Quantum computers are driving a new computing paradigm to address important computational problems in science. For example, quantum computing can be the solution to demystify complex mathematic formulas applied in cryptography, or complex models used in chemistry for biological systems. Due to the early stage in the development of quantum hardware, simulation is currently playing a prime role in research. To tackle the exponential cost of quantum simulation, state-of-the-art simulators are typically implemented using programming languages associated with High Performance Computing, while also providing the means for hardware acceleration on heterogeneous co-processors (e.g., GPUs). The vast majority of quantum simulators implement a part of the simulator in a platform-specific language (e.g., CUDA, OpenCL). This approach results in fragmented development as developers have to manually specialize the code for custom execution across different devices or microarchitectures.

In this lightning talk, we will present TornadoQSim, an open-source quantum circuit simulation framework implemented in Java. The proposed framework has been designed to be modular and easily expandable for accommodating different user-defined simulation backends, such as the unitary matrix simulation technique. Furthermore, TornadoQSim features the ability to interchange simulation backends that can simulate arbitrary quantum circuits. Another novel aspect of TornadoQSim over other quantum simulators is the transparent hardware acceleration of the simulation backends on heterogeneous devices. TornadoQSim employs TornadoVM to automatically compile parts of the simulation backends onto heterogeneous hardware, thereby addressing the fragmentation in development due to the low-level heterogeneous programming models.