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arXiv:2311.10686 · ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing

Realistic Cost to Execute Practical Quantum Circuits using Direct Clifford+T Lattice Surgery Compilation

Tyler LeBlond, Christopher Dean, George Watkins, Ryan S. Bennink

Published Aug 27, 2024• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We report a resource estimation pipeline that explicitly compiles quantum circuits expressed using the Clifford+T gate set into a surface code lattice surgery instruction set. The cadence of magic state requests from the compiled circuit enables the optimization of magic state distillation and storage requirements in a post-hoc analysis. To compile logical circuits into lattice surgery operations, we build upon the open-source Lattice Surgery Compiler. The revised compiler operates in two stages: the first translates logical gates into an abstract, layout-independent instruction set; the second compiles these into local lattice surgery instructions that are allocated to hardware tiles according to a specified resource layout. The second stage retains logical parallelism while avoiding resource contention in the fault-tolerant layer, aiding realism. Additionally, users can specify dedicated tiles at which magic states are replenished, enabling resource costs from the logical computation to be considered independently from magic state distillation and storage. We demonstrate the applicability of our pipeline to large practical quantum circuits by providing resource estimates for the ground state estimation of molecules. We find that variable magic state consumption rates in real circuits can cause the resource costs of magic state storage to dominate unless production is varied to suit.

DOI
10.1145/3689826

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We report a resource estimation pipeline that explicitly compiles quantum circuits expressed using the Clifford+T gate set into a surface code lattice surgery instruction set. The cadence of magic state requests from the compiled circuit enables the optimization of magic state distillation and storage requirements in a post-hoc analysis. To compile logical circuits into lattice surgery operations, we build upon the open-source Lattice Surgery Compiler. The revised compiler operates in two stages: the first translates logical gates into an abstract, layout-independent instruction set; the second compiles these into local lattice surgery instructions that are allocated to hardware tiles according to a specified resource layout. The second stage retains logical parallelism while avoiding resource contention in the fault-tolerant layer, aiding realism. Additionally, users can specify dedicated tiles at which magic states are replenished, enabling resource costs from the logical computation to be considered independently from magic state distillation and storage. We demonstrate the applicability of our pipeline to large practical quantum circuits by providing resource estimates for the ground state estimation of molecules. We find that variable magic state consumption rates in real circuits can cause the resource costs of magic state storage to dominate unless production is varied to suit.
Lattice surgery on the surface code is a leading route to fault-tolerant quantum computation. Compiling logical circuits into lattice surgery operations is a pivotal step that determines the resource cost of a computation. Prior compilers build on idealized assumptions, and one that works in practical settings remains to be developed. Existing works are either unscalable or route one gate at a time within a layer, so the embedding depends on the order of gates and opportunities to route many gates at once are lost. In addition, they assume magic states are always available and cost-free, even though preparing one costs more than a Clifford operation. We present FlowRouter, the first topological lattice surgery compiler that places Clifford routing and stochastic magic state cultivation inside a single 3D embedding. At compile time, FlowRouter formulates the routing of an entire circuit layer as a maximum-flow problem, embedding many gates simultaneously. At runtime, it allows magic states to be cultivated at every idling patch, works with the realistic cultivation process with multiplexing and multi-stage post-selections, and absorbs the stochasticity by introducing delay mechanisms that add as little spacetime volume as possible. With magic states assumed free, FlowRouter reduces spacetime volume by 2.3x and compiles 10.8x faster than the state-of-the-art static topological lattice surgery compiler. With the cultivation-aware setting that includes both Clifford and magic state cost, FlowRouter reduces spacetime volume by 2.3x on a distance-13 surface code when compared with the state-of-the-art runtime compiler.
In the early fault-tolerant quantum computing era, it is desirable to accurately capture resource estimates for practical quantum circuit execution on future fault-tolerant quantum processors. While several open-source resource estimation tools currently exist, they fall short of realism in multiple facets: first, they do not rely on explicit compilation, thus necessitating several simplifying assumptions. Second, they rely on one-size-fits-all logical error rate formulae for all members of their logical instruction set. To properly account for the resource overhead of fault-tolerance, a comprehensive strategy for compiling logical circuits into fault-tolerant operations on a hardware-mapped quantum error-correcting code is required. In the case of the surface code, explicit compilation enables resource estimation for schemes that do not assume a constant rate of magic state consumption and the more realistic computation of total logical error based on active hardware tiles. This poster will focus on ORNL's efforts toward developing compiler-based resource estimation for a surface code mapping onto a hypothetical trappedion QCCD architecture. To this end, two open-source compilers and a simulator have been developed. First, we use a significantly-revised Lattice Surgery Compiler (LSC) to compile logical circuits into surface code primitives acting on abstract hardware tiles. Second, the Trapped-Ion Surface Code Compiler (TISCC) compiles these primitives into native trappedion hardware gates acting on trapping zones. Finally, we use the Oak Ridge Quasi-Clifford Simulator (ORQCS) to evaluate the fault-tolerance of TISCC circuits under realistic trappedion QCCD noise assumptions. We describe how this end-to-end fault-tolerance compilation and simulation capability enables advanced resource estimation.
Fault-tolerant quantum processors based on topological codes execute programs through lattice surgery, where operations must be mapped, routed, and supplied with magic states across a 2D grid of physical patches. Non-Clifford operations require these magic states, produced either by distillation factories or by cultivation, each trading footprint against preparation latency, and delivering a magic state to the data patches that consume it requires routing through the same shared layout as every other operation. Yet placement, routing, scheduling, and magic-state supply cannot be optimized in isolation: two operations with no circuit-level dependency can still contend for the same ports, routes, or magic-state terminals once placed, so a compiler that decouples instruction scheduling from magic-state generation, or hard-codes a single generation protocol, is forced to trade execution time against layout footprint instead of co-optimizing both across protocols. We present Harvest, a resource-aware compilation approach for lattice-surgery that co-optimizes magic-state consumption with circuit-aware placement and congestion-aware routing under a protocol-agnostic resource model, then reclaims unused layout footprint after scheduling. Across standard benchmark suites (QAOA, QFT, QASMBench), Harvest achieves an average speedup of 4.83×4.83\times4.83× (up to 17.8×17.8\times17.8×) over sequential execution, improves schedule length by up to 1.35×1.35\times1.35× through circuit-aware placement, and reclaims up to 72.0%72.0\%72.0% of unused magic-state patches and 33.9%33.9\%33.9% of unused routing patches.
Recent experimental progress in realizing surface code on hardware, including demonstrations of break-even logical memory on devices with up to hundreds of physical qubits, has materially advanced the prospects for fault-tolerant quantum computation. This progress creates urgency for the development of compilation workflows that directly target the forthcoming generation of devices with thousands of physical qubits, for which algorithm execution becomes practical. We develop a pipeline for compiling logical algorithms to physical circuits implementing lattice surgery on the surface code, and use this pipeline to identify the requirements for achieving algorithmic break-even -- where quantum error correction improves the performance of a quantum algorithm -- for two prominent quantum algorithms: the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) and quantum phase estimation (QPE). Our pipeline integrates several open-source software tools, and leverages recent advances in error-aware unitary gate synthesis, high-fidelity magic state production, and the calculation of correlation surfaces in the surface code. We perform classical simulations of physical Clifford proxy circuits produced by our pipeline, and find that both 5-qubit QAOA and QPE can reach algorithmic break-even with 2517 physical qubits (surface code distance d=11d=11d=11) at physical error rates of p=10−3p=10^{-3}p=10−3, or 1737 physical qubits (d=9d=9d=9) at p=5×10−4p=5\times 10^{-4}p=5×10−4. Our work thereby identifies conditions for achieving algorithmic break-even with near-term quantum hardware and paves the way towards an end-to-end compiler for early-fault-tolerant surface code architectures.
We present the first high performance compiler for very large scale quantum error correction: it translates an arbitrary quantum circuit to surface code operations based on lattice surgery. Our compiler offers an end to end error correction workflow implemented by a pluggable architecture centered around an intermediate representation of lattice surgery instructions. Moreover, the compiler supports customizable circuit layouts, can be used for quantum benchmarking and includes a quantum resource estimator. The compiler can process millions of gates using a streaming pipeline at a speed geared towards real-time operation of a physical device. We compiled within seconds 80 million logical surface code instructions, corresponding to a high precision Clifford+T implementation of the 128-qubit Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT).
Resource estimation is a significant challenge in evaluating fault tolerant quantum computers. Existing approaches often rely on either fixed architectural assumptions or coarse analytical models that fail to capture the interaction between hardware constraints and circuit compilation. This challenge is particularly acute for neutral atom quantum computers, where architectural features such as atom movement, measurement zones, and multi-species arrays introduce a broad design space for implementing fault tolerant computation. Addressing the need for a tighter feedback loop between hardware design and practical application development, we present a compilation-driven framework for quantum resource estimation that translates arbitrary quantum circuits into logical primitive operations with known physical resource costs. This framework allows for easily configurable hardware assumptions that enable rapid comparison of different architectural design choices. We apply our approach to two early fault tolerant quantum simulation and optimization workloads, assuming the use of the surface code, revealing several architectural trends. While the production of magic states continues to be the dominant source of overhead for these benchmarks, access to movement can save time on cultivation and important transversal gates. As problem size grows, routing and qubit movement become dominant bottlenecks, highlighting the need for movement-aware compiler optimizations and frugal routing strategies. Finally, our results suggest that neutral atom architectures combining dual-species arrays with controlled qubit movement offer a promising path toward near-term advantage on fault tolerant devices.