OQTOPUS Delivers an Open Source Software Stack for Broader Access to Quantum Computers
Permissively-licensed operating system provides remote access to a range of quantum computer hardware, to boost the development ecosystem.
A team from the University of Osaka, Fujitsu, Systems Engineering Consultants (SEC), and TIS Inc. have announced the launch of an open source operating system with a difference: it's built for quantum computers, not classical ones.
"The Open Quantum Toolchain for Operators and Users (OQTOPUS) OS can be customized to meet individual user needs and is expected to help make practical quantum computing a reality," a spokesperson for the team explains of its announcement. "Until now, universities and companies seeking to make their quantum computers accessible via the cloud have had to independently develop extensive software to enable cloud-based operation. By offering this open source OS — covering everything from setup to operation — the research partners have lowered the barrier to deploying quantum computers in the cloud."
Modern classical computers are built around the concept of binary bits, which can either be on or off — representing a one or zero, true or false. A quantum computer, by contrast, works using quantum bits — "qubits" — which can be a zero, a one, or a superposition of the two. For specific tasks that could translate to dramatically increased performance, though at the time of writing claims of "quantum supremacy" where today's relatively limited-scale quantum computers have been shown to perform useful tasks faster than their classical equivalents have been largely overblown.
Key to improving the practicality of quantum computers is both increasing the number of qubits in each system and provide developers with wider access to the devices — and it's the latter where OQTOPUS aims to help. The open source software stack includes a graphical user interface and a plugin-compatible application programming interface (API) which links developers to quantum computers over a cloud platform, via the "OQTOPUS Engine" and "Tranqu server" running alongside software designed to control the quantum hardware itself.
Quantum programs written by remote users are automatically converted into a generic format dubbed OpenASM3, the team explains, which is transmitted to the server over OQTOPUS Cloud; this is then transferred to the Tranqu framework and a transpiler which allows the program to be executed on any supported quantum computing platform. Each layer in the software stack has been released under a permissive open source license; only the machine-specific quantum control software, hardware controller, and the quantum hardware itself remains proprietary.
More information is available on the OQTOPUS website; source code for each layer in the stack is available on GitHub under the permissive Apache 2.0 license.
