While Quantum Information Science (QIS) is still in its infancy, the ability for quantum based hardware or computers to communicate and integrate with their classical counterparts will be a major requirement towards their success. Little attention however has been paid to this aspect of QIS. To manage and exchange information between systems, today's classic Information Technology (IT) commonly uses the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and its related tools. XML is composed of numerous specifications related to various fields of expertise. No such global specification however has been defined for quantum computers. QIS-XML is a proposed XML metadata specification for the description of fundamental components of QIS (gates & circuits) and a platform for the development of a hardware independent low level pseudo-code for quantum algorithms. This paper lays out the general characteristics of the QIS-XML specification and outlines practical applications through prototype use cases.
Quantum Information Science (QIS) is in its infancy and quantum computers are currently at an experimental stage. No production system exists and, while small prototypes are being tested in laboratories (using a few "qubits"), we may not see such reality for another 10 or 20 years. The challenge is that, while we do understand the underlying theoretical physics, the engineering needed to build quantum hardware is not yet here.
Nevertheless, quantum technology seem to be an inescapable outcome. At the current pace, Moore’s law1 will reach its limit around 20202 . Once transistors become a few or single atoms in size, quantum mechanical effects can no longer be ignored (today’s typical transistors are as small as 20 atoms). While we do not know exactly when production grade quantum hardware will become available, rapid progress is being made and several prototypes have been demonstrated to work. Their existence is unavoidable given the physical limits of ever shrinking hardware.
QIS is not and cannot be a stand alone technology. The “Classic” Information Science (CIS) is already deeply rooted in our society and represents a significant segment of the global economy. This implies that to be successful, any kind of quantum information system will need to smoothly integrate in this existing environment. Interacting with quantum systems will also require an interface that will naturally be build on classic computers. This merging of technologies in essence can be seen as a unification of the two fields of expertise into a “Complete Information Science”.
It is likely that the first generations of quantum computers will be in the form of co-processors, remote systems or highly specialized circuits whose functionalities will simply extend standard computers and applications. Classic computers will remain the common interface for end-users and the development platform of choice for programmers (at least until we have a quantum operating system).
The classic information science will therefore need to become “quantum aware” to be able to manage QIS objects. This integration means that (1) classic and quantum computers will need to communicate with each other and (2) classic computers will need to be able to represent and manage QIS concepts.
A widely used technology that is particularly attractive to answer such requirements is the eXtensible Markup Language3 or XML. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of structured data and metadata across different information systems. This paper introduces such approach through the proposal of QIS-XML, a metadata specification for Quantum Information Science.
Providing a comprehensive introduction to XML is outside the scope of this paper. A wide body of knowledge is available on the topic and numerous resources are available on the Internet. The key concepts are introduced below to facilitate the understanding of the paper.
When we need to describe an object or an entity, we typically use adjectives to capture its fundamental characteristics. For example, if we want to describe a book, we can use its title, author, year of publication or ISBN number. For a car, a different set of attributes can be used such as manufacturer, brand, color, price, etc. In the information technology world, these characteristics are know as metadata4 and is typically defined as “data about the data”. Metadata does not change anything about the item it describes but rather captures its nature by attaching a set of descriptive attributes to the object.
An important aspect of metadata is that it can be stored, accessed or exchanged with having to pass along the underlying object. We can browse a library catalog remotely or select a car from a brochure without going to the dealership.
Traditionally, when computer systems needed to capture such information, metadata was stored into a relational database system. While this works well in an isolated environment, databases run off proprietary solutions which make the exchange of information between agencies or individuals challenging. Database systems also are limited in functionalities and cannot always perform all the tasks we require for metadata management. The emergence of the Internet and of global communities has lead to new approaches based on openness and interoperability.
XML is one such technology. It allows computer systems to manage metadata (or data) in a harmonized way. It is non-proprietary (in the public domain) and can be used in any operating environment (Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac). It is a language that “tags” or “markups” elements of information and stores them in a simple text format that can be read by any computer. XML and its related standards are maintained by the World Wide Web 5 consortium (headed by by Sir Tim Berners-Lee 6 , often referred to as the inventor of the World Wide Web).
XML is widely used on the Web, in particular to exchange information between organizations and different computer systems. I
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