Exploratory Review of Quantum Computing Software Requirements Specification and Their Measurement

Abstract

Quantum software sets itself apart from classical software owing to its powerful computational abilities rooted in entanglement and superposition. Unlike classical software, quantum software diverges notably across various dimensions, including computational models, hardware architectures, algorithms, deployment platforms, and problem domains. Quantum software is also often not standalone and interacts heavily with classical software, stressing the importance of carefully considering hybridization. From a software engineering standpoint, researchers generally agree that a different approach is required for quantum software, and they advocate a Quantum Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This exploratory study briefly outlines the specifics of quantum software, overviews the proposed approaches regarding the software requirements of quantum software, and then reviews the current alternatives for measuring the functional size of quantum software. This study indicates that only a few papers in the literature discuss the requirements and functional size measurements of quantum software. Their results are also mostly conceptual and have not yet been empirically validated. Functional size measurement using quantum software remains an open area for further research. © 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors.