Backend as RPC servers

[alecandido]

Let's assume for a moment that we have been able to solve somehow #11. Now we're left with the problem of actually choosing a backend to run.

Before this was done setting a global object in Python. That's definitely not an option any longer.

The problem: our executable is written in language X, and the backend is in language Y (you can think that none of them is Rust, to avoid special cases, that will also be solved by the general one)

Now, the executable will link or dynamically import qibo-core, and create a qibo-core circuit. So, whichever was language X, the user can interact with qibo-core through the qibo-core-X API.

However, qibo-core will not know all the possible backends in advance (the backends depend on qibo-core, not the opposite), so the circuit will have to find which backend to use during execution. A backend might even have to be spawned in a separate process, e.g. if the executable is in C, but the backend is in Python, either the user should link its program with a Python interpreter (not particularly nice) or a Python interpreter should be launched separately.

So, how could we interact with a backend created in another process? And how we create it in the first place?

Most likely, we should provide different types of backends instantiation, this is what I have in mind.

Creating the backend

Here I see essentially two ways:

• the user create a backends object, and pass some kind of typed pointer down to qibo-core (a' la Box<dyn Backend>), and the general backend interface is called during circuit execution (and whatever else is doing a backend)
• the user ask for a backend type, and qibo-core will fork a process for that

And the way I know to create processes is running executables. Thus, the backends should advertise themselves as executables available on PATH (possibly matching some kind of pattern, like "numpy" -> qibo-backend-numpy, "tensorflow" -> qibo-backend-tensorflow, and so on...).

In this case, another kind of backend object is created in qibo-core, holding the PID of the process.

Something like the following:

enum BackendHandle {
    UserInstance { backend: Box<dyn Backend> } 
    Spawned{ pid: usize }
}

Executing circuits

Once we're in one of the cases above, we should actually send instructions to the backend to operate.

I still have to think carefully about this part, but the sketchy concept is the following.

In case of handle: UserInstance, we just run handle.backend.apply_gate(gate: Gate), and we call it a day (here the challenge is just to be able to pass the typed pointer through the API, since using traits would be a challenge... or just impossible...).

For Spawned, we should setup some kind of comunication. Since the two process will actually run on the same machine, the best would be to use some kind of IPC, and implement some kind of client-server communication:

• the qibo-core part instantiated by the user executable (through the API) will act as a client, sending instructions
• another qibo-core party, instantiated within by the backend process spawned, will act as a server, executing on the actual backend (e.g. NumPy, or Qulacs)

This could be implemented reducing the copies, since the two processes could share some memory.

If we succeed with this mechanism, the backends could be completely decoupled from the users' code, and even act as a small tunnel for some remote connection.

[alecandido]

Ok, the project is actually ambitious, and there are many gray areas I'm not yet sure how to cover.

But well, I have to try something to see which are the actual issues.

And, as I mentioned above, this is only an initial sketchy plan.