Toward a neutral atom quantum computer

Neutral atom quantum computers (NAQCs) are among the most promising computational platforms for quantum computing. Controlling and measuring individual atoms and their states, which often requires multiple imaging and image-analysis procedures, is typically the most time-consuming task during computation and contributes significantly to overall cycle times. To resolve this challenge, we propose a highly-parallel atom-detection accelerator for tweezer-based NAQCs. Our design builds on an existing state-reconstruction method and combines an algorithm-level optimization with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation to maximize parallelism and reduce the run time of the image-analysis process. We identify and overcome several challenges for an FPGA implementation, such as introducing a prefetching mechanism to improve scalability and customizing bus transfers to support large bandwidths. Tested on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA, our design can analyze a 256x256-pixel fluorescence image in just 115mus, achieving 34.9x and 6.3x speedups over the original and optimized CPU baseline, respectively. Moreover, our accelerator can maintain consistent resource utilization across various atom array sizes, contributing to the ongoing efforts toward scalable and fully integrated FPGA-based control systems for NAQCs.Neutral atom quantum computers (NAQCs) are among the most promising computational platforms for quantum computing. Controlling and measuring individual atoms and their states, which often requires multiple imaging and image-analysis procedures, is typically the most time-consuming task during computation and contributes significantly to overall cycle times. To resolve this challenge, we propose a highly-parallel atom-detection accelerator for tweezer-based NAQCs. Our design builds on an existing state-reconstruction method and combines an algorithm-level optimization with a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation to maximize parallelism and reduce the run time of the image-analysis process. We identify and overcome several challenges for an FPGA implementation, such as introducing a prefetching mechanism to improve scalability and customizing bus transfers to support large bandwidths. Tested on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA, our design can analyze a 256x256-pixel fluorescence image in just 115mus, achieving 34.9x and 6.3x speedups over the original and optimized CPU baseline, respectively. Moreover, our accelerator can maintain consistent resource utilization across various atom array sizes, contributing to the ongoing efforts toward scalable and fully integrated FPGA-based control systems for NAQCs.

quant-pharXiv:2604.00816ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC)Apr 2, 20260 citations

Multi-qubit entanglement and algorithms on a neutral-atom quantum computer

Trent Graham, Yunheung Song, J. Scott +22 more

arXiv:2112.14589NatureApr 20, 2022519 citations

Efficient Image Reconstruction Architecture for Neutral Atom Quantum Computing

Jonas Winklmann, Yian Yu, Xiaorang Guo +2 more

In recent years, neutral atom quantum computers (NAQCs) have attracted a lot of attention, primarily due to their long coherence times and good scalability. One of their main drawbacks is their comparatively time-consuming control overhead, with one of the main contributing procedures being the detection of individual atoms and measurement of their states, each occurring at least once per compute cycle and requiring fluorescence imaging and subsequent image analysis. To reduce the required time budget, we propose a highly-parallel atom-detection accelerator for tweezer-based NAQCs. Building on an existing solution, our design combines algorithm-level optimization with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation to maximize parallelism and reduce the run time of the image analysis process. Our design can analyze a 256$\times $256-pixel image representing a 10$ \times$10 atom array in just 115 $μ$ s on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA. Compared to the original CPU baseline and our optimized CPU version, we achieve about 34.9 $\times$ and 6.3 $\times$ speedup of the reconstruction time, respectively. Moreover, this work also contributes to the ongoing efforts toward fully integrated FPGA-based control systems for NAQCs.In recent years, neutral atom quantum computers (NAQCs) have attracted a lot of attention, primarily due to their long coherence times and good scalability. One of their main drawbacks is their comparatively time-consuming control overhead, with one of the main contributing procedures being the detection of individual atoms and measurement of their states, each occurring at least once per compute cycle and requiring fluorescence imaging and subsequent image analysis. To reduce the required time budget, we propose a highly-parallel atom-detection accelerator for tweezer-based NAQCs. Building on an existing solution, our design combines algorithm-level optimization with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation to maximize parallelism and reduce the run time of the image analysis process. Our design can analyze a 256$\times$256-pixel image representing a 10$\times$10 atom array in just 115 $μ$s on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA. Compared to the original CPU baseline and our optimized CPU version, we achieve about 34.9$\times$ and 6.3$\times$ speedup of the reconstruction time, respectively. Moreover, this work also contributes to the ongoing efforts toward fully integrated FPGA-based control systems for NAQCs.

quant-pharXiv:2603.03149Mar 4, 20260 citations

Quantum Computing with Neutral Atoms

Taylor & Francis eBooksMar 11, 20080 citations

256-pixel image representing a 10

\times$10 atom array in just 115

μ

s on a Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA. Compared to the original CPU baseline and our optimized CPU version, we achieve about 34.9

\times

and 6.3

\times

speedup of the reconstruction time, respectively. Moreover, this work also contributes to the ongoing efforts toward fully integrated FPGA-based control systems for NAQCs.