Abstract
Quantum computing is advancing by leaps and bounds to become a commercial reality. This revolutionary new technology aims to improve essential areas such as cybersecurity, financial services, and medicine. The growth of this technology has encouraged different research centers and big companies such as IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google to dedicate considerable efforts to the development of new technologies that bring quantum computing to the market. However, these technologies are not yet mature and create a major problem of vendor lock-in. Therefore, new techniques and tools are needed to facilitate access to this technology and to allow developers to increase the level of abstraction at which they work. In this chapter, we perform a technical comparison between different quantum computing service providers using a case study by performing empirical tests based on the Traveling Salesman Problem. This study highlights the differences between the major providers. To address these differences and reduce the vendor lock-in effect, we made three proposals: an extension of the Quantum API Gateway to support the different vendors; a code generator making use of a modification of the OpenAPI specification; and a workflow to automate the continuous deployment of these services making use of GitHub Actions. This would allow programmers to deploy quantum code without specific knowledge of the major vendors, which would facilitate access and simplify the development of quantum applications.
Chapter PDF
References
MacQuarrie, E.R., Simon, C., Simmons, S., Maine, E.: The emerging commercial landscape of quantum computing. Nature Rev. Phys. 2(11), 596–598 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-020-00247-5
Rojo, J., Valencia, D., Berrocal, J., Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J., Rodriguez, J.M.M.: Trials and tribulations of developing hybrid quantum-classical microservices systems (2021). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2105.04421
Romero-Álvarez, J., Alvarado-Valiente, J., Garcia-Alonso, J., Moguel, E., Murillo, J.M.: A graph-based healthcare system for quantum simulation of medication administration in the aging people. In: Gerontechnology IV, pp. 34–41. Springer, Évora, Portugal (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97524-1_4
Pérez-Castillo, R., Piattini, M.: The quantum software engineering path. In: International Workshop on Software Engineering & Technology (Q-SET’20) Co-located with IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (IEEE Quantum Week 2020) Broomfield, Colorado, USA, October, 2020. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2705, pp. 1–4. CEUR-WS.org. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2705/invited1.pdf
Wille, R., Van Meter, R., Naveh, Y.: Ibm’s qiskit tool chain: Working with and developing for real quantum computers. In: Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE), Florence, Italy, pp. 1234–1240 (2019). https://doi.org/10.23919/DATE.2019.8715261
Bergholm, V., Izaac, J., Schuld, M., Gogolin, C., Alam, M.S., Ahmed, S., Arrazola, J.M., Blank, C., Delgado, A., Jahangiri, S., others: Pennylane: Automatic differentiation of hybrid quantum-classical computations. arXiv preprint (2018). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1811.04968
Piattini, M., Serrano, M., Perez-Castillo, R., Petersen, G., Hevia, J.L.: Toward a quantum software engineering. IT Prof. 23(1), 62–66 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2020.3019522
Pérez-Castillo, R., Serrano, M.A., Piattini, M.: Software modernization to embrace quantum technology. Adv. Eng. Software 151, 102933 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advengsoft.2020.102933
Sodhi, B.: Quality attributes on quantum computing platforms. arXiv preprint (2018). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1803.07407
McCaskey, A., Dumitrescu, E., Liakh, D., Humble, T.: Hybrid programming for near-term quantum computing systems. In: IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing (ICRC), pp. 1–12 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRC.2018.8638598
McCaskey, A.J., Lyakh, D.I., Dumitrescu, E.F., Powers, S.S., Humble, T.S.: Xacc: a system-level software infrastructure for heterogeneous quantum–classical computing. Quantum Sci. Technol. 5(2), 1–17 (2020). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1911.02452
Digital Journal: Topological Quantum Computing Market Is Likely to Experience a Tremendous Growth in Near Future (2022). https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/topological-quantum-computing-market-is-likely-to-experience-a-tremendous-growth-in-near-future-microsoft-ibm-google-d-wave-systems
Zinner, M., Dahlhausen, F., Boehme, P., Ehlers, J., Bieske, L., Fehring, L.: Toward the institutionalization of quantum computing in pharmaceutical research. Drug Discovery Today 27(2), 378–383 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/J.DRUDIS.2021.10.006
Pistoia, M., Ahmad, S.F., Ajagekar, A., Buts, A., Chakrabarti, S., Herman, D., Hu, S., Jena, A., Minssen, P., Niroula, P., Rattew, A., Sun, Y., Yalovetzky, R.: Quantum Machine Learning for Finance (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCAD51958.2021.96434692109.04298
Cheng, J.K., Lim, E.M., Krikorian, Y.Y., Sklar, D.J., Kong, V.J.: A Survey of Encryption Standard and Potential Impact Due to Quantum Computing. In: IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO50100.2021.9438392
Alvarado-Valiente, J., Romero-Álvarez, J., Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Quantum-classical software for drug prescription simulation in aging people. Gerontechnology 21, 1–1 (2022). https://doi.org/10.4017/GT.2022.21.S.557.OPP7
Alvarado-Valiente, J., Romero-Álvarez, J., Moguel, E., García-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Towards a classical-quantum platform for pharmacogenetic simulations. In: Gerontechnology V, pp. 187–192. Springer, Évora, Portugal and Cáceres, Spain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29067-1_20
Sanchez-Rivero, J., Talaván, D., Garcia-Alonso, J., Ruiz-Cortés, A., Murillo, J.M.: Operating with Quantum Integers: An Efficient ‘Multiples of’ Oracle (2023). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.04440
Sanchez-Rivero, J., Talaván, D., Garcia-Alonso, J., Ruiz-Cortés, A., Murillo, J.M.: Some Initial Guidelines for Building Reusable Quantum Oracles (2023). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.14959
Sanchez-Rivero, J., Talavan, D., Garcia-Alonso, J., Ruiz-Cortes, A., Murillo, J.: Automatic generation of an efficient less-than oracle for quantum amplitude amplification. In: International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering (Q-SE), pp. 26–33. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA (2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/Q-SE59154.2023.00011
Ravichandran, T., Rai, A.: Quality management in systems development: An organizational system perspective. MIS Q. Manag. Inf. Syst. 24(3), 381–410 (2000). https://doi.org/10.2307/3250967
Papazoglou, M.P., Georgakopoulos, D.: Introduction: service-oriented computing. Commun. ACM 46(10), 24–28 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1145/944217.944233
Papazoglou, M.P.: Service-oriented computing: concepts, characteristics and directions. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering, 2003. WISE 2003, pp. 3–12 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1109/WISE.2003.1254461
Papazoglou, M.P., van den Heuvel, W.-J.: Service oriented architectures: approaches, technologies and research issues. VLDB J. 16(3), 389–415 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-007-0044-3
Papazoglou, M.P., Traverso, P., Dustdar, S., Leymann, F.: Service-oriented computing: State of the art and research challenges. Computer 40, (2007). https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2007.400
World Wide Web Consortium: Web Services Architecture (2004). https://www.w3.org/TR/2004/NOTE-ws-arch-20040211/
Berrocal, J., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M., Canal, C.: Rich contextual information for monitoring the elderly in an early stage of cognitive impairment. Pervasive Mobile Comput. 34, 106–125 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2016.05.001
OpenAPI Initiative: The OpenAPI Specification Repository (2021). https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification
Kaebisch, S., McCool, M., Korkan, E.: Web of Things (WoT) Thing Description (2017). https://www.w3.org/TR/wot-thing-description11/
Rahaman, M., Masudul Islam, Md.: A review on progress and problems of quantum computing as a service (qcaas) in the perspective of cloud computing. Global J. Comput. Sci. Technol. (2015). https://computerresearch.org/index.php/computer/article/view/1279
Marston, S., Li, Z., Bandyopadhyay, S., Zhang, J., Ghalsasi, A.: Cloud computing - the business perspective. Decis. Support Syst. 51(1), 176–189 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2010.12.006
Zhao, J.: Quantum software engineering: Landscapes and horizons. CoRR abs/2007.07047 (2020). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2007.07047
Piattini, M., Peterssen, G., Pérez-Castillo, R.: Quantum computing: A new software engineering golden age. ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes 45(3), 12–14 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1145/3402127.3402131
Valencia, D., Garcia-Alonso, J., Rojo, J., Moguel, E., Berrocal, J., Murillo, J.M.: Hybrid classical-quantum software services systems: Exploration of the rough edges. In: Quality of Information and Communications Technology, pp. 225–238. Springer, Algarve, Portugal (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85347-1_17
Barzen, J., Leymann, F., Falkenthal, M., Vietz, D., Weder, B., Wild, K.: Relevance of near-term quantum computing in the cloud: A humanities perspective. In: Cloud Computing and Services Science - 10th International Conference (CLOSER) 2020, Prague, Czech Republic, May 7-9, 2020, Revised Selected Papers. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 1399, pp. 25–58. Springer, Prague, Czech Republic (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72369-9_2
Moguel, E., Rojo, J., Valencia, D., Berrocal, J., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Quantum service-oriented computing: current landscape and challenges. Software Q. J. 30(4), 983–1002 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-022-09589-y
Piattini, M., Peterssen, G., Pérez-Castillo, R., Hevia, J.L., Serrano, M.A., Hernández, G., García Rodríguez de Guzmán, I., Paradela, C.A., Polo, M., Murina, E., Jiménez, L., Marqueño, J.C., Gallego, R., Tura, J., Phillipson, F., Murillo, J.M., Niño, A., Rodríguez, M.: The talavera manifesto for quantum software engineering and programming. In: Short Papers Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on the QuANtum SoftWare Engineering & pRogramming, Talavera de la Reina, Spain, February 11–12, 2020. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 2561, pp. 1–5 (2020). https://www.aquantum.es/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Talavera_Manifesto.pdf
Moguel, E., Berrocal, J., García-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: A roadmap for quantum software engineering: applying the lessons learned from the classics. In: International Workshop on Software Engineering & Technology (Q-SET 2020) (2020). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2705/short1.pdf
Gyongyosi, L., Imre, S.: A Survey on quantum computing technology. Comput. Sci. Rev. 31, 51–71 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/J.COSREV.2018.11.002
Grumbling, E., Horowitz, M.: Quantum computing: progress and prospects. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (2019). https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25196/quantum-computing-progress-and-prospects
Alvarado-Valiente, J., Romero-Álvarez, J., Moguel, E., García-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Technological diversity of quantum computing providers: a comparative study and a proposal for api gateway integration. Software Q. J. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-023-09633-5
Karp, R.M.: Reducibility among combinatorial problems. Complex. Comput. Comput., 85–103 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2001-2_9
Gidney, C.: Stim: a fast stabilizer circuit simulator. Quantum 5 (2021). https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2021-07-06-497
Mandviwalla, A., Ohshiro, K., Ji, B.: Implementing grover’s algorithm on the ibm quantum computers. In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), pp. 2531–2537 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData.2018.8622457
Bisicchia, G., García-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M., Brogi, A.: Dispatching shots among multiple quantum computers: an architectural proposal. In: International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering and Technology (QCE23). IEEE Quantum Week 2023 (2023)
Srinivasan, K., Satyajit, S., Behera, B.K., Panigrahi, P.K.: Efficient quantum algorithm for solving travelling salesman problem: An ibm quantum experience (2018). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1805.10928
Aparicio-Morales, Á.M., Herrera, J.L., Moguel, E., Berrocal, J., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Minimizing deployment cost of hybrid applications. In: International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering and Technology (QCE23). IEEE Quantum Week 2023 (2023)
Ohkura, Y., Satoh, T., Van Meter, R.: Simultaneous execution of quantum circuits on current and near-future nisq systems. IEEE Trans. Quantum Eng. 3, (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/TQE.2022.3164716
Ray, J.: China at the nexus of ai and quantum computing. Chinese Power and Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives and Challenges, 155–172 (2022). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003212980-12
Kaliyanandi, M., Murugan, J., Subburaj, S.K., Ganesan, S., Gandhimathinathan, V.: Design and development of novel security approach designed for cloud computing with load balancing. Adv. Intell. Appl. Innov. Approach 2760, 050005 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0126814
Karacan, E., Karakaya, A., Akleylek, S.: Quantum secure communication between service provider and sim. IEEE Access 10, 69135–69146 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3186306
Garcia-Alonso, J., Rojo, J., Valencia, D., Moguel, E., Berrocal, J., Murillo, J.M.: Quantum software as a service through a quantum api gateway. IEEE Internet Comput. 26, 34–41 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/MIC.2021.3132688
Romero-Álvarez, J., Alvarado-Valiente, J., Moguel, E., Canal, C., García-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Leveraging api specifications for scaffolding quantum applications. In: International Workshop on Quantum Software Engineering and Technology (QCE23). IEEE Quantum Week 2023 (2023)
Amazon: Amazon Braket. Accelerate Quantum Computing Research. https://aws.amazon.com/braket/
Salm, M., Barzen, J., Leymann, F., Weder, B.: Prioritization of compiled quantum circuits for different quantum computers. In: 2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER), pp. 1258–1265 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00150. IEEE
Alvarado-Valiente, J., Romero-Álvarez, J., Arias, D., Terres, E.B., Garcia-Alonso, J., Moguel, E., Bringas, P.G., Murillo, J.M.: Improving the quality of quantum services generation process: Controlling errors and noise. In: Hybrid Artificial Intelligent Systems, pp. 180–191. Springer, Salamanca, Spain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40725-3_16
Alvarado-Valiente, J., Romero-Álvarez, J., Díaz, A., Rodríguez, M., García-Rodríguez, I., Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: Quantum services generation and deployment process: A quality-oriented approach. In: Quality of Information and Communications Technology, pp. 200–214. Springer, Aveiro, Portugal (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43703-8_15
Weder, B., Barzen, J., Leymann, F., Zimmermann, M.: Hybrid quantum applications need two orchestrations in superposition: A software architecture perspective. In: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS), pp. 1–13 (2021). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2103.04320 . IEEE
Weder, B., Barzen, J., Leymann, F., Salm, M., Wild, K.: Qprov: A provenance system for quantum computing. IET Quantum Commun. 2(4), 171–181 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1049/qtc2.12012
Johnson, B.: Qiskit runtime, a quantum-classical execution platform for cloud-accessible quantum computers. Bull. Am. Phys. Soc. (2022). https://research.ibm.com/publications/qiskit-runtime-a-quantum-classical-execution-platform-for-cloud-accessible-quantum-computers
Heim, B.: Universal quantum intermediate representation. In: APS March Meeting Abstracts, vol. 2021, pp. 34–009 (2021). https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021APS..MARM34009H/abstract
Hilton, J.: Building the quantum workforce of the future. Forbes Technology Council (2019). https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/06/19/building-the-quantum-workforce-of-the-future/
Schwichtenberg, S., Gerth, C., Engels, G.: From open api to semantic specifications and code adapters. In: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS), pp. 484–491 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICWS.2017.56. IEEE
Soni, A., Ranga, V.: Api features individualizing of web services: Rest and soap. Int. J. Innov. Technol. Explor. Eng. 8(9), 664–671 (2019). https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:241888945
Karavisileiou, A., Mainas, N., Petrakis, E.G.M.: Ontology for openapi rest services descriptions. In: 2020 IEEE 32nd International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI), pp. 35–40 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTAI50040.2020.00016
Romero-Álvarez, J., Alvarado-Valiente, J., Casco-Seco, J., Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J., Canal, C., Murillo, J.M.: Developing high-level abstractions for creating quantum services: Openapi and asyncapi. In: Symposium and Summer School On Service-Oriented Computing (SummerSOC 2023), Crete, Greece (2023)
Silva, V.: Practical Quantum Computing for Developers: Programming Quantum Rigs in the Cloud Using Python, Quantum Assembly Language and IBM QExperience. Apress, USA (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4218-6
Romero-Álvarez, J., Alvarado-Valiente, J., Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J.: Quantum web services: Development and deployment. In: Web Engineering, pp. 421–423. Springer, Alicante, Spain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34444-2_39
Kumara, I., Van Den Heuvel, W.-J., Tamburri, D.A.: Qsoc: Quantum service-oriented computing. In: Symposium and Summer School on Service-Oriented Computing, pp. 52–63 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87568-8_3. Springer
Alvarado-Valiente, J., Romero-Álvarez, J., Moguel, E., García-Alonso, J.: Quantum web services orchestration and management using devops techniques. In: Garrigós, I., Murillo Rodríguez, J.M., Wimmer, M. (eds.) Web Engineering, pp. 389–394. Springer, Alicante, Spain (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34444-2_33
Romero-Alvarez, J., Alvarado-Valiente, J., Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M.: A workflow for the continuous deployment of quantum services. In: IEEE International Conference on Software Services Engineering (SSE), pp. 1–8 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/SSE60056.2023.00015
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Moguel, E., Garcia-Alonso, J., Murillo, J.M. (2024). Development and Deployment of Quantum Services. In: Exman, I., Pérez-Castillo, R., Piattini, M., Felderer, M. (eds) Quantum Software. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64136-7_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64136-7_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-64135-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-64136-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)