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arXiv:2110.08973 · Quantum

Tight Bounds on the Spooky Pebble Game: Recycling Qubits with Measurements

Niels Kornerup, Jonathan Sadun, David Soloveichik

Published Feb 18, 2025• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Pebble games are popular models for analyzing time-space trade-offs. In particular, reversible pebble game strategies are frequently applied in quantum algorithms like Grover's search to efficiently simulate classical computation on inputs in superposition, as unitary operations are fundamentally reversible. However, the reversible pebble game cannot harness the additional computational power granted by intermediate measurements, which are irreversible. The spooky pebble game, which models interleaved Hadamard basis measurements and adaptive phase corrections, reduces the number of qubits beyond what purely reversible approaches can achieve. While the spooky pebble game does not reduce the total space (bits plus qubits) complexity of the simulation, it reduces the amount of space that must be stored in qubits. We prove asymptotically tight trade-offs for the spooky pebble game on a line with any pebble bound. This in turn gives a tight time-qubit tradeoff for simulating arbitrary classical sequential computation when using the spooky pebble game. For example, for all ϵ∈(0,1] , any classical computation requiring time T and space S can be implemented on a quantum computer using only O(T/ϵ) gates and O(TϵS1−ϵ) qubits. This improves on the best known bound for the reversible pebble game with that number of qubits, which uses O(21/ϵT) gates. For smaller space bounds, we show that the spooky pebble game can simulate arbitrary computation with O(T1+ϵS−ϵ/ϵ) gates and O(S/ϵ) qubits whereas any simulation via the reversible pebble game requires Ω(S⋅(1+log⁡(T/S))) qubits.We also consider the spooky pebble game on more general directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), capturing fine-grained data dependency in computation. We show that for an arbitrary DAG even approximating the number of required pebbles in the spooky pebble game is PSPACE-hard. Despite this, we are able to construct a time-efficient strategy for pebbling binary trees that uses the minimum number of pebbles.

DOI
10.22331/q-2025-02-18-1636

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Pebble games are popular models for analyzing time-space trade-offs. In particular, reversible pebble game strategies are frequently applied in quantum algorithms like Grover's search to efficiently simulate classical computation on inputs in superposition, as unitary operations are fundamentally reversible. However, the reversible pebble game cannot harness the additional computational power granted by intermediate measurements, which are irreversible. The spooky pebble game, which models interleaved Hadamard basis measurements and adaptive phase corrections, reduces the number of qubits beyond what purely reversible approaches can achieve. While the spooky pebble game does not reduce the total space (bits plus qubits) complexity of the simulation, it reduces the amount of space that must be stored in qubits. We prove asymptotically tight trade-offs for the spooky pebble game on a line with any pebble bound. This in turn gives a tight time-qubit tradeoff for simulating arbitrary classical sequential computation when using the spooky pebble game. For example, for all ϵ∈(0,1] , any classical computation requiring time T and space S can be implemented on a quantum computer using only O(T/ϵ) gates and O(TϵS1−ϵ) qubits. This improves on the best known bound for the reversible pebble game with that number of qubits, which uses O(21/ϵT) gates. For smaller space bounds, we show that the spooky pebble game can simulate arbitrary computation with O(T1+ϵS−ϵ/ϵ) gates and O(S/ϵ) qubits whereas any simulation via the reversible pebble game requires Ω(S⋅(1+log⁡(T/S))) qubits.We also consider the spooky pebble game on more general directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), capturing fine-grained data dependency in computation. We show that for an arbitrary DAG even approximating the number of required pebbles in the spooky pebble game is PSPACE-hard. Despite this, we are able to construct a time-efficient strategy for pebbling binary trees that uses the minimum number of pebbles.
Pebble games are commonly used to study space-time trade-offs in computation. We present a pebble game that explores this trade-off in quantum simulation of arbitrary classical circuits on non-classical inputs. Many quantum algorithms, such as Shor's algorithm and Grover's search, include subroutines that require simulation of classical functions on inputs in superposition. The current state of the art uses generic reversible simulation through Bennett's pebble game and universal reversible gate sets such as the Toffoli. Using measurement-based uncomputation, we replace many of the ancilla qubits used by existing constructions with classical control bits, which are cheaper. Our pebble game forms a natural framework for reasoning about measurement-based uncomputation, and we prove tight bounds on the time complexity of all algorithms that use our pebble game. For any ϵ∈(0,1)\epsilon \in (0,1)ϵ∈(0,1), we present an algorithm that can simulate irreversible classical computation that uses T\mathcal{T}T time and S\mathcal{S}S space in O(1ϵT1+ϵSϵ)O(\frac{1}{\epsilon}\frac{\mathcal{T}^{1+\epsilon}}{\mathcal{S}^\epsilon})O(ϵ1​SϵT1+ϵ​) time with O(1ϵS)O(\frac{1}{\epsilon}\mathcal{S})O(ϵ1​S) qubits. With access to more qubits we present algorithms that run in O(1ϵT)O(\frac{1}{\epsilon}\mathcal{T})O(ϵ1​T) time with O(S1−ϵTϵ)O(\mathcal{S}^{1-\epsilon}\mathcal{T}^\epsilon)O(S1−ϵTϵ) qubits. Both of these results show an improvement over Bennett's construction, which requires O(T1+ϵSϵ)O(\frac{\mathcal{T}^{1+\epsilon}}{\mathcal{S}^\epsilon})O(SϵT1+ϵ​) time when using O(ϵ21/ϵS(1+log⁡TS))O(\epsilon2^{1/\epsilon} \mathcal{S} (1+\log \frac{\mathcal{T}}{\mathcal{S}}))O(ϵ21/ϵS(1+logST​)) qubits. Additionally the results in our paper combine with Barrington's theorem to provide a general method to efficiently compute any log-depth circuit on quantum inputs using a constant number of ancilla qubits. We also explore a connection between the optimal structure of our pebbling algorithms and backtracking from dynamic programming.
Pebble games are used to study space/time trade-offs. Recently, spooky pebble games were introduced to study classical space / quantum space / time trade-offs for simulation of classical circuits on quantum computers. In this paper, the spooky pebble game framework is applied for the first time to general circuits. Using this framework we prove an upper bound for quantum space in the spooky pebble game. We also prove that solving the spooky pebble game is PSPACE-complete. Moreover, we present a solver for the spooky pebble game based on satisfiability solvers combined with heuristic optimizers. This spooky pebble game solver was empirically evaluated by calculating optimal classical space / quantum space / time trade-offs. Within limited runtime, the solver could find a strategy reducing quantum space when classical space is taken into account, showing that the spooky pebble model is useful to reduce quantum space.
Hierarchical reversible logic synthesis can find quantum circuits for large combinational functions. The price for a better scalability compared to functional synthesis approaches is the requirement for many additional qubits to store temporary results of the hierarchical input representation. However, implementing a quantum circuit with large number of qubits is a major hurdle. In this paper, we demonstrate and establish how reversible pebble games can be used to reduce the number of stored temporary results, thereby reducing the qubit count. Our proposed algorithm can be constrained with number of qubits, which is aimed to meet. Experimental studies show that the qubit count can be significantly reduced (by up to 63.2%) compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms, at the cost of additional gate count.
Quantum oracles are quantum circuits that implement classical Boolean functions, frequently used as independent black boxes in quantum algorithm design. The hierarchical reversible logic synthesis approach, a scalable method for large-scale oracle synthesis, relies on ancilla qubits to store intermediate results. The sequence in which these results are computed and uncomputed, governed by the reversible pebble game, greatly affects both qubit usage and circuit gate count. This paper introduces a novel divide-and-conquer pebbling strategy that reduces qubit count while maintaining a reasonable circuit gate count. Experimental results show up to a 90% reduction in qubits compared to the most commonly-used strategy, with an average increase of 3 to 4 times in quantum operations, all achieved within a reasonable runtime. In qubit-constrained tasks, our method achieves over 90% reduction in T-count. Additionally, we have incorporated our strategy into the hierarchical synthesis method and implemented it as a potential synthesizer for Qiskit, with experiments demonstrating that it outperforms the default synthesizer. The proposed approach shows promise in optimizing both qubit usage and circuit gate count for large-scale oracle synthesis problems.
Quantum circuit synthesis translates a classical Boolean function into an equivalent quantum circuit. The syn-thesis is solvable by playing the reversible pebble game on the logic network of the function. However, optimal solutions are im-practical for large networks, affecting the number of qubits and gates of the final quantum circuit. In this work, we improve the solution of the reversible pebble game by leveraging dominance relations on the directed acyclic graph of the classical function, reducing qubits needed for syntheses. The proposed algorithm exposes a tunable tradeoff between the available number of qubits and the circuit size expressed as T-count and T-depth. We experimentally validate our methodology on cryptographic and arithmetic benchmarks, reporting reductions between 37% and 83 % in qubit number with respect to Bennet syntheses algorithms and complete the majority of our syntheses in less than a second, improving on the current running times of state of the art approaches.
Quantum memory management is becoming a pressing problem, especially given the recent research effort to develop new and more complex quantum algorithms. The only existing automatic method for quantum states clean-up relies on the availability of many extra resources. In this work, we propose an automatic tool for quantum memory management. We show how this problem exactly matches the reversible pebbling game. Based on that, we develop a SAT-based algorithm that returns a valid clean-up strategy, taking the limitations of the quantum hardware into account. The developed tool empowers the designer with the flexibility required to explore the trade-off between memory resources and number of operations. We present two show-cases to prove the validity of our approach. First, we apply the algorithm to straight-line programs, widely used in cryptographic applications. Second, we perform a comparison with the existing approach, showing an average improvement of 52.77%.