About 2 weeks ago, we introduced the HyperBEAM Accelerationism (hb/acc) manifesto. And one of the main angles of the manifesto is focusing on the development of meta-VM devices that work as a sidecar for ao compute, and could be potentially an additional $AO compute revenue stream for the ao network node operators (HyperBEAM).
Therefore, today we are contributing more towards the meta-VMs angle by introducing the ~quantum-rt@1.0 device, a serverless quantum functions runtime on top of HyperBEAM.
Things quantum computers are good at
- Tamper-proof randomness for draws, games, governance
- Faster brute-force searches (Grover-style tricks)
- Hybrid optimisation loops (VQE, QAOA, ML kernels)
- Small-scale chemistry and materials sims
By plugging the quantum device into HyperBEAM, each of these becomes a one-call service over HTTP. This unlocks provable randomness via quantum_rng with each step stored onchain to reproducibility, fast quantum searches over unsorted data, and even small chemistry models (ten-electron molecules) with results posted onchain. This is step zero toward real NISQ hardware, and is already useful right now as a sidecar for ao processes an onchain AI agents.
Disclaimer of Big Words, relax
No, we didn't acquire a quantum computer, nor do we claim to have achieved real quantum computation (as in NISQ state - Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum - computing).
In this experiential, educational-purposes device, we have ported QuEST toolkit to HyperBEAM, achieving quantum circuit compute-exact simulation on CPU/GPU using the roqoqo-quest library.
In other words, this is a quantum-compatible compute device.
"The Quantum Exact Simulation Toolkit (QuEST) is a high-performance simulator of quantum statevectors and density matrices. It hybridises multithreading, GPU acceleration and distribution to run lightning fast on laptops, desktops and supercomputers, parallelising over multiple cores, CPUs and GPUs". - src
"qoqo-quest allows to simulate the execution of qoqo quantum circuits with the help of the QuEST quantum simulator. Based on QuEST qoqo supports the simulation of error-free and noisy quantum computers. qoqo-quest is designed to be able to simulate all operations that are part of qoqo" - src
Alright, now that we should have cleared up any potential misconceptions, let’s dive into the ~quantum-rt@1.0 device!
About the ~quantum-rt@1.0 device
This device brings quantum circuits-simulated compute to HyperBEAM, in the architecture of a serverless functions runtime. The ~quantum-rt@1.0 device can be seen as step 0 towards bringing NISQ compute to ao, as a sidecar to ao processes.
The current state of the device is beneficial for quantum testing, and research using classical simulation - and that’s because roqoqo-quest is designed to simulate all of the quantum operations that are part of the roqoqo (qoqo) quantum backend.
Architectural design
The architecture of the ~quantum-rt@1.0 device is relatively simple, it’s built as a Rust NIF device in the HyperBEAM codebase, and exposes a runtime environment wrapped around the QuEST compute.
The device has a registry of name-whitelisted serverless functions (quantum circuits) that the HyperBEAM node operators (with the device plugged in) can offer to users. Check the full list of registry functions here.
The NIF exposes a compute() function to the HyperBEAM stack that takes 3 inputs: the number of qubits to initialize, a function ID from the serverless registry, and a list of qubit indices to measure. Called over HTTP, it returns a HashMap containing the measurement results.
Try it out
The ~quantum-rt@1.0 device is currently supported on our experimental HyperBEAM node at hb.load.rs – to experiment with the quantum_rng quantum serverless function - pseudo-random as its circuit simulation mode - call the device from our HyperBEAM node as below:
curl -X POST "https://hb.load.rs/~quantum-rt@1.0/compute" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"function_id": "quantum_rng",
"num_qubits": 4,
"measurements": [0, 1, 2, 3]
}'The ideal future of the ~quantum-rt@1.0 device
As mentioned previously, this device is dead-simple and simply offers quantum circuits simulated execution flavoured with serverless functions runtime architecture.
The device marks step 0 towards making quantum circuits compute offering by ao-HyperBEAM node operators a reality. By integrating NISQ quantum compute along the ao network stack, the ecosystem will be achieving a novel approach (another one) in the web3 industry where such complex compute is only possible on ao network.
Additionally, building such a device on top of the ao network inherits the network security and compute verifiability, with a built-in $AO payment system to charge for this alien compute and take advantage of the distributed set of HyperBEAM nodes.
Will we be able to achieve quantum computing within the ao ecosystem? Not sure, could be, but we are taking step 0, the initiative to make it within the realm of reality in the future. Maybe someone else will get inspired by this experimental research and push towards the vision! Also, moving from QuEST backend to NISQ quantum computing is relatively easy (roqoqo-quest -> roqoqo-aqt), what’s needed to is gain access to cloud quantum computing, where such services are offered by projects like AQT.eu that offers access to trapped-ion quantum computers (hint, we are putting some efforts in that too)