can run on existing hardware. But what if only part of the problem fits this expression? In general, complex problems are best handled by traditional computing and quantum technology, but most developers are not familiar with this technology of splitting problems into different computing domains such as CPU, GPU, and QPU. To this end, IBM decided to pave the way for quantum computing through abstraction layers, promoting "serverless" computing at the quantum level like cloud service providers do.
What is "Quantum Serverless"?
IBM's "quantum serverless" approach is designed to guide users in leveraging quantum computing resources at scale without worrying about the complexity of the underlying hardware. This frictionless development process relies primarily on the open source Qiskit, an environment for executing classical computing code in a containerized manner, enabling low-latency access to quantum hardware. As a result, a wide variety of workloads can iterate or reuse quantum hardware to perform far faster than ever before. In fact, IBM used the Qiskit runtime to execute the variational quantum Eigensolver algorithm 120 times faster than previous circuit API models.
About Qiskit
IBM Qiskit mainly targets three kinds of users. The first is high-level experts in fields such as chemistry, finance or AI that are not very familiar with quantum technology, and now they can also deploy circuits on quantum hardware in a relatively transparent way. This is undoubtedly an important step for quantum computing to meet market demand. The second is a developer who has a certain understanding of quantum circuits and intends to use a runtime library to test the comparative advantages of quantum computing over classical computing. Finally, quantum computing experts who want to examine quantum computing pulses—the signals that go in and out of qubits—can deploy the same runtime suite in one of the more than 20 IBM-backed quantum systems around the world, powered by Qiskit. superior.
The IBM team has also been researching new ways to improve the problem-solving capabilities of quantum computing systems by leveraging classical resources to tackle complex problems such as circuit design, quantum embedding, and error mitigation. Classical resources can find key entry points in circuit design problems, thereby generating smaller quantum circuits to accommodate current quantum devices with weak computing power. After the parts are completed, the parts are then reassembled by classical computers to simulate the overall problem. Error mitigation is to reduce certain errors and their effects through classical post-processing mechanisms, thereby obtaining more accurate quantum computing solutions. IBM hopes this quantum-classical combination will allow the tech community to enjoy the benefits of quantum computing in certain applications sooner than expected.
What are the advantages of "serverless"?
In fact, the expression "serverless" can be a bit confusing. The underlying servers (both in classical or quantum form) of course exist, it's just that developers now only need to focus on coding, not the hardware infrastructure. All resources will be encapsulated as cloud services, eliminating the need for capacity or lifecycle management on the development side and enabling seamless expansion. Finally, users can pay as they go without incurring the cost of idle hardware.
Conclusion
At present, IBM's release is only a simple demonstration, mainly emphasizing how the IBM cloud code engine and Qiskit runtime help users combine CPU, GPU and QPU in the same application scenario, which is equivalent to opening a small window to spy on future application scenarios .
Looking to the future, IBM is exploring more complex ways to implement quantum computing, hoping to truly achieve and accelerate "quantum supremacy" -- a use case where quantum computing is significantly better than traditional computing. The emergence of "quantum serverless" is exactly a blueprint outlined by IBM for quantum computing.
