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ParTec at HPQCI 2024
The integration of QC into HPC centers has become a topic of increasing interest and urgency because QC is viewed as the next logical step for accelerating HPC. To leverage QC’s potential for HPC the first international workshop on High Performance and Quantum Computing Integration (HPQCI) at HPDC conference 2024 in Pisa (Italy) focused on the necessary steps for seamless HPC/QC integration. The level of integration across various layers -including programming models, environmental and infrastructure requirements, integrated scheduling environments, and operating system extensions- determines the required effort to an optimal heterogenous HPC-QC workflow. After five presentations, this topic was discussed with the audience in a final panel.

Key takeaways

  • In his keynote Paolo Viviani (LINKS Foundation) highlighted that critical issues such as HPC resource allocation and job scheduling represent a key challenge in the interplay between HPC and QC that need to be addressed. This is especially true given the heterogeneity of current quantum technologies and their computational models (e.g. digital vs. analog), which is very challenging given the scarce QC hardware resource.
  • First practical approaches of tackling this challenge were then presented by Davide Ferrari (University of Parma) who discussed a design framework for simulating distributed quantum computing.
  • Stefan Kister (ParTec AG) then gave an overview on ParTec’s component-based HPC-integrable quantum computing approach which was recently announced at ISC 2024. He delved into the details of the HPC-QC API QBridge and the HPC-powered quantum workbench.
  • Finally, Stefano Markidis (KTH Royal Institute of Technology) shared his perspective on necessary changes of quantum programming models. He noted that current models use quantum computers as black-box accelerators that still largely depend on classical hardware components. Markidis sees this as a major limitation in achieving optimal implementations and beneficial operation of quantum computers. He suggested that concepts from non-Von Neumann architectures – which use abstractions such as stimuli, channels, and schedules – would be more consistent with the nature of quantum computing systems and the physical processes they embody.

Overall, the workshop was highly successful, with presentations that built on each other, and fostering open and constructive discussions. It provided the audience with a solid basis to explore the crucial and interesting topic of HPC-QC integration. A big thank you goes to the organizers and moderators Martin Ruefenacht and Davide Ferrari!

Further materials

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