Cambridge Quantum (CQ) is pleased to confirm that the latest version of TKET (pronounced “ticket”), their high-performance hardware-agnostic quantum software development kit (SDK), is completely open-source.
Ilyas Khan, CEO at CQ, noted that they had first announced that TKET would be “available on an ‘open-access’ basis earlier this year, with a commitment to become fully open-sourced by the end of this year.”
Khan added:
“During that period, a global community of software developers embraced our class leading product that delivers the best possible performance, whilst utilizing existing platforms such as Qiskit and Cirq, as well as the largest collection of quantum processors available. The growth of the global TKET community has been astonishing and I am so pleased that we can now complete this part of our journey.”
Dr. Ross Duncan, Head of Software at CQ, stated:
“Minimizing gate count and execution time are very important in this Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era. TKET combines high-level hardware-agnostic optimization for quantum circuits with target specific compilation passes for the chosen quantum device.”
Dr. Duncan also mentioned that this helps quantum computing users “move seamlessly between quantum platforms, while maintaining consistent high performance.” He added that users need only to focus “on developing their quantum applications, not rewriting code around the idiosyncrasies of any particular hardware.” At the same time, they help quantum computing hardware firms “ensure that they can get the best performance from their processors,” Dr. Duncan said.
Open-sourcing allows for greater transparency of the code, easier reporting of issues and “more robust integrations.” The fast-growing quantum software community will now be able to “make their own contributions or take inspiration and develop their own extensions to the codebase under the permissive Apache 2.0 license.”
As mentioned in the update shared with CI, this development follows the open-sourcing of extensions which “began in Version 0.8; extensions are Python modules which enable TKET to work with different quantum devices and simulators, and provide integration with other quantum software tools.”
Extensions are currently available for all the main quantum hardware and software platforms, the announcement revealed.
Established in 2014 and supported by various quantum computing firms, CQ is an international provider of quantum software and quantum algorithms, “enabling clients to achieve the most out of rapidly evolving quantum computing hardware.”
CQ maintains offices in Europe, the US, and Japan. On June 8, 2021, CQ announced “a merger with Honeywell Quantum Solutions which is expected to close in Q3 2021.”