Quantum Machines Announces QUA as First Standard Universal Language for Quantum Computers
The new language enables researchers to run any type of quantum program and combine it with classical processing
 Quantum Machines, the creator of the first complete hardware and software solution for the control and operation of quantum computers, announced today the launch of QUA as a standard universal language for Quantum Computing. QUA allows researchers to intuitively program even the most complex quantum programs that are tightly integrated with classical processing and real-time decision-making. The language is the first to address all requirements of an anticipated quantum computing software abstraction layer.
A primary challenge with quantum research and development today is that every quantum computer has its own unique hardware, coded in the researchers’ language of choice. The unique nature of every system results in teams spending inordinate amounts of time coding and programming new programs and algorithms, with any variation requiring either restarting the process or even re-routing the control hardware itself. The resulting process is extremely time-consuming and difficult to scale to more complex systems and algorithms.
QUA is a pulse-level programming language for quantum devices, and the first language designed specifically as a universal quantum computing software abstraction layer. To achieve this, several different criteria had to be fulfilled to fit the distinct structure of quantum algorithms and quantum programming: semantical, technological, commercial, and qubit agnostic.
“QUA is the first-ever programming language designed with the needs of quantum research in mind and offers teams a powerful and intuitive language designed not only for their present needs but also those of the future.”
– Dr. Itamar Sivan, CEO, Quantum Machines
From a semantic perspective, QUA is the first language to combine universal quantum operations at the pulse-level, together with universal classical operations, namely, Turing-complete classical processing, and comprehensive control-flow. From a technological and commercial perspective, QUA was developed to be extremely intuitive while relying on QM’s proprietary compiler, XQP, to do the heavy lifting for optimizing the many entangled quantum and classical operations. XQP compiles quantum programs to QM’s Pulse Processor assembly language which can then run them with extremely low latencies and precision. Finally, QUA is qubit agnostic and supports all quantum processors.
Quantum computers are nothing like any other computer we use today. However, for the inception of QUA and its compiler XQP, inspiration was drawn from classical counterparts that have become standards or widely established across the computing industry, such as NVIDIA’s CUDA, Intel’s X86, and Google’s TensorFlow. These three languages are significantly different in nature, illustrating the complexity and distinct approach required for quantum computing.
Used as part of Quantum Machines’ existing Quantum Orchestration Platform, QUA is a universal language. Its beta version has already been adopted by leading teams in multinational corporates, startups, national-labs, and academic institutions that develop quantum computers based on the entire spectrum of quantum hardware available today including superconducting qubits, trapped ions & atoms, NV centers, quantum dots, and topological qubits. It is the combination of QUA’s capabilities with an actual underlying processor, QM’s Pulse Processor, which allows for QUA’s fast adoption across the emerging quantum industry.
“As the field of quantum computing continues to progress and grow more complex, teams across the industry need solutions that can scale to meet their growing needs,” said Itamar Sivan, CEO of Quantum Machines. “QUA is the first-ever programming language designed with the needs of quantum research in mind and offers teams a powerful and intuitive language designed not only for their present needs but also those of the future.”
“We are extremely excited to introduce QUA,” said Yonatan Cohen, co-founder and CTO of Quantum Machines. “With QUA, teams can run even the most complex quantum-error-correction and hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, right ‘out-of-the-box’. It is a true paradigm shift that we see drastically impacting each and every one of our customers.”
