In the race to develop and build quantum computers, D-Wave are making a new software tool to help developers program D-Wave machines without any necessary experience in quantum physics or advanced mathematics, according to this piece on Wired Magazine by Klint Finley.

The software tool, Qbsolv, will be made open-source, meaning anyone will be able to freely share and modify the software. It is an interesting move by D-Wave, who hope the software will get other researchers and practitioners “involved in charting the future directions of quantum computing developments”. D-Wave International president Bo Ewald says, “we need more smart people thinking about applications, and another set thinking about software tools.”

The new software will join a growing pool of readily available software for quantum computer programmers, such as Qmasm, which assists developers by removing the worry about addressing underlying hardware in D-Wave machines. Finley writes on Ewald’s goal is to “kickstart a quantum computing software tools ecosystem and foster a community of developers working on quantum computer problems.”

Unfortunately, softwares such as Qbsolv actually require access to D-Wave machines, of which there are a few. Rather, programs and softwares such as Qbsolv and Qmasm are step towards improving the way we visualise problems within quantum computing. Finley, however, is less emphatic and writes “they’ll need more than just open source software […] They’ll need an open source community.”

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