AQUA Tools

Aqua is my Annotated Quantum Assembler language (the acronym also
stands for Algorithms for Quantum Architectures and Advanced Quantum
Architectures, depending on context).  Welcome.

You'll find tools here to perform certain phases of program
compilation, primarily architecture-dependent but
technology-independent optimization, and various visualization and
analysis tools.

Goal:

The main goal is to develop a quantum computing *system* architecture.
The point of developing software, then, is to create:

* tools to support analysis of architectures and algorithms

Non-Goal:

THIS IS NOT QUANTUM PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE DESIGN.  Designing a good
language is hard; designing a lousy language is bad for your
reputation.  So, we're not doing it.

We do have several languages as part of the overall project; the
syntax and semantics of them are subject to change on the whims of the
programmers, until such time as we develop a large enough body of code
that change becomes impractical.  In particular, if you're reading
this, and you have suggestions for improving the languages, or better
yet, complementary tools you would like us to be compatible with, LET
US KNOW.  We like suggestions!

Philosophy

I'm not afraid to write code, though I'm neither the world's fastest
nor best programmer.  But, if I can find useful tools, I would rather
use someone else's than spend weeks writing/debugging my own.

What I want in a set of tools:

* open source tools
* dependent primarily, or preferably totally, on open source
* runs on Linux

Tools that meet all of these and have the functionality I'm after seem
to be few and far between, so, I'm coding.

The Aqua Tools

The main tool is called "aqua", and it is a compiler.  It takes as
input a quantum program, and outputs the program in another language.
Sometimes the transform is trivial, sometimes it is not, depending on
how aqua is called.  Most of the time, aqua can determine what
transform you want it to perform based on the input and output file
names.

The input language is Aqua, and may be annotated for a specific
architecture, or may be architecture-independent.  The possible
outputs are:

* fig (xfig) diagram of the circuit
* animated gif (actually, frame descriptions and a script to create
  an animated gif, which is moderately compute-intensive)
* an annotated Aqua file, converted to a different architecture

Coming soon:

* Octave functions of the unitary transforms
* source for Cyrus Master's simulator
* source for OpenQubit simulator?

Other included tools:

* qclib.m: rudimentary Octave library for quantum computation

Specific Dependencies

To do the storage assignment that is the heart of compiling from AC to
NTC architectures, you need access to Kevin Binkley's genetic
algorithm (which calls a fitness function included in this package).
His code is not yet ready for public consumption, though...

General Dependencies

Most of these are independent.  You'll only need the tools to generate
the output you want.

* xfig (if you want to edit circuit diagrams)
* fig2dev (to convert circuit diagrams to e.g. PostScript)
* povray (to render animation frames; this choice might change!)
* Image Magick:
  - convert (combines frames to an animation; should be compiled with
    GIF option on; this choice might change!)
  - animate (if you want to view locally; most web browsers will
    show animated gifs automatically as well)
* Octave (if you want to verify that the transforms do what you think)
* gcc, bison, and flex, (and make) if you want to compile from scratch

Most (all?) of these tools are available for almost any form of Linux,
or using cygwin on Windows.

To Do List

* finish the ToDo list
* macro preprocessor
* other output languages
* other architectures (esp. 2D, lattice, scalable ion trap)
* other algorithms
* quantum error correction (using macros)
* architecture description language

References:

* Van Meter & Itoh, quant-ph/0408006
* Svore, Turku quantum languages workshop, 2004

Contact

If you want to contact me, try

rdv (at) tera.ics.keio.ac.jp, or
rdv (at) alumni.caltech.edu

(The former is only good as long as I'm at Keio, the latter is buried
in spam, so pick your poison.)