Quantum Internet Alliance (QIA) researchers at TU Delft, QuTech, University of Innsbruck, INRIA, and CNRS recently announced the creation of the first operating system designed for quantum networks: QNodeOS 🚀. The research, published in Nature, represents a major step forward in transforming quantum networks from a theoretical concept to a practical technology that could revolutionize the future of the Internet 🌐.

“The goal of our research is to bring quantum network technology to everyone. With QNodeOS, we're taking a major step forward. For the first time, it's possible to easily program and run applications on a quantum network,” explains Prof. Dr. Stephanie Wehner, Professor of Quantum Computing at TU Delft's QuTech Institute for Quantum Technology, who led the study. “Our work also creates a framework that opens up new areas of research in quantum computing.” 💡

Removing barriers for developers 👩‍💻👨‍💻

The ability to easily program classic hardware like laptops and cell phones has transformed our world and enabled the creation of a wide variety of applications. “The system works like the software on your home computer: you don't need to know how the hardware works to use it,” says Mariagrazia Iuliano, a PhD student at QuTech.

By removing the barrier between networking hardware and software, the operating system will allow developers to easily create applications compatible with a wide variety of hardware, paving the way for quantum networking technology to reach society.

A fully programmable operating system 💻✨

The quantum network operating system, known as QNodeOS, is fully programmable, meaning applications can run at a high level, similar to classic operating systems like Windows or Android. Unlike previous systems, which required programming specific code for each experimental setup, QNodeOS makes it easy to manage networked quantum processors regardless of the hardware platform used.

“This architecture, never before created for quantum networks, allows developers to focus on application logic rather than hardware details,” explains Bart van der Vecht, a PhD student at QuTech. “This makes it easier to create new types of applications, some of which we can't even imagine today.” 🤯

Corresponding author Stephanie Wehner and co-authors Mariagrazia Iuliano, Carlo Delle Donne, and Bart van der Vecht, in the context of high-level application code executable on quantum network hardware using the QNodeOS stack. Credit: Studio Oostrum

Compatible with multiple types of hardware 🔗

Quantum network applications are different from those running on a quantum computer, which poses unique challenges that researchers had to overcome. Unlike quantum computers that run a single program, quantum network applications require multiple programs to run independently on different nodes in the network—like a client app on your phone and a server in the cloud ☁️.

These programs must be coordinated using messages and quantum entanglement, a special type of connection that powers quantum networks. QNodeOS solves these unique challenges of the quantum network execution paradigm.

The researchers demonstrated that QNodeOS can work with multiple types of quantum hardware by connecting it to two very different types of quantum processors. “Our trapped ion processors work completely differently than those based on diamond color centers, but we’ve shown that QNodeOS can work with both,” says Tracy Northup, a professor at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. 💎⚛️

The future of quantum networks 🌟

The creation of QNodeOS brought together experts in physics, computer science, and engineering to take a key step in QIA's mission to build a scalable and useful quantum network that can support real-world applications. Along the way, the operating system will provide a crucial framework for further research and experimentation.

As a next step, QIA is working to provide global access to the software and hardware components of this technology. One way will be to deploy QNodeOS in the Quantum Network Explorer, QuTech's quantum internet demonstrator. This will allow a much broader audience to experiment, innovate, and create software for quantum networks, accelerating the evolution of the field 🚀🔬.