The application and commercialization of quantum computing continues to advance as the competition increases and the community of interest grows. To date, most of the attention
has been focused on the competition to build a quantum computer that is robust,
error-correcting, long-lived, scalable, and commercially accessible.
A parallel effort underway aims to broaden and
expand a quantum-educated user community. This includes developing the DevOps
tools needed to create quantum computer applications. The result is an
expanding eco-system of quantum products, tools, students, researchers,
enterprise efforts, services, etc.
The software effort has focused on development
languages, API interfaces and tools that facilitate coding and communications
between classical and specific quantum system architectures. Despite some
efforts to assure a measure of software portability among existing
architectures and products, no truly integrated, hardware agnostic development
environment existed. Until now.
With the introduction of Orquestra™, Zapata Computing radically upends and advances efforts to bring quantum computing to
an even broader cross-section of the potential end-user market. Orquestra joins
the limited number of existing Jupyter notebook services that allow users to
compose workflows from any software library, then deploy them across a full
range of quantum and classical devices. It uniquely allows for more scalability
and flexibility across both quantum and “quantum-inspired” classical backends. Adjustments
can be quickly made, run, and produce comparable results.
It is the first platform to not only abstract
the hardware’s idiosyncrasies, but also allow users to tune parameters of each
device to maximize what the latest quantum devices can do—all within a scalable
workflow system. It is in some measure, a step toward Linux for quantum hardware
architectures.
Much like early UNIX and today’s Linux
platforms, it shifts the focus from adapting to the hardware to most
effectively leveraging the unique strengths of the available existing hardware.
Cloud-based accessibility to quantum computers makes it even more powerful. Zapata’s
collection of algorithms, services, architecture, and software capabilities
built around and into Orquestra, advances DevOps for quantum, even as the
underlying infrastructure evolves and matures.
What is the big deal?
For the first time, application developers do not have to fully commit to a single quantum architecture. They can develop software, run on different quantum hardware, compare results, and choose the optimal architecture for their application.
Secondly, developers can select and
use code from a variety of sources, code libraries, etc. using well-known
classical computing tools. Let’s take a closer look.
What’s
going on
Now
and for the foreseeable future, quantum computers will operate in conjunction
with classical computers. Each working on parts of the problem. Effective
commercialization mandates that the classical computing DevOps tools be used
with quantum computing. Today most only provide single-node hosted Jupyter
notebooks. While fine for initial basic experimentation, these cannot scale to
meet enterprise need. For that, vendors will have to provide compatible tools.
 |
| Figure 1 Qrquestra Unified Quantum Operating Environment |
Implementing a quantum workflow involves the creation of a “circuit” processed on the quantum computer. Experience has shown there exists a direct link between a quantum computer’s architectural configuration and its efficiency at obtaining results.
Thus, matching problem circuit definitions to
a specific quantum hardware configuration can yield results significantly more
quickly and accurately. To date, much of the effort in application development
has paired classical software with software specific to a single vendors’
quantum hardware. This works but tends to make performance comparisons and/or
shifting “circuits” between different quantum computers a time-consuming,
difficult process. By changing a few lines of code, Orquestra makes it faster,
easier, and much more feasible.
Zapata delivers a collection of products and
support services that integrate quantum-specific functions with contemporary
DevOps solutions and processes to build circuits from hardware “agnostic” to
hardware specific, based on the user’s familiarity with backend devices’
strengths.
Users can build quantum workflows with
real-world solutions that run on multiple quantum architectures and compare results.
Clients can choose to develop using in-house infrastructure, Zapata Cloud,
external Cloud (e.g. AWS, Azure, Rigetti, IBM, Honeywell, etc.) or any
combination of these. Zapata collects data that can be used to compare and
optimize performance.
Potential Use cases
Every vendor is searching for the optimal use
case that will demonstrate quantum superiority. Zapata is searching for real-world problem cases where a quantum computer is uniquely able to provide a
superior answer more quickly and with fewer errors than today’s supercomputers. The focus is on actionable solutions to pressing problems.
During April and May of this year, Zapata held
intensive Orquestra training sessions for specially selected enterprise
partners. The intent was to train staff so they can apply new research and
science to begin building solutions to real-world business problems. There are
now 100 or so staffs working to resolve problems in such areas as simulating
chemical reactions (e.g. improve fertilizer efficiency), machine learning (e.g.
improve accuracy and speed), and routing optimization (e.g. speeding
calculations to dynamically optimize a salesman’s route[1]). Other
areas of interest include finance (e.g. developing exotic derivative pricing models)
and increasing pharma/drug effectiveness and efficacy (e.g. treatment,
vaccines, etc.).
W
- We use some of Zapata’s own words to summarize Orquestra’s unique capabilities: Extensible: Developers can compose workflows from existing in-house tasks or use libraries (Zapata + open source). Mix and match modules written using popular quantum libraries and languages (Cirq, Qiskit, PennyLane, PyQuil). Build for any backend. Integrate with database endpoints.
- Hardware Smart: Beyond hardware agnostic. Can be abstracted so non-quantum domain experts can be productive, by allowing designing workflows that both maximize specific device capabilities and allow benchmarking across devices.
- Reproducible: Build new or re-run existing workflows at scale and over time. Reproduce within team.
- Modular: Enable all team members who are focused on library coding, quantum science, databases, domain experts to contribute modularly to common efforts.
- Scalable: Manage complex data records, automate parallelization via container orchestration. Iterate at scale. Deploy across NISQ, quantum-inspired, and multi-cloud and hybrid cloud classical backends.
The
Final Word
Zapata’s solutions represent a major advance in
the goals and thinking about commercializing quantum computing. Linux was an
elusive prize for classical computing eager for vendor independence. It took
decades to arrive as the commercial successor to Bell Lab’s Unix operating
system. To have the Orquestra environment available this early in quantum
computing’s lifecycle is somewhat amazing.
Orquestra is a fully integrated software
development environment with associated services that permit more than just utilization of today’s
quantum libraries and computers. It allows the user to match the architecture
with function to get the best combination for overall performance. The solution leverages existing DevOps tools
and applications to allow construction of algorithms that run on existing quantum
hardware to address real-life problems. It lowers cost and effort barriers for
enterprises that need to become quantum-smart more than ever.
A significant key to the success of Orquestra
results from in-depth customer experiences and interactions. Zapata’s platform
resulted from actively working with potential customers in-the-field as they
confronted real business problems. Zapata products, attitudes and results
reveal and reflect that their intense interest, hard-earned experience, and
expertise is in addressing the most near-term problems that quantum and
quantum-inspired devices will be helpful in solving.
Zapata clearly takes pride in the research and
academic credentials of their staff. They have upwards of 20 PhDs and plenty of
sophisticated, well-published, and well-cited researchers. However, this is no
collection of lab-bound researchers and abstract theoreticians. The Zapata Computing
staff we met exhibited a solid real-world focus on prompt delivery of
actionable results. We believe their contributions will enable and speed major advances
toward the commercialization of enterprise quantum computing.
[1] Classical problem in Operations Research AKA
the Traveling Salesman problem – the subject of my Master’s in Operations
Research thesis years ago.
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