Simulating Quantum Computers Using OpenCL

Abstract

Quantum computing is an emerging technology, promising a paradigm shift in computing, and allowing for speedups in many different problems. However, quantum devices are still in their early stages, most with only a small number qubits. This places a reliance on simulation to develop quantum algorithms and to verify these devices. While there exists many algorithms for the simulation of quantum circuits, there is (at the time of writing) no tools which use OpenCL to parallelize this simulation, thereby taking advantage of devices such as GPUs while still remaining portable. In this paper, such a tool is described, including optimizations in areas such as gate application. This leads to a new approach that outperforms other popular state vector based simulators. An implementation of the proposed simulator is available at https://qcgpu.github.io.