Quantum computing with black-box quantum subroutines

In classical computation a subroutine is treated as a black box and we do not need to know its exact physical implementation to use it. A complex problem can be decomposed into smaller problems using such modularity. We show that quantum mechanically applying an unknown quantum process as a subroutine is impossible, and this restricts computation models such as DQC1 from operating on unknown inputs. We present a method to avoid this situation for certain computational problems and apply to a modular version of Shor's factoring algorithm. We examine how quantum entanglement and discord fare in this implementation. In this way we are able to study the role of discord in Shor's factoring algorithm.