Semiconductor triple-quantum dots (TQDs) are a promising platform for scalable quantum information processing, but the community has so far lacked access to affordable and flexible high-speed control electronics. SpinQICK, an open-source spin qubit-control package built on the Xilinx Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC), directly addresses this gap by leveraging the high sampling-rate signal generation and advanced digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities of the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK) to enable precise time-domain voltage control and readout of semiconductor spin qubits. In this paper, we use spinQICK to demonstrate coherent control, state preparation, and readout of a fully connected triangular exchange-only device. We also introduce and experimentally verify a novel dynamical decoupling (DD) sequence enabled by the triangular TQD and leverage its unique decoupling properties to characterize electrical noise. These results establish spinQICK as a low-cost, flexible platform for semiconductor spin qubit control and provide a pathway for hardware optimization through qubit-level noise diagnostics.
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Semiconductor triple-quantum dots (TQDs) are a promising platform for scalable quantum information processing, but the community has so far lacked access to affordable and flexible high-speed control electronics. SpinQICK, an open-source spin qubit-control package built on the Xilinx Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC), directly addresses this gap by leveraging the high sampling-rate signal generation and advanced digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities of the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK) to enable precise time-domain voltage control and readout of semiconductor spin qubits. In this paper, we use spinQICK to demonstrate coherent control, state preparation, and readout of a fully connected triangular exchange-only device. We also introduce and experimentally verify a novel dynamical decoupling (DD) sequence enabled by the triangular TQD and leverage its unique decoupling properties to characterize electrical noise. These results establish spinQICK as a low-cost, flexible platform for semiconductor spin qubit control and provide a pathway for hardware optimization through qubit-level noise diagnostics.
<!--HTML-->The control of superconducting qubits, central to quantum computing, demands precise manipulation of fast microwave pulses. FPGAs offer ideal versatility for this task. However, due to FPGA complexity, institutions often opt for costly, pre-made solutions, limiting customization. We therefore presented Qibosoq, an open-source software package designed for radio frequency system on chip (RFSoC) platforms. Qibosoq bridges the RFSoC firmware provided by QICK, a Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, with Qibo, an open-source quantum computing framework. By using RFSoC boards, it is possible to significantly lower the cost of a qubit-control hardware, while also maintaining high development flexibility. We present the Qibosoq software package, as well as the result of testing it with multiple qubits both as a characterization platform and as an algorithm executor, where we demonstrated the capability of the RFSoC board to accurately perform Quantum Machine Learning applications.
Dynamical decoupling techniques are widely used to characterize and control the environments of solid-state quantum defects, enabling solid-state quantum memories and nanoscale quantum sensors. However, resolution is often limited by the timing granularity of control hardware, which can undersample narrow spectral features and distort extracted parameters. Here, we demonstrate sub-nanosecond timing control on an inexpensive FPGA-based platform by extending the open-source QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit) framework using a waveform-offset method. This approach achieves an effective timing resolution of 200~ps on an RF system-on-chip device without modification to the underlying hardware. We apply this capability to dynamical decoupling spectroscopy of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, enabling precise extraction of hyperfine couplings of individual 13C nuclear spins and resolving spectral features that are otherwise undersampled. These results demonstrate that high-resolution, device-level characterization of spin-based quantum memories can be achieved using flexible, inexpensive control hardware, providing a scalable alternative to commercial arbitrary waveform generators.
We introduce a Xilinx RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC)-based qubit controller (called the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, or QICK for short), which supports the direct synthesis of control pulses with carrier frequencies of up to 6 GHz. The QICK can control multiple qubits or other quantum devices. The QICK consists of a digital board hosting an RFSoC field-programmable gate array, custom firmware, and software and an optional companion custom-designed analog front-end board. We characterize the analog performance of the system as well as its digital latency, important for quantum error correction and feedback protocols. We benchmark the controller by performing standard characterizations of a transmon qubit. We achieve an average gate fidelity of Favg=99.93%. All of the schematics, firmware, and software are open-source.
The QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit), first introduced in 2022, is a standalone open source control system for quantum information science. Since then, QICK has been migrated to new hardware platforms, expanded its functionality for applications with different types of qubits (superconducting, atomic, ion-trapped, and spin defects), as well as quantum sensors, and quantum networks. QICK is a highly optimized control kit, with a library of functions that can be used for more than one application. In particular, the software and firmware are customized to minimize latency and maximize control performance and throughput. In this white paper, we describe hardware details and performance of the QICK Box. The QICK Box features up to 16 outputs, up to 8 inputs, and 8 20-bit DC biases. Modular output and input daughtercards give the choice of signal chains optimized for fast DC-coupled signals or RF signals up to 10 GHz. Power levels, step attenuation, and bandpass filtering are controlled by software. We demonstrate the system's performance through single-shot readout measurements of a six-transmon device at the Quantum Underground Instrumentation Experimental Testbed (QUIET) at Fermilab, achieving (91.7 +/- 0.4)% readout fidelity limited by T1 decay during the readout. The single shot readout signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 4.4 +/- 0.1 without a quantum amplifier, confirming that the QICK Box is suitable for high-fidelity quantum control and measurement applications. Advances in firmware and software will be described in a separate paper.
Abstract We present Qibosoq , an open-source server-side software package designed for radio frequency system on chip (RFSoC) for executing arbitrary pulse sequences and algorithms on self-hosted quantum processing units using only open-source software. Qibosoq connects the RFSoC firmware provided by Qick , a Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit, with Qibo , a quantum computing middleware framework that enables both experimental and gate-based applications. It simplifies the work of experimentalists and developers by managing client-server communication protocols, implementing tests, and validation procedures, thereby reducing the complexity of experimental setups. The client-side integration is achieved with dedicated drivers implemented in Qibolab , the specialized software module of Qibo for quantum hardware control. Therefore, this setup provides a seamless mechanism to deploy circuit-based algorithms on custom self-hosted quantum hardware platforms controlled by RFSoC electronics.
This thesis presents the development of a superconducting qubit control and readout system based on FPGA technology, with a focus on the design of a pulse sequencer and the integration of frequency-multiplexed control. The system leverages the Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK), an open-source Xilinx RFSoC-based platform capable of direct digital synthesis and acquisition of microwave signals up to 10 GHz. The QICK firmware was extended to support the simultaneous generation and readout of multiple frequency-multiplexed tones, enabling the control and measurement of several qubits coupled to a shared feedline. This approach optimizes the number of controllable qubits relative to the available ADC and DAC resources on the RFSoC 4x2 board. Furthermore, this work includes the development of Qubase, a Python-based pulse sequencer that allows users to easily define and execute complex sequences of control and measurement pulses through the QICK Python interface. The resulting architecture is both flexible and scalable, providing a foundation for efficient multi-qubit experiments and enabling advanced techniques such as quantum error correction and real-time feedback.