A lot has been written about the potential of quantum computing.
Companies including Microsoft, Google and IBM are in the race to create truly useful quantum computers, but one challenge facing researchers is that there has been no unifying or intuitive quantum computing language.
Now, a team of computer scientists at ETH Zurich have developed what they say is the first language for quantum computers that is as simple, secure and reliable as those used for traditional computing.
Martin Vechev, a computer science professor at ETH’s Secure, Reliable and Intelligent Systems Lab (SRI), said that the new language, called Silq, would allow programmers to realise the power of quantum computers more effectively than ever before.
He said that this was because the language was ‘more compact, faster, more intuitive and easier to understand’ than existing systems.
Silq will be introduced to other professionals working in the field of quantum computing at this week’s PLDI 2020 forum.
Standing for ‘Programming Language Design and Implementation’, PLDI is a leading conference for programming languages, which this year is being held entirely online for obvious reasons.
Silq is also being released via its own website in order to reach as many people as possible and facilitate discussion, adoption and ongoing development.
New language is not tied to an individual computer
In essence, a quantum algorithm provides the code needed for the computer to solve a problem.
Currently, the language used to do this is tied to the cutting-edge hardware being used.
In other words, programmers use ‘hardware description languages’ that are extremely detailed and cannot be easily transferred between different hardware set-ups.
Benjamin Bichsel, a doctoral student involved in Silq, said that the language was the first that was not primarily designed around the existing hardware.
Rather, he explained, it was based on ‘the mindset of the programmers when they want to solve a problem – without requiring them to understand every detail of the computer architecture and implementation’.
These types of languages, which are not tied to the specifics of the computers being used, are also known as high-level programming languages.
They are more expressive, allowing for more complex algorithms while actually using less code.
Vechev added: ‘Silq is a major breakthrough in terms of optimising the programming of quantum computers; it is not the final phase of development.’
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