Quantum computers are a new, promising technology still
in its infancy. Our conventional computers are already quite
powerful. But this new technology could speed things up a
lot! Because of this, many computer companies have already
started building quantum computers. Unfortunately, they are
still rather small compared to what we expect in the future.
So how can we prepare programmers and users for this
new technology? One way to do so: simulate the quantum
computer on our conventional machines. Of course, this is
very complex ? if it were easy, we would not need a quantum
computer in the first place. Here we propose a method that
tackles this complexity using so-called decision diagrams. We
tested our method by attempting several different quantum
computations. Then we compared it to the other existing
simulators. Our approach outperforms the other solutions
in many cases. This allows everyone to simulate quantum
computations today ? even before the really powerful
quantum computers are available.
Forschungs-