Quantum computing represents a paradigm shift for computation requiring an
entirely new computer architecture. However, there is much that can be learned
from traditional classical computer engineering. In this paper, we describe the
Parallel Research Kernels (PRK), a tool that was very useful for designing
classical parallel computing systems. The PRK are simple kernels written to
expose bottlenecks that limit classical parallel computing performance. We
hypothesize that an analogous tool for quantum computing, Quantum Research
Kernels (QRK), may similarly aid the co-design of software and hardware for
quantum computing systems, and we give a few examples of representative QRKs.Comment: 2 page