Towards High-Level Synthesis of Quantum Circuits

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of quantum algorithms, primarily due to their exponential speedup over their classical counterparts. Quantum algorithms find applications in various domains, including machine learning, molecular simulation, and cryptography. However, extensive knowledge of linear algebra and quantum mechanics are required to program a quantum computer, which might not be feasible for traditional software programmers. Moreover, current quantum programming paradigm is difficult to scale and integrate quantum circuits to achieve complex functionality. To this end, in this paper, we introduce QHLS, a quantum high-level synthesis (HLS) framework. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first HLS framework for quantum circuits. The proposed QHLS allows quantum programmers to start with high-level behavioral descriptions (e.g., C, C++) and automatically generate the corresponding quantum circuit; thus, reducing the complexity of programming a quantum computer. Our experimental results demonstrate the success of QHLS in translating high-level behavioral software programs containing arithmetic, logical, and conditional statements.