QuantSim

Inspiration

Scott Aaronson is a literal god and should be worshipped by all.

What it does

Simulates a 10+ qubit quantum computer in Java, with real quantum measurements.

How I built it

Ungodly amounts of linear algebra

Challenges I ran into

Well, this had to be hard at some point, because otherwise quantum computing wouldn't be worth anything. Ever computed the Kronecker product of 15 matrices? Don't. It sucks.

Also verifying randomness is actually really really hard. If you roll a die 6 times and get 6 every time, are you just unlucky or is the die broken? When are sure? What if its 2am and you're super tired?

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We had a working quantum computer engine in 12 hours. That's awesome. I'm really glad we could use some of the stuff we learned last semester. We also made what is almost definitely the first quantum measurement at a HackTX, ever.

What I learned

Linear algebra can do everything. Exponenential growth is hard. (Seriously, every bit you add makes it twice as hard, 10 bits is easy, 15 is 32 times harder, 20 is 32 harder than that and is out of our reach. World record is 59 with over 3 terabytes of RAM and a week of computation)

What's next for QuantSim

Optimizations, cooling to 13millikelvin, GPU integration.

Built With

• anu-qnrq
• ejml
• java