There’s no denying, I went a little bit over the top with the closed-source, proprietary version of the Blackfire Framework under my now-defunct start-up, Black Brane Systems. For the new, open-source version, Open-Blackfire, I intend to focus the implementation on the features that will make it most useful for the Common Lisp and Quantum Computing communities, along the shortest path of development to these features.
The core modules of the Blackfire Framework boil down to:
- The Wittek Machine: quantum virtualization
- Protocol “Phi”: higher-order quantum type system
- Blackfire Quantum Assembly: Vendor-agnostic quantum computer machine language
The initial priorities for Open-Blackfire are for Protocol “Phi” and the Blackfire Quantum Assembly language for vendor-agnostic quantum computer programming. The Wittek Machine architecture, which uses a hyperlattice data-structure to represent quantum states and operations under the Quantum Logic formalism, will be a serious pain to reimplement, so I’m saving that migraine as an optimization down the road once the core functionality is exposed.
To start with, Open-Blackfire will rely heavily on CLOS and the MOP in its architecture, and use Complex-valued matrix encodings to represent Quantum States and Operations, which as the standard in the literature will be easily checked for correctness. This will be extensible to use alternate and eventually interchangeable internal encodings, which will allow streamlined Quantum Validation built into Open-Blackfire’s test suite.
The above paragraph feels distinctly hand-wavey, ignoring the complications between various interpretations of Quantum Mechanics and the impact that has on the practical aspects of Quantum Computing. I will be keeping these complications at the forefront of my mind and factoring them into the new codebase from the beginning, and my hope is that I can do it in a way this time that is clear in the codebase for those who care, and a non-issue for those who don’t.
And lastly, as a large-scale open-source project, I will need to rely on the Common Lisp and Quantum Computing communities to see this project through, so if this technology will be of use to you and you are able to help make it a reality, please consider sponsoring me on GitHub Sponsors:
