QADL: Prototype of Quantum Architecture Description Language

Quantum Software (QSW) aims to exploit the principles of quantum mechanics – programming quantum bits (QuBits) that manipulate quantum gates (QuGates) – for operationalizing quantum computing systems. QSW has emerged as a quantum-specific genre of classical software systems, requiring notations, languages, patterns, and tools, etc., for mapping the operations of QuBits and the structure of QuGates to components of quantum software architectures. To support declarative modelling of QSW, we seek to enable architecture-centric development where software engineers can model, program, and evaluate quantum software systems by abstracting away implementation details through architectural representation. We have developed a prototype for QADL – Quantum Architecture Description Language – providing a specification language, design space, and execution environment to architect QSW. Inspired by the concept of classical ADLs, QADL provides (i) a graphical interface to specify QSW components, (ii) a parser for syntactical correctness of the components, and (iii) execution environment by integrating QADL with IBM Qiskit. The preliminary evaluation of QADL is based on usability analysis by a team of quantum physicists and software engineers, using quantum algorithms such as Quantum Teleportation and Grover’s Search. QADL as an ongoing project is a pioneering effort, complementing existing research and development on classical ADLs, to offer a specification language and design environment dedicated to architecting QSW. Project page of QADL: https://github.com/wasimsse/QadlProject