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QFaaS: A Serverless Function-as-a-Service Framework for Quantum Computing

Hoa T. Nguyen, Muhammad Usman, Rajkumar Buyya

TL;DR

QFaaS addresses fragmentation in quantum software engineering by offering a universal serverless framework that supports multiple SDKs and providers, enabling hybrid quantum-classical functions. It combines containerization, CI/CD, and a six-stage lifecycle to streamline development, deployment, and execution on simulators and real quantum hardware. The paper presents architecture, components, workflows, and two case studies (QRNG and Shor) with performance evaluations, and outlines plans for open-source release. This work demonstrates a practical path toward vendor-agnostic, scalable quantum software engineering in the NISQ era.

Abstract

Recent breakthroughs in quantum hardware are creating opportunities for its use in many applications. However, quantum software engineering is still in its infancy with many challenges, especially dealing with the diversity of quantum programming languages and hardware platforms. To alleviate these challenges, we propose QFaaS, a novel Quantum Function-as-a-Service framework, which leverages the advantages of the serverless model and the state-of-the-art software engineering approaches to advance practical quantum computing. Our framework provides essential components of a quantum serverless platform to simplify the software development and adapt to the quantum cloud computing paradigm, such as combining hybrid quantum-classical computation, containerizing functions, and integrating DevOps features. We design QFaaS as a unified quantum computing framework by supporting well-known quantum languages and software development kits (Qiskit, Q#, Cirq, and Braket), executing the quantum tasks on multiple simulators and quantum cloud providers (IBM Quantum and Amazon Braket). This paper proposes architectural design, principal components, the life cycle of hybrid quantum-classical function, operation workflow, and implementation of QFaaS. We present two practical use cases and perform the evaluations on quantum computers and simulators to demonstrate our framework's ability to ease the burden on traditional engineers to expedite the ongoing quantum software transition.

QFaaS: A Serverless Function-as-a-Service Framework for Quantum Computing

TL;DR

QFaaS addresses fragmentation in quantum software engineering by offering a universal serverless framework that supports multiple SDKs and providers, enabling hybrid quantum-classical functions. It combines containerization, CI/CD, and a six-stage lifecycle to streamline development, deployment, and execution on simulators and real quantum hardware. The paper presents architecture, components, workflows, and two case studies (QRNG and Shor) with performance evaluations, and outlines plans for open-source release. This work demonstrates a practical path toward vendor-agnostic, scalable quantum software engineering in the NISQ era.

Abstract

Recent breakthroughs in quantum hardware are creating opportunities for its use in many applications. However, quantum software engineering is still in its infancy with many challenges, especially dealing with the diversity of quantum programming languages and hardware platforms. To alleviate these challenges, we propose QFaaS, a novel Quantum Function-as-a-Service framework, which leverages the advantages of the serverless model and the state-of-the-art software engineering approaches to advance practical quantum computing. Our framework provides essential components of a quantum serverless platform to simplify the software development and adapt to the quantum cloud computing paradigm, such as combining hybrid quantum-classical computation, containerizing functions, and integrating DevOps features. We design QFaaS as a unified quantum computing framework by supporting well-known quantum languages and software development kits (Qiskit, Q#, Cirq, and Braket), executing the quantum tasks on multiple simulators and quantum cloud providers (IBM Quantum and Amazon Braket). This paper proposes architectural design, principal components, the life cycle of hybrid quantum-classical function, operation workflow, and implementation of QFaaS. We present two practical use cases and perform the evaluations on quantum computers and simulators to demonstrate our framework's ability to ease the burden on traditional engineers to expedite the ongoing quantum software transition.
Paper Structure (52 sections, 6 equations, 13 figures, 2 tables, 3 algorithms)

This paper contains 52 sections, 6 equations, 13 figures, 2 tables, 3 algorithms.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Challenges for quantum software engineering
  3. Challenges for quantum cloud computing
  4. Contributions
  5. Background
  6. The Fundamentals of Quantum Computing
  7. Qubits, Superposition and Entanglement
  8. Quantum Gates
  9. Quantum Circuits and Quantum Algorithms
  10. Quantum Software Engineering
  11. Quantum SDKs and languages
  12. NISQ era and the Hybrid Quantum-Classical model
  13. Variation of Quantum Software Development Lifecycle
  14. Quantum Computing as a Service (QCaaS)
  15. Serverless Quantum Computing
  16. ...and 37 more sections

Figures (13)

  • Figure 1: An example quantum circuit for the Deutsch-Jozsa Algorithm (generated by using Qiskit)
  • Figure 2: Overview of QFaaS Components and Architecture Design
  • Figure 3: QFaaS CLI tool (sample commands for working with QFaaS functions)
  • Figure 5: Hybrid Quantum-Classical Function Life Cycle.
  • Figure 7: Operation workflow for invoking QFaaS functions
  • ...and 8 more figures