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Q# API Design Meeting / 4 March 2021

Attendees (in order by username): @bettinaheim, @cgranade, @guenp, @msoeken.

Agenda

Discussion

Library support for multidimensional arrays (microsoft/qsharp-language#49)

Proposal: #408

Discussion:

  • Previous consensus: Defer until next review, read in detail and discuss async until then.
  • Good to take inspiration from other high-level multidimensional array APIs like NumPy.
    • Some differences reflecting different terminology in Q# from Python (e.g.: "size" vs "shape").
    • Action item: Rename "reshape" → "resize" for consistency with QEP 3.
  • Not specific to this proposal, but lack of overloading can make names confusing.
  • Selection of different functions and operations makes sense.
  • Nice to provide guidance on how users can write their own.
  • Perhaps reasonable to schedule out-of-band review to do deeper dive.
  • Good to have consensus by approximately July.
  • Add application-driven examples (e.g.: BSM).

Consensus: Defer until out-of-band review, revise in the meantime.

Additions to Microsoft.Quantum.Math for floating point support

Proposal: #413

Discussion:

  • Tense of FiniteFact may not match EqualityFact; perhaps FinitenessFact?
    • "Finite" is a synonym of "finiteness," such that a slight inconsistency in tense may be reasonable here for the sake of brevity.

Consensus: Approve as-is.

Autoemulation attribute

Proposal: #424

Discussion:

  • "Emulate with" is a verb phrase.
  • "Emulatable with" may make clear that the attribute isn't doing the substitution, but is providing metadata to the relevant rewrite step.
  • "Emulation" may not be the right root either; one way to use it, but functionality is more general: target-specific substitution. Simulators are one specific kind of target.
    • Alternatively, can narrow definition of attribute; e.g.: "simulator specific implementation."
    • Only supported on C# runtime for now, but keep more general in case other runtimes support it eventually?
  • Microsoft.Quantum.Targeting as namespace instead of Microsoft.Quantum.Core?
  • Action item: Modify to Microsoft.Quantum.Targeting.SubstitutableOnTarget("Alternative", "TargetName").

Consensus: Approved with modification above.

Deprecate Microsoft.Quantum.Environment operations

Proposal: #418

Discussion:

  • Long-term goal would be to do qubit allocation statically, would be very difficult to do dynamically with this API.
  • May not be usecases for this feature; need other ways of exposing width–depth tradeoffs to static analysis.
  • Dynamic qubit management would require JIT anyway.

Consensus: Approved as-is.

DoubleAsInt

Proposal: #405

Discussion:

  • Previous consensus: Introduce DoubleAsInt, effectively as an alias for Truncate.
  • Revisiting due to additional feedback from @bettinaheim.
  • Action item: Duplicate table of different truncate/round/ceil/floor outputs in each different function.

Consensus: Resolve with additional API documentation to clarify.

Formatting functions

Proposal: #419

Administrative note: Proposal still in draft, but request to consider deprecating previous functions immediately.

Consensus: Deprecate formatting functions immediately.