Munich Quantum Software Forum 2024: Talk by Josh Izaac (Xanadu)

Title:
Escaping Python (via Python!) for Optimum Performance with PennyLane and Catalyst

Abstract:
Up until now, most quantum programming frameworks have been written in Python, and serialize solely the quantum part of the workflow to simplistic string-based representations that are sent to cloud-connected quantum hardware (while the classical part executes locally!). But this ignores the history of classical programming infrastructure and the fact that no algorithm is purely quantum — there is bound to be expensive and interwoven classical processing, and we need to take this into account. In this talk, I’ll chat about how we are addressing this with PennyLane via Catalyst, a framework for quantum just-in-time compilation (QJIT). Using QJIT, full quantum-classical programs written in Python are automatically captured and compiled using standard compiler technologies such as MLIR and LLVM — leading to not only performance improvements, but increasingly richer ways we can interface with quantum computers.

Biography:
Josh is a (former) computational quantum physicist, (retired) quantum software developer, and ex-illustrator working to build accessible, open-source quantum software at Xanadu. These days, he mainly focuses on the roadmap and strategy for PennyLane and Catalyst.