Open Quantum Assembly Language
Open Quantum Assembly Language
Cross and colleagues define OpenQASM, a text format for low-depth quantum circuits with measurement, reset, and fast feedback.
Paper information (2017, OpenQASM technical specification) — Andrew W. Cross, Lev S. Bishop, John A. Smolin, and Jay M. Gambetta. arXiv:1707.03429
Work
The paper defines Open Quantum Assembly Language (OpenQASM) for implementing experiments with low-depth quantum circuits. It represents physical circuits over a CNOT plus SU(2) universal basis using straight-line text, and includes measurement, reset, fast feedback, and gate subroutines. Code can be written by hand or generated by higher-level tools before execution on a quantum device.
Contributions
- A simple readable assembly representation for low-depth quantum experiments.
- Explicit support for measurement, reset, fast feedback, and gate subroutines.
- An interface between higher-level circuit tools and device execution.
- A universal gate-basis representation for physical circuits used in experiments.
Limits
OpenQASM is a device-oriented circuit format, rather than a complete quantum language with rich abstraction, type proofs, or higher-order functions. Expressing an operation does not mean that a target backend supports its gate set, feedback latency, or calibration accuracy. Circuit correctness, resource cost, and noise behavior require separate tools and hardware models.
Connections
OpenQASM forms a low-level interface between Quantum Circuits and higher-level descriptions such as Quipper, and can be compared with the type-safe circuit core of QWIRE. Compared with The Measurement Calculus, it emphasizes an execution format rather than rewrite semantics for measurement patterns.
Original paper
Andrew W. Cross, Lev S. Bishop, John A. Smolin, and Jay M. Gambetta, Open Quantum Assembly Language, 2017. arXiv:1707.03429