Towards a user-centric HPC-QC environment
Robust execution environments are important for addressing key challenges in quantum computing, such as application development, portability, and reproducibility, and help unlock the development of modular quantum programs, driving forward hybrid quantum workflows. In this work, we show progress towards a basic, but portable, runtime environment for developing and executing hybrid quantum-classical programs running in High Performance Computing (HPC) environments enhanced with Quantum Processing Units (QPUs). The middleware includes a second layer of scheduling after the main HPC resource manager in order to improve the utilization of the QPU, and extra functionality for observability, monitoring, and admin access. This approach enables managing multiple programming Software Development Kits (SDKs) as first-class citizens in the environment by building on a recently proposed vendor-neutral Quantum Resource Management Interface (QRMI). Lastly, we discuss and show a solution for the monitoring and observability stack, completing our description of the hybrid system architecture.