Characterizing the Stability of NISQ Devices

Abstract

In this study, we focus on the question of stability of NISQ devices. The parameters that define the device stability profile are motivated by the work of DiVincenzo where the requirements for physical implementation of quantum computing are discussed. We develop the metrics and theoretical framework to quantify the DiVincenzo requirements and study the stability of those key metrics. The basis of our assessment is histogram similarity (in time and space). For identical experiments, devices which produce reproducible histograms in time, and similar histograms in space, are considered more reliable. To investigate such reliability concerns robustly, we propose a moment-based distance (MBD) metric. We illustrate our methodology using data collected from IBM's Yorktown device. Two types of assessments are discussed: spatial stability and temporal stability.

Based on work submitted to IEEE Quantum Week 2020. This revision corrects data and plots for Figures 8, 9, and 10 while the remainder is unchanged. The conclusions of the manuscript are unaffected by these changes