QITE: Assembly-Level, Cross-Platform Testing of Quantum Computing Platforms

2025-03-21

AI Summary

Quantum computing platforms suffer from fragmentation and rapid evolution, leading to elusive quantum-specific bugs—such as qubit ordering errors and abstraction-layer implementation flaws—that severely undermine software reliability. To address this, we propose the first cross-platform assembly-level testing framework built upon the QASM intermediate representation. Our framework introduces the novel “Import–Transform–Export” (ITE) workflow and employs a dual-oracle verification strategy combining crash detection and semantic equivalence checking. It supports coordinated testing across four major quantum SDKs: Qiskit, PennyLane, Pytket, and BQSKit. Integrated components include platform-specific adapters, optimization-aware transformations, and synergistic fuzzing analysis, significantly improving low-level code coverage. Evaluated on real quantum hardware and simulators, the framework uncovered 17 quantum-specific bugs; 14 have been confirmed or fixed. Crucially, it exposes platform-layer defects inaccessible to existing quantum fuzzers.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Quantum Machine Learning
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Qualitative Reasoning
• Application Domains: Software Engineering

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Responsible Web: Algorithmic accountability and transparency on the web
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Quantum computing platforms are susceptible to quantum-specific bugs (e.g., incorrect ordering of qubits or incorrect implementation of quantum abstractions), which are difficult to detect and require specialized expertise. The field faces challenges due to a fragmented landscape of platforms and rapid development cycles that often prioritize features over the development of robust platform testing frameworks, severely hindering the reliability of quantum software. To address these challenges, we present QITE, the first cross-platform testing framework for quantum computing platforms, which leverages QASM, an assembly-level representation, to ensure consistency across different platforms. QITE introduces the novel ITE process to generate equivalent quantum programs by iteratively (I)mporting assembly into platform representations, (T)ransforming via platform optimization and gate conversion, and (E)xporting back to assembly. It uses a crash oracle to detect failures during cross-platform transformations and an equivalence oracle to validate the semantic consistency of the final sets of assembly programs, which are expected to be equivalent by construction. We evaluate QITE on four widely-used quantum computing platforms: Qiskit, PennyLane, Pytket, and BQSKit, revealing 17 bugs, 14 of which are already confirmed or even fixed. Our results demonstrate QITE's effectiveness, its complementarity to existing quantum fuzzers in terms of code coverage, and its ability to expose bugs that have been out of reach for existing testing techniques.

Problem

• Detecting quantum-specific bugs in computing platforms
• Ensuring cross-platform consistency in quantum software
• Addressing lack of robust testing frameworks in quantum development

Innovation

• Cross-platform testing using QASM assembly representation
• Novel ITE process for generating equivalent quantum programs
• Crash and equivalence oracles for detecting transformation failures