A manufacturable surface code architecture for spin qubits with fast transversal logic

Jason D. Chadwick, Willers Yang, Joshua Viszlai, Frederic T. Chong (Dec 09 2025).

Abstract: Spin qubits in silicon quantum dot arrays are a promising quantum computation platform for long-term scalability due to their small qubit footprint and compatibility with advanced semiconductor manufacturing. However, spin qubit devices face a key architectural bottleneck: the large physical footprint of readout components relative to qubits prevents a dense layout where all qubits can be measured simultaneously, complicating the implementation of quantum error correction. This challenge is offset by the platform's unique rapid shuttling capability, which can be used to transport qubits to distant readout ports. In this work, we explore the design constraints and capabilities of spin qubits in silicon and propose the SNAQ (Shuttling-capable Narrow Array of spin Qubits) surface code architecture, which relaxes the 1:1 readout-to-qubit assumption by leveraging spin shuttling to time-multiplex ancilla qubit initialization and readout. Our analysis shows that, given sufficiently high (experimentally demonstrated) qubit coherence times, SNAQ delivers an orders-of-magnitude reduction in chip area per logical qubit. Additionally, by using a denser grid of physical qubits, SNAQ enables fast transversal logic for short-distance logical operations, achieving 4.0-22.3x improvement in local logical clock speed while still supporting global operations via lattice surgery. This translates to a 57-60% reduction in spacetime cost of 15-to-1 magic state distillation, a key fault-tolerant subroutine. Our work pinpoints critical hardware metrics and provides a compelling path toward high-performance fault-tolerant computation on near-term-manufacturable spin qubit arrays.

Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07131