Following Intel recently discontinuing a number of open-source projects, this week they formally discontinued their Quantum Passes open-source project that was intended to provide additional passes for their LLVM-based compiler in the Intel Quantum SDK.
The Intel Quantum SDK is their “complete quantum computing stack” for use in simulation to help in developing code to run on “quantum hardware tomorrow”. The Quantum SDK includes a compiler derived from LLVM/Clang, qubit simulation back-ends, and more.
The Intel Quantum Passes open-source project has been around since 2023 for providing additional out-of-tree open-source components for the Intel Quantum Compiler found with their Quantum SDK. With Intel Quantum Passes it takes the IR from Intel Quantum Intrinsics and allows developers to add their own compiler passes during the compilation process.
“The passes included in this repository lowers, schedules and prepares the generated IR from clang package with the Intel Quantum SDK to the point before the qISA is generated for Intel Quantum Backends via the Quantum Runtime. The code included with this repository cannot generate a binary. The final step of compilation to target a quantum binary will need to be generated using the compilation program included with the Intel Quantum SDK.”
The Intel Quantum Passes code was last updated a year ago with the current Quantum SDK 1.1.1 release. There doesn’t appear to have been any updated Intel Quantum SDK release now in a year but at least for that packaged software from Intel isn’t disclosed as formally discontinued. But now this week the Intel Quantum Passes project has been formally discontinued and archived.
On Monday the GitHub repository for Quantum Passes is marked as read-only archived with the usual messaging:
“Intel will not provide or guarantee development of or support for this project, including but not limited to, maintenance, bug fixes, new releases or updates.
Patches to this project are no longer accepted by Intel.
If you have an ongoing need to use this project, are interested in independently developing it, or would like to maintain patches for the community, please create your own fork of the project.”
Not too surprising given they apparently haven’t updated the Intel Quantum SDK now in one year but given the expected future of quantum computing, a bit surprising they are apparently divesting from this software work among their cost-cutting measures at the company.
