Princeton Researchers Develop Debugging Tools for Near-Term Quantum Computers

(ScienceTimes) Princeton University researchers developed debugging tools based on statistical tests for helping programmers in building correct quantum programs for near-term quantum computers. Both classical computing and quantum computing involve debugging programs as the most tedious task in software development. The boom in the field of quantum computing experimentation has created an urgent challenge in assisting programmers in translating those abstract algorithms into correctly functioning quantum program code.
The researchers Yipeng Huang and Margaret Martonosi, a Princeton University professor of Computer Science, identified three key challenges in debugging quantum programs and assessing solutions in addressing those challenges.
–Programmers find it difficult to easily examine the values of variables of a quantum program.
–There exists a difficulty in interpreting quantum states.
–There are no existing guidelines when it comes to checking or debugging programs.