Welcome to My GSoC 2026 Journey
Hi, I’m Chinmay Tangal – a Computer Engineering undergrad with a growing interest in high-performance computing, open quantum systems, and open-source scientific software. I’m excited to be part of Google Summer of Code 2026 with NumFOCUS, working on a project that sits right at the intersection of quantum physics and systems-level computing.
This blog is where I’ll document my GSoC experience, the technical problems I run into, and how I’m thinking through building a cluster-ready quantum solver.
About the Project
Large Scale HEOM Solver Using PETSc
I’m building a distributed HEOM solver for QuTiP (Quantum Toolbox in Python). HEOM — the Hierarchical Equations of Motion — is one of the few methods that can exactly simulate open quantum system dynamics without Markov or perturbative approximations. The catch is that it’s expensive: memory and compute blow up fast as hierarchy depth or system size grows. The current QuTiP implementation runs on a single node, which puts a hard ceiling on what’s realistically solvable.
What I’m Building:
- A distributed execution path for the HEOM solver using PETSc and MPI, so the ODE integration can run across multiple nodes on an HPC cluster
- A careful distributed data layout for the hierarchy that keeps inter-rank communication manageable
- Correctness validation against the existing solver on standard benchmark systems
- Performance benchmarks across hierarchy depths, system sizes, and node counts
- Documentation and tutorials for running the solver on real HPC infrastructure
Technologies & Tools:
- Primary: Python, PETSc, MPI, QuTiP, SciPy
- Development: Git, GitHub, Jupyter Notebooks
- Documentation: LaTeX, Matplotlib
- Testing: pytest framework
Mentors: Alex Pitchford, Emil VATAI, Neill Lambert
The existing solver stays completely untouched — users who don’t need distributed execution shouldn’t have to think about any of this.
Recent Posts
🎉 Exciting News: I’m Joining Google Summer of Code 2026!
May 2026
I’d been contributing to QuTiP for a few months when I decided to put together a GSoC proposal. I didn’t expect it to go anywhere — but here we are…
About This Site
This site is built with Quarto and hosted on GitHub Pages. It’s part technical blog, part development log for everything happening during this project.
Topics I write about:
- Open quantum systems and simulation
- High-performance and distributed computing
- Open source development
- Python and C programming
- GSoC 2026 journey
- Technical tutorials and HPC workflows
Last updated: June 2026