Design Automation for Quantum Computing

In the 1970s, researchers started to utilize quantum mechanics to address questions in computer science and information theory—establishing new research directions such as quantum computing.

Now, more than four decades later, we are at the dawn of a new""computing age"" in which quantum computers indeed will find its way into practical application.

However, while impressiveaccomplishments can be observed in the physical realization of quantum computers, the development of automated tools andmethods that provide assistance in the design and realization of applications for those devices is at risk of not being able to keep upwith this development anymore—leaving a situation where we might have powerful quantum computers but hardly any propermeans to actually use them.This project aims to provide a solution for this upcoming design gap by developing efficient and practical relevant methods forcorresponding simulation, synthesis, and verification tasks.

While the current state of the art severely suffers from theinterdisciplinarity of quantum computing (leading to the consideration of inappropriate models, inconsistent interpretations, or""wrong"" problem formulations), this project will build a bridge between the design automation community and the quantumcomputing community.

This will allow to fully exploit the potential of design automation which is hardly utilized in quantumcomputing yet.Since quantum computers are reaching feasibility, the methods developed within this project will be highly demanded.

Preliminaryinvestigations conducted in preparation of this proposal already showed the potential of such an endeavor and raised significantattention in the quantum computing community and its ""big players"".

The project plans to continue these developments on a largerscale—eventually providing the foundation for design automation methods that accomplish for quantum computing what thedesign automation community realized for classical electronic circuits.