Classical computers have hardly gotten any faster in the last 15 years, we solely increased the number of processors we distribute tasks over. This stop in speed has had a severe impact on research and application areas ranging from physics to chemistry, via logistics and optimization, to material design and finance. However, quantum computers present a new computation paradigm that enable computations beyond the capabilities of classical computers. The new computing approach promises to create solutions for reduced global power consumption, thus fighting climate change, and designing better materials and personalized drugs, thus improving the overall life quality and patient outcomes. Quantum computers may provide a better understanding of superconductivity and realise such materials operating at room temperature - changing the entire electronics market from smartphones to electric cars.
Realizing these promises of quantum computing are not easy. Current devices are in an early development stage, in which it is hard to operate and access them. The small number of existing devices further limits the development speed in this promising field. The project QCDC addresses this limited availability of quantum computing resources. The project develops an integrated service that allows researchers, innovators and businesses to access and run their quantum programs on universal quantum computing processors. The cloud solution serves as an interface between the user and real quantum computing hardware. The new service significantly simplifies access to quantum computing by adapting the hardware programming paradigms at a low level to higher-level software development kits. Furthermore, the underlying quantum hardware benefits from continuous robustness and reliability improvements, resulting in higher uptimes and less maintenance overheads. In combination with integrated programming language frameworks, the computing stack enables user-friendly exploitation of European quantum computers.
