What matters, and by how much? Quantum talent is like an artificial neural network: everything has a weight. Also, every job specification has its own model, so the weights for a quantum algorithm developer role are different than the weights for a software engineering role. For example, a quantum algorithm developer role probably requires a PhD…

A Specific Use Case My March 10, 2002, article titled “Quantum Error Ignoration” used a quantum walk as a practical example: for two qubits, imagine you have three valid directions of travel and one invalid direction of travel; you simply cannot travel in an invalid direction. So, if environmental noise tells you to go…

For the Mathematically Uninclined I recently experimented with the Approximate Toffoli to see how it would perform as a component of an Approximate SWAP Test. While trying to answer someone’s question, it occurred to me that the Quirk online simulator provides an excellent visual explanation as to how the Approximate Toffoli works…

The meaning of life, apparently, is 44. I was inspired by how Soshun Naito created the shallowest C14X gate, a gate with 14 control qubits and 1 target qubit, to win the MCX challenge of the recent #ClassiqCodingCompetition. Because many top competitors across the four challenges used relative phase Toffoli gates, I experimented with using an RCCX…

Does it work? Like I said in my first book, “Dungeons & Qubits, an Adventurer’s Tale Beyond the Quantum Computing Tutorials,” (which is pending an update, by the way) sometimes you just need to experiment. I recently wrote about how relative phase Toffoli gates can reduce circuit depth, albeit with a caveat, but…

“Gate by gate, ooh baby!” I’ve read the OpenQASM 2.0 specification multiple times, and I thought I had a fairly good grasp on it. After all, I still consider myself IBM’s first and only unofficial OpenQASM Advocate. But, thanks to the #ClassiqCodingCompetition and the winning solutions’ emphasis on relative phase Toffoli gates, I recently noticed…

Achievement Unlocked At the end of my first book, “Dungeons & Qubits: an Adventurer’s Tale Beyond the Quantum Computing Tutorials,” is a section titled, “Wish List.” In this section, I listed six projects that I was hoping to work on in the near future. The first topic on my wish list was…

Here are the generic lessons. Over the years, I’ve signed up for multiple coding competitions. I’ve always looked at the problems, quickly lost interest, and I’ve never ended up actually submitting anything. Classiq’s Coding Competition marks the first contest I’ve ever actually competed in, and I must say I learned a lot. I learned a…

TL;DR: Simpler is Better The Classiq Coding Competition included a Hamiltonian simulation problem. Although quantum chemistry is not my area of expertise, I can read code and analyze circuits. I can tell when it seems to be working, as well as when it seems not to be working. …