Today's quantum computers are primarily accessible through the cloud and
potentially shifting to the edge network in the future. With the rapid
advancement and proliferation of quantum computing research worldwide, there
has been a considerable increase in demand for using cloud-based quantum
computation resources. This demand has highlighted the need for designing
efficient and adaptable resource management strategies and service models for
quantum computing. However, the limited quantity, quality, and accessibility of
quantum resources pose significant challenges to practical research in quantum
software and systems. To address these challenges, we propose iQuantum, a
first-of-its-kind simulation toolkit that can model hybrid quantum-classical
computing environments for prototyping and evaluating system design and
scheduling algorithms. This paper presents the quantum computing system model,
architectural design, proof-of-concept implementation, potential use cases, and
future development of iQuantum. Our proposed iQuantum simulator is anticipated
to boost research in quantum software and systems, particularly in the creation
and evaluation of policies and algorithms for resource management, job
scheduling, and hybrid quantum-classical task orchestration in quantum
computing environments integrating edge and cloud resources.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure