一句话：首个对量子计算平台缺陷的大规模实证研究，揭示量子特有缺陷的分布、表现形式与反复出现的模式。
随着量子计算的发展，用于开发量子程序的软件平台的正确性变得愈发重要，而这需要深入理解这些平台常见的缺陷类型。本文开展了首个针对量子计算平台缺陷的深入研究：作者从 18 个开源量子计算平台中收集并人工检查了 223 个真实缺陷。研究发现，其中相当大比例（39.9%）是量子特有的缺陷，说明需要专门的方法来预防和发现它们。这些缺陷分布在平台各个组件中，但量子特有缺陷尤其集中在表示、编译和优化量子编程抽象的组件里。与崩溃等明显异常不同，许多量子特有缺陷通过非预期的输出表现出来。论文最后给出了一份反复出现的缺陷模式层级结构，其中包括十个新发现的量子特有模式。这些发现既表明了量子计算平台缺陷的普遍性与重要性，也能帮助开发者规避常见错误、帮助工具构建者应对预防和修复此类缺陷的挑战。
The interest in quantum computing is growing, and with it, the importance of software platforms to develop quantum programs. Ensuring the correctness of such platforms is important, and it requires a thorough understanding of the bugs they typically suffer from. To address this need, this paper presents the first in-depth study of bugs in quantum computing platforms. We gather and inspect a set of 223 real-world bugs from 18 open-source quantum computing platforms. Our study shows that a significant fraction of these bugs (39.9%) are quantum-specific, calling for dedicated approaches to prevent and find them. The bugs are spread across various components, but quantum-specific bugs occur particularly often in components that represent, compile, and optimize quantum programming abstractions. Many quantum-specific bugs manifest through unexpected outputs, rather than more obvious signs of misbehavior, such as crashes. Finally, we present a hierarchy of recurrent bug patterns, including ten novel, quantum-specific patterns. Our findings not only show the importance and prevalence bugs in quantum computing platforms, but they help developers to avoid common mistakes and tool builders to tackle the challenge of preventing, finding, and fixing these bugs.
@article{paperbot1518,
title = {Bugs in Quantum computing platforms: an empirical study},
author = {Matteo Paltenghi and Michael Pradel},
journal = {Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages},
volume = {6},
number = {OOPSLA1},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1145/3527330}
}