This book provides an easy-to-read introduction into quantum computing as well as classical simulation of quantum circuits. The authors showcase the enormous potential that can be unleashed when doing these simulations using decision diagrams—a data structure common in the design automation community but hardly used in quantum computing yet. In fact, the covered algorithms and methods are able to outperform previously proposed solutions on certain use cases and, hence, provide a complementary solution to established approaches. The award-winning methods are implemented and available as open-source under free licenses and can be easily integrated into existing frameworks such as IBM’s Qiskit or Atos’ QLM.
Stefan Hillmich is a senior researcher at the Software Competence Center Hagenberg (SCCH) GmbH. Previously he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria), where he completed his PhD in 2022. Before that, he received his BSc and MSc in computer science from the University of Bremen (Germany) in 2015 and 2018, respectively. His research interests include design automation for quantum computing and in this domain specifically classical quantum circuit simulation and efficient data structures. In this area, he has published several papers at international conferences and journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), the ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing (TQC), the Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference (ASP-DAC), the Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference, the Design Automation Conference (DAC), and the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD). For his work, he has won the Student Research Competition at ICCAD and has been made an IBM Qiskit Advocate.
Robert Wille is a Full and Distinguished Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and Chief Scientific Officer at the Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH, Austria. From 2002 to 2006, Robert Wille studied Computer Science (Diploma) at the University of Bremen. After successfully completing his doctorate in 2009 (summa cum laude), he worked as postdoc at the University of Bremen and, since 2013, as Senior Researcher in the Cyber-Physical Systems department of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Besides that, he served as lecturer at the University of Applied Science Bremen from 2010 to 2012 and was guest professor at the University of Potsdam in 2012 as well as the Technical University of Dresden in 2013/2014. From 2015 to 2022, he was Full Professor at the Johannes Kepler University Linz and head of the Institute for Integrated Circuits (at the age of 32 and as one of the youngest full professors in the field). In 2019, he founded the LIT Secure and Correct Systems Lab at JKU and, in 2020, he additionally became Chief Scientific Officer at the Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH. Since 2022, he works in Munich—appointed through a “Leuchtturm”-procedure (i.e., direct appointment) and, additionally, through the “Distinguished Professorship”-program.
His research interests are in the design of circuits and systems for both conventional and emerging technologies. In these areas, he published more than 400 papers and served in editorial boards as well as program committees of numerous journals/conferences such as TCAD, ASP-DAC, DAC, DATE, and ICCAD. For his research, he was awarded, e.g., with Best Paper Awards, e.g., at TCAD and ICCAD, an ERC Consolidator Grant, a Distinguished and a Lighthouse Professor appointment, a Google Research Award, and more.
