Parallel quantum computer simulation on the CUDA architecture

Abstract

Due to their increasing computational power, modern graphics processing architectures are becoming more and more popular for general purpose applications with high performance demands. This is the case of quantum computer simulation, a problem with high computational requirements both in memory and processing power. When dealing with such simulations, multiprocessor architectures are an almost obliged tool. In this paper we explore the use of the new graphics processor architecture NVIDIA CUDA in the simulation of some basic quantum computing operations. This new architecture is oriented towards a more general exploitation of the graphics platform, allowing to use it as a parallel SIMD multiprocessor. In this direction, some implementation strategies are proposed, showing that the effectiveness of the codes is subject to a right exploitation of the underlying memory hierarchy. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.