RT Journal Article
T1 Review of intermediate representations for quantum computing
A1 Cardama Santiago, Francisco Javier
A1 Vázquez Pérez, Jorge
A1 Piñeiro Pomar, César Alfredo
A1 Pichel Campos, Juan Carlos
A1 Fernández Pena, Anselmo Tomás
A1 Gómez, Andrés
K1 Intermediate representation
K1 Quantum compiling
K1 Distributed quantum computing
K1 Compilers
AB Intermediate representations (IRs) are fundamental to classical and quantum computing, bridging high-level quantum programming languages and the hardware-specific instructions required for execution. This paper reviews the development of quantum IRs, focusing on their evolution and the need for abstraction layers that facilitate portability and optimization. Monolithic quantum IRs, such as QIR (Lubinski et al. in Front Phys 10:940293, 2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphy.2022.940293), QSSA (Peduri et al. in Proceedings of the 31st ACM SIGPLAN international conference on compiler construction. CC 2022. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, 2022), or Q-MLIR (McCaskey and Nguyen in Proceedings-2021 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering, QCE, 2021), their effectiveness in handling abstractions, and their hybrid support between quantum-classical operations are evaluated. However, a key limitation is their inability to address qubit locality, an essential feature for distributed quantum computing (DQC). To overcome this, InQuIR (Nishio and Wakizaka in InQuIR: Intermediate Representation for Interconnected Quantum Computers, 2023. https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.00267) was introduced as an IR specifically designed for distributed systems, providing explicit control over qubit locality and inter-node communication. While effective in managing qubit distribution, InQuIR’s dependence on manual manipulation of communication protocols increases complexity for developers. NetQIR (Vázquez-Pérez et al. in NetQIR: An Extension of QIR for Distributed Quantum Computing, 2024. https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.03712), an extension of QIR for DQC, emerges as a solution to achieve the abstraction of quantum communications protocols. This review emphasizes the need for further advancements in IRs for distributed quantum systems, which will play a crucial role in the scalability and usability of future quantum networks.
PB Springer Nature
SN 0920-8542
YR 2025
FD 2025-01-21
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/41168
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/41168
LA eng
NO Cardama, F. J., Vázquez-Pérez, J., Piñeiro, C., Pichel, J. C., Pena, T. F., & Gómez, A. (2025). Review of intermediate representations for quantum computing. "The Journal of Supercomputing", 81(418).
NO This work was supported by MICINN through the European Union NextGenerationEU recovery plan (PRTR-C17.I1), and by the Galician Regional Government through the “Planes Complementarios de I+D+I con las Comunidades Autónomas” in Quantum Communication. This work was also supported by financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain) (PID2022-141623NB-I00), the Xunta de Galicia - Consellerí a de Cultura, Educación, Formación Profesional e Universidades (Centro de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2024-2027 ED431G-2023/04 and Reference Competitive Group accreditation ED431C-2022/016), and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund - ERDF).
DS Minerva
RD 23 abr 2026