Open source quantum computing software OpenFermion?

Google announced on its official blog the open source quantum computing software OpenFermion. This is another new move after open source deep learning development frameworks such as tensorflow and caffe.

Google said that the source code of OpenFermion is open this time and can be used by users for free. Chemists and materials scientists can use Google software to adapt algorithms and equations so that they can run on quantum computers.

"We hope this decision will help build a community based on OpenFermion as the standard, so that chemical simulations can be performed on quantum computers." Google wrote in a blog post.

Google’s open source approach is also a current trend in the field of quantum computers. Companies such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft and D-Wave have all announced the opening of their own quantum computing platforms to promote the commercial operation of quantum computing.

OpenFermion is a software that contains a library of algorithms that can simulate electron interactions on a quantum computer. This is important for the fields of chemistry and materials science because OpenFermion can help scientists describe chemical molecular simulation experiments and materials into a programming format that quantum computers can understand. Previously, chemists had to work with professional quantum computer software developers and write large amounts of software code to simulate the interactions between electrons on a quantum computer.

In addition, OpenFermion can directly adapt the two most popular traditional simulators-Psi4 and PySCF. It is worth mentioning that OpenFermion is compatible with several different quantum computers, including models developed by Google, Rigetti and IBM.

In addition to Google, quantum computer start-up Rigetti also participated in this software development. Google said in a blog post that ETH Zurich, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Oxford University, Dartmouth College and NASA provided help during the development of the software.

Compared with traditional computers, the biggest difference between quantum computers is that traditional computers can only solve problems one by one in chronological order, while quantum computers can solve multiple problems at the same time.

The operation rule used by traditional computers is binary, using 0 and 1 to record information status. However, quantum computers describe information by quantum states. According to the characteristics of quantum, it can represent multiple states at the same time and perform superposition operations at the same time, so it has a faster computing method.

Because the processing power of quantum computers is several orders of magnitude higher than that of current traditional supercomputers. Therefore, many people believe that quantum computers will complete tasks that were previously considered impossible, such as simulating chemical catalysts, building models of ultra-complex systems, cracking encryption codes, etc. But so far, the quantum computers developed by these companies have not been powerful or precise enough to outperform classical computers in running most tasks.