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arXiv:2012.01624

Quantum block lookahead adders and the wait for magic states

Craig Gidney

Published Dec 3, 2020• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We improve the Toffoli count of low depth quantum adders, and analyze how their spacetime cost reacts to having a limited number of magic state factories. We present a block lookahead adder that parallelizes across blocks of bits of size $b$, instead of over all bits. The block lookahead adder achieves a Toffoli count of $3n + 5n/b$ for out of place addition (vs $4n$ in previous work by Thapliyal et al) and $5n + 8n/b$ for in place addition (vs $7n$ in previous work by Thapliyal et al). The tradeoff is that the reaction depth of these circuits depends linearly on $b$, and they use additional workspace. We estimate the spacetime volume of these adders, and adders from previous work, for various register sizes and factory counts under plausible assumptions for a large scale quantum computer based on the surface code and superconducting qubits.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2012.01624

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We improve the Toffoli count of low depth quantum adders, and analyze how their spacetime cost reacts to having a limited number of magic state factories. We present a block lookahead adder that parallelizes across blocks of bits of size bbb, instead of over all bits. The block lookahead adder achieves a Toffoli count of 3n+5n/b3n + 5n/b3n+5n/b for out of place addition (vs 4n4n4n in previous work by Thapliyal et al) and 5n+8n/b5n + 8n/b5n+8n/b for in place addition (vs 7n7n7n in previous work by Thapliyal et al). The tradeoff is that the reaction depth of these circuits depends linearly on bbb, and they use additional workspace. We estimate the spacetime volume of these adders, and adders from previous work, for various register sizes and factory counts under plausible assumptions for a large scale quantum computer based on the surface code and superconducting qubits.
Quantum circuits of arithmetic operations such as addition are needed to implement quantum algorithms in hardware. Quantum circuits based on Clifford+T gates are used as they can be made tolerant to noise. The tradeoff of gaining fault tolerance from using Clifford+T gates and error correcting codes is the high implementation overhead of the T gate. As a result, the T-count performance measure has become important in quantum circuit design. Due to noise, the risk for errors in a quantum circuit computation increases as the number of gate layers (or depth) in the circuit increases. As a result, low depth circuits such as quantum carry lookahead adders (QCLA)s have caught the attention of researchers. This work presents two QCLA designs each optimized with emphasis on T-count or qubit cost respectively. In-place and out-of-place versions of each design are shown. The proposed QCLAs are compared against the existing works in terms of T-count. The proposed QCLAs for out-of-place addition achieve average T gate savings of 54.34%54.34 \%54.34% and 37.21%37.21 \%37.21%, respectively. The proposed QCLAs for in-place addition achieve average T gate savings of 72.11%72.11 \%72.11% and 35.87%35.87 \%35.87%
In this paper, we propose an efficient quantum carry-lookahead adder based on the higher radix structure. For the addition of two n-bit numbers, our adder uses [Formula: see text] qubits and [Formula: see text] T gates to get the correct answer in T-depth [Formula: see text], where r is the radix. Quantum carry-lookahead adder has already attracted some attention because of its low T-depth. Our work further reduces the overall cost by introducing a higher radix layer. By analyzing the performance in T-depth, T-count, and qubit count, it is shown that the proposed adder is superior to existing quantum carry-lookahead adders. Even compared to the Draper out-of-place adder which is very compact and efficient, our adder is still better in terms of T-count.
Progress in quantum hardware design is progressing toward machines of sufficient size to begin realizing quantum algorithms in disciplines such as encryption and physics. Quantum circuits for addition are crucial to realize many quantum algorithms on these machines. Ideally, quantum circuits based on fault-tolerant gates and error-correcting codes should be used as they tolerant environmental noise. However, current machines called Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) machines cannot support the overhead associated with fault-tolerant design. In response, low depth circuits such as quantum carry lookahead adders (QCLA)s have caught the attention of researchers. The risk for noise errors and decoherence increase as the number of gate layers (or depth) in the circuit increases. This work presents an out-of-place QCLA based on Clifford+T gates. The QCLAs optimized for T gate count and make use of a novel uncomputation gate to save T gates. We base our QCLAs on Clifford+T gates because they can eventually be made fault-tolerant with error-correcting codes once quantum hardware that can support fault-tolerant designs becomes available. We focus on T gate cost as the T gate is significantly more costly to make fault-tolerant than the other Clifford+T gates. The proposed QCLAs are compared and shown to be superior to existing works in terms of T-count and therefore the total number of quantum gates. Finally, we illustrate the application of the proposed QCLAs in quantum image processing by presenting quantum circuits for bilinear interpolation.
In 2004, Cuccaro et al found a quantum-quantum adder with O(n)O(n)O(n) gate cost and O(1)O(1)O(1) ancilla qubits. Since then, it's been an open question whether classical-quantum adders can achieve the same asymptotic complexity. These costs are particularly relevant to modular arithmetic circuits, which often offset by the classically known modulus. In this paper, I construct an adder that uses 3 clean ancillae and 4n±O(1)4n \pm O(1)4n±O(1) Toffoli gates to add a classical offset into a quantum register. I also present an adder with a Toffoli cost of 3n±O(1)3n \pm O(1)3n±O(1) that uses 2 clean ancillae and n−2n-2n−2 dirty ancillae. I further show that applying the presented adders conditioned on a control qubit requires no additional workspace or Toffolis.
We present an efficient addition circuit, borrowing techniques from the classical carry-lookahead arithmetic circuit. Our quantum carry-lookahead (QCLA) adder accepts two n-bit numbers and adds them in O(log n) depth using O(n) ancillary qubits. We present both in-place and out-of-place versions, as well as versions that add modulo 2^n and modulo 2^n - 1. Previously, the linear-depth ripple-carry addition circuit has been the method of choice. Our work reduces the cost of addition dramatically with only a slight increase in the number of required qubits. The QCLA adder can be used within current modular multiplication circuits to reduce substantially the run-time of Shor's algorithm.
We present an efficient addition circuit, borrowing techniques from the classical carry-lookahead arithmetic circuit. Our quantum carry-lookahead (QCLA) adder accepts two n-bit numbers and adds them in O(log n) depth using O(n) ancillary qubits. We present both in-place and out-of-place versions, as well as versions that add modulo 2^n and modulo 2^n - 1. Previously, the linear-depth ripple-carry addition circuit has been the method of choice. Our work reduces the cost of addition dramatically with only a slight increase in the number of required qubits. The QCLA adder can be used within current modular multiplication circuits to reduce substantially the run-time of Shor's algorithm.