The goal of the Quantum and Software Quality group is to develop verification and testing solutions that can cope with the ever-increasing complexity of modern systems and the challenges of tomorrow’s computation paradigms.
- We’re currently focusing on two main domains:
- Quantum computing – We develop methods and algorithms aimed at characterizing and verifying both physical and functional aspects of quantum devices and algorithms. Such methods are key in understanding the properties of a given device and the inherent challenge related to noise in the quantum device. Such understanding promotes advances in the devices and helps develop better quantum circuit simulation algorithms.
- Software testing and analytics technologies – Regardless of whether you are developing a monolithic or fully-fledged microservices-based application, code quality and functional correctness is always a prime concern. We develop a set of tools and technologies that assist in various development phases, from automated test-planning to AI-assisted code and risk analysis. We also look at the quality of network and cloud solutions. Our solutions are widely used by many teams within IBM and externally.
Quantum Circuit Simulation
As part of the global development effort of IBM Q, IBM’s quantum computer, and the related software stack QISKit,we develop and analyze approximate noise models to better understand the behavior of quantum algorithms when run on noisy (i.e., non-fault-tolerant) quantum machines. These also serve as efficient, realistic reference models for the hardware.
Test Optimization Technologies
Software quality technologies aim to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of software testing methodologies and processes. Our combinatorial test design and test analysis technologies can be used to significantly reduce testing efforts of virtually any type of software.
Network-Policy Analysis
Microservices-based architecture lies at the heart of many modern cloud applications. In such architectures, services communicate using lightweight protocols that are governed by network policies. We are developing a tool that builds a semantic model for a given set of network policies, allowing various analyses to be performed.