Aliro Technologies Inc. today announced the availability of its cross-platform quantum computing software portfolio that it says can serve as a foundation for organizations hoping to build powerful quantum systems.

The company, which does business as Aliro Quantum, aims to democratize access to quantum computing. It announced the launch of its products at the virtual InnovationXLab Quantum Information Science & Technology Summit that kicks off today.

Quantum computing is a fundamentally different and vastly more powerful computer architecture that, although still nascent, has the potential to solve extremely complex problems that are impossible or would take years for today’s computers to tackle.

Aliro first emerged in September 2019, having begun its life as a project at Harvard University’s quantum computing lab. There, its founders built a dedicated software-as-a-service platform that makes it possible for any developer to get started in quantum computing, regardless of the hardware being used. Its software enables developers to write quantum code that can run on any kind of quantum architecture without changes.

That’s important, because while several companies are working on quantum computing platforms, the architectures they have built are all markedly different from one another. Rigetti Computing Inc., for example, pioneers an approach that uses superconducting qubits at extremely low temperatures, while IonQ Inc. uses trapped ions, which are charged particles suspended in a vacuum, as the basis for its hardware.

Aliro Q.Compute is the company’s hardware-independent quantum computing development environment for building quantum apps that can run on any of those platforms. It provides access to an intuitive user interface and a range of quantum computing backends, plus optimization schemes, the company said. It also comes with a noise-expert compiler that makes the necessary transformations for each app to quantum circuits, which frees researchers from the constraints of different hardware platforms.

Aliro is also focused on enabling quantum networks for the future quantum internet. Aliro Chief Technology Officer Prineha Narang said the quantum internet will enable transformative applications with wide-ranging societal impacts, including physics-based secure communications, ultraprecise long-baseline astronomy and advances in medical imaging. “But to build these networks, telecom and government organizations have an immediate need for accurate simulation and emulation tools,” Narang said.

To that end, Aliro has created the Aliro Q.Network, which it says is a quantum network simulator that can be used to build each step of near-term quantum networks. Researchers can use it to create their network architecture, optimize network protocols, model control schemes and finally run their applications. AQN assists with this by visualizing performance and resource estimations so users can create an optimal network for each of their quantum applications, Aliro said.

Aliro has already put its AQC and AQN platforms to use, partnering with another company that’s building a quantum computing architecture, Honeywell International Inc., to research new technologies to enable quantum communications.

“Our current studies indicate that the adoption of quantum computing in both the public and private sector is on the rise for the foreseeable future,” said Bob Sorensen, chief analyst for quantum computing at Hyperion Research. “One of the next great challenges for the quantum computing sector is the ability to scale up processing capabilities through the use of quantum networking. The expertise that Aliro brings to quantum networking development could contribute significantly to progress in that critical area.”

Image: Aliro