Full-Stack, Real-System Quantum Computer Studies: Architectural Comparisons and Design Insights

Abstract

In recent years, Quantum Computing (QC) has progressed to the point where small working prototypes are available for use. Termed Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers, these prototypes are too small for large benchmarks or even for Quantum Error Correction, but they do have sufficient resources to run small benchmarks, particularly if compiled with optimizations to make use of scarce qubits and limited operation counts and coherence times. QC has not yet, however, settled on a particular preferred device implementation technology, and indeed different NISQ prototypes implement qubits with very different physical approaches and therefore widely-varying device and machine characteristics. Our work performs a full-stack, benchmark-driven hardware-software analysis of QC systems. We evaluate QC architectural possibilities, software-visible gates, and software optimizations to tackle fundamental design questions about gate set choices, communication topology, the factors affecting benchmark performance and compiler optimizations. In order to answer key cross-technology and cross-platform design questions, our work has built the first top-to-bottom toolflow to target different qubit device technologies, including superconducting and trapped ion qubits which are the current QC front-runners. We use our toolflow, TriQ, to conduct {\em real-system} measurements on 7 running QC prototypes from 3 different groups, IBM, Rigetti, and University of Maryland. From these real-system experiences at QC's hardware-software interface, we make observations about native and software-visible gates for different QC technologies, communication topologies, and the value of noise-aware compilation even on lower-noise platforms. This is the largest cross-platform real-system QC study performed thus far; its results have the potential to inform both QC device and compiler design going forward.

Preprint of a publication in ISCA 2019

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Quantum Circuit Transformation Based on Simulated Annealing and Heuristic Search
• Quantum Computing: An Overview Across the System Stack
• NetQASM -- A low-level instruction set architecture for hybrid quantum-classical programs in a quantum internet
• Topological-Graph Dependencies and Scaling Properties of a Heuristic Qubit-Assignment Algorithm
• Quantum algorithms for scientific computing
• Pauli path simulations of noisy quantum circuits beyond average case
• Vacuum Characterization of a Compact Room-temperature Trapped Ion System
• Planning for Compilation of a Quantum Algorithm for Graph Coloring
• Qubit assignment using time reversal
• MUQUT: Multi-Constraint Quantum Circuit Mapping on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computers
• The resource cost of large scale quantum computing
• Bounds on the recurrence probability in periodically-driven quantum systems
• AccQOC: Accelerating Quantum Optimal Control Based Pulse Generation