Robert Wille (Munich Quantum Software Company): Quantum software needs design automation, not just algorithms

Yuval interviews Robert Wille, a computer scientist and co-founder focused on quantum computing software. They discuss the field’s transition from research to practical deployment, the need for heterogeneous and hardware-agnostic software stacks, and the integration of quantum into HPC environments. Robert explains the importance of design automation, open-source strategy, and AI-assisted development, arguing that quantum’s complex optimization challenges resemble those long solved in classical computing.

Transcript

Yuval: Hello Robert and thank you for joining me today.

Robert: Hello Yuval, happy to be here.

Yuval: So who are you and what do you do?

Robert: Yeah, I’m Robert, I’m a computer scientist by training and for more than 15 years now actually involved in quantum computing. We are building software for quantum computing, which is important because it is awesome to have great quantum computing hardware and have great quantum computing applications, but you definitely need software to connect the end users to the hardware and to make these applications work.

Yuval: I think you have at least two hats, right? One is an academic and the other is an entrepreneur. Could you tell us a little bit about that, please?