Qumat: Apache Mahout Quantum Compute
Session Abstract
In this talk we present current progress on Mahout’s new quantum compute layer named Qumat. We will give an overview of the project, explain why we built Qumat, and show its current state. We will present a demo of Qumat in action, and end with calls to action for researchers and engineers interested in using it and contributing to the project.
Session Description
Following Mahout’s core values of interoperability and providing tools for matrix arithmetic at scale, we have added a new layer (qumat) alongside our existing distributed matrix math framework (Samsara), that allows quantum researchers and developers to write code once and run it on any back-end available.
As with distributed compute systems like Spark and Flink, moving from one platform to another typically requires a complete code rewrite. This is prohibitive in most cases, but Samsara allows machine learning researchers and developers one unified interface to write code once and port instantly to another platform if it is deemed necessary.
Similarly for quantum computing, multiple vendors (IBM, GCP, and AWS to name a few) have their own libraries for accessing their cloud quantum compute services, such as qiskit, cirq, and braket. To give the same flexibility in the quantum area, qumat corrals all these libraries under one interface, allowing users to focus on building circuits and writing algorithms rather than adapting to one particular library.
