Aer 0.4 Release Tasks

[chriseclectic]

Main Features

• GPU support in QasmSimulator (Add GPU support for qasm statevector simulation method #511 @doichanj @atilag )
• Migrate QasmSimulator from Cython to Pybind (@ereastman @atilag)
• Pulse Simulator backend (@DanPuzzuoli)
• Approximate simulation in MPS method (@merav-aharoni)

Ramaining Issues/PRs:

Qasm Simulator

• Test wheel build and distribution (@atilag @mtreinish )

• Fix sdist builds and add testing: Fix sdist builds and add test coverage #560

• GPU Qasm statevector method (Add GPU support for qasm statevector simulation method #511, @doichanj )

• Pybind wrappers for Result objects (Further reduce c++/python conversion overhead (pybind) #504, @ereastman )

• MPS expectation values (Update MPS expectation value snapshots #509, @yaelbh )

• MPS bond-dimension truncation (Introducing approximation into the MPS simulation method #475 @merav-aharoni )

Pulse Simulator

• Transmon system generation functions (Transmon Pulse SystemModel/HamiltonianModel generation functions #514 @DanPuzzuoli )
• Debug ZVODE errors (Adding soft resets to avoid ZVODE errors in pulse simulator #499 @DanPuzzuoli )
• Finish API documentation (Add PulseSimulator to API docs #433 @DanPuzzuoli)
• Cleanup default behaviour, kwargs etc (Change name of qubit_list in PulseSystemModel and HamiltonianModel to something more general #500, Cleanup/clarify pulse simulation defaults behaviour and digest #501)
• Add additional unittests and integration tests (@DanPuzzuoli haggai)

Bugs

• Remove Initialize from unitary simulator basis gates (The initialize() method fails on the unitary_simulator backend #497 )
• Add cvxpy requirement to setup.py (cvxpy needed by noise transformations but not installed #490)
• Close or update old build related issues (Pass user specified directories to the build system #17, Use same BLAS implimentation as NumPy #18, Remove openblas.lib/.7z from the wheel package #203, No install target defined in cmake scripts #233, ImportError: DLL load failed: The specified module could not be found.  #242, Error installing Aer with Pipenv #392 @atilag )

NB: dashed items are postponed till after release

[mtreinish]

For the wheel issue/pr just some more information. They're covered by both #168 and #428 in for 0.4. One automates the wheel building (and publishing process) so we don't have to manually build them anymore, the other marks python 3.8 as supported (the first actually starts the processes of building wheels on py38). It would be good to push out a combined release with terra (which already supports 3.8) so that the 2 elements that require compiled code have published wheels on 3.8 so users stop running into issues installing with 3.8. The blocker for both is the windows environment but we can either fix those issues or workaround them somehow we should be good to go.