Bit-Slicing the Hilbert Space: Scaling Up Accurate Quantum Circuit Simulation

Quantum computing is greatly advanced in recent years and is expected to transform the computation paradigm in the near future. Quantum circuit simulation plays a key role in the toolchain for the development of quantum hardware and software systems. However, due to the enormous Hilbert space of quantum states, simulating quantum circuits with classical computers is extremely challenging despite notable efforts have been made. In this paper, we enhance quantum circuit simulation in two dimensions: accuracy and scalability. The former is achieved by using an algebraic representation of complex numbers; the latter is achieved by bit-slicing the number representation and replacing matrix-vector multiplication with symbolic Boolean function manipulation. Experimental results demonstrate that our method can be superior to the state-of-the-art for various quantum circuits and can simulate certain benchmark families with up to tens of thousands of qubits.