QFaaS: A Serverless Function-as-a-Service framework for Quantum computing

Abstract

Quantum computing is rapidly reaching a point in which its application design and engineering aspects must be seriously considered. However, quantum software engineering is still in its infancy, with numerous challenges, especially in dealing with the diversity of quantum programming languages and noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) systems. To alleviate these challenges, we propose QFaaS, a holistic Quantum Function-as-a-Service framework, which leverages the advantages of the serverless model, DevOps lifecycle, and the state-of-the-art software techniques to advance practical quantum computing for next-generation application development in the NISQ era. Our framework provides essential elements of a serverless quantum system to streamline service-oriented quantum application development in cloud environments, such as combining hybrid quantum–classical computation, automating the backend selection, cold start mitigation, and adapting DevOps techniques. QFaaS offers a full-stack and unified quantum serverless platform by integrating multiple well-known quantum software development kits (Qiskit, Q#, Cirq, and Braket), quantum simulators, and cloud providers (IBM Quantum and Amazon Braket). This paper proposes the concept of quantum function-as-a-service, system design, operation workflows, implementation of QFaaS, and lessons learned on the benefits and limitations of quantum serverless computing. We also present practical use cases with various quantum applications on today’s quantum computers and simulators to demonstrate our framework capability to facilitate the ongoing quantum software transition.