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Quantum Science and Technology

An efficient quantum compiler that reduces T count

Luke Heyfron, Earl T. Campbell

Published Jul 26, 2018• 96 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Before executing a quantum algorithm, one must first decompose the algorithm into machine-level instructions compatible with the architecture of the quantum computer, a process known as quantum compiling. There are many different quantum circuit decompositions for the same algorithm but it is desirable to compile leaner circuits. A fundamentally important cost metric is the T count—the number of T gates in a circuit. For the single qubit case, optimal compiling is essentially a solved problem. However, multi-qubit compiling is a harder problem with optimal algorithms requiring classical runtime exponential in the number of qubits. Here, we present and compare several efficient quantum compilers for multi-qubit Clifford + T circuits. We implemented our compilers in C++ and benchmarked them on random circuits, from which we determine that our TODD compiler yields the lowest T counts on average. We also benchmarked TODD on a library of reversible logic circuits that appear in quantum algorithms and found that it reduced the T count for 97% of the circuits with an average T -count saving of 20% when compared against the best of all previous circuit decompositions.

DOI
10.1088/2058-9565/aad604

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An Efficient Quantum Compiler that reduces TTT count

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Before executing a quantum algorithm, one must first decompose the algorithm into machine-level instructions compatible with the architecture of the quantum computer, a process known as quantum compiling. There are many different quantum circuit decompositions for the same algorithm but it is desirable to compile leaner circuits. A fundamentally important cost metric is the $T$ count -- the number of $T$ gates in a circuit. For the single qubit case, optimal compiling is essentially a solved problem. However, multi-qubit compiling is a harder problem with optimal algorithms requiring classical runtime exponential in the number of qubits. Here, we present and compare several efficient quantum compilers for multi-qubit Clifford + $T$ circuits. We implemented our compilers in C++ and benchmarked them on random circuits, from which we determine that our TODD compiler yields the lowest $T$ counts on average. We also benchmarked TODD on a library of reversible logic circuits that appear in quantum algorithms and found that it reduced the $T$ count for 97\% of the circuits with an average $T$-count saving of 20\% when compared against the best of all previous circuit decompositions.

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Quantum circuits for basic mathematical functions such as the square root are required to implement scientific computing algorithms on quantum computers. Quantum circuits that are based on Clifford+T gates can easily be made fault tolerant, but the T gate is very costly to implement. As a result, reducing T-count has become an important optimization goal. Further, quantum circuits with many qubits are difficult to realize, making designs that save qubits and produce no garbage outputs desirable. In this work, we present a T-count optimized quantum square root circuit with only 2 ṡ n + 1 qubits and no garbage output. To make a fair comparison against existing work, the Bennett’s garbage removal scheme is used to remove garbage output from existing works. We determined that our proposed design achieves an average T-count savings of 43.44%, 98.95%, 41.06%, and 20.28% as well as qubit savings of 85.46%, 95.16%, 90.59%, and 86.77% compared to existing works.

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A polynomial time and space heuristic algorithm for T-count

Michele Mosca, Priyanka Mukhopadhyay

Abstract An important part of reaping computational advantage from a quantum computer is to reduce the quantum resources needed to implement a desired quantum algorithm. Quantum algorithms that are too large to be practical on noisy intermediate scale quantum devices will require fault-tolerant error correction. This work focuses on reducing the physical cost of implementing quantum algorithms when using the state-of-the-art fault-tolerant quantum error correcting codes, in particular, those for which implementing the T gate consumes vastly more resources than the other gates in the gate set. More specifically, in this paper we consider the group of unitaries that can be exactly implemented by a quantum circuit consisting of the Clifford + T gate set. The Clifford + T gate set is a universal gate set and in this group, using state-of-the-art surface codes, the T gate is by far the most expensive component to implement fault-tolerantly. So it is important to minimize the number of T gates necessary for a fault-tolerant implementation. Our primary interest is to compute a circuit for a given n -qubit unitary U , using the minimum possible number of T gates (called the T-count of unitary U ). We consider the problem COUNT-T, the optimization version of which aims to find the T-count of U . In its decision version the goal is to decide if the T-count is at most some positive integer m . Given an oracle for COUNT-T, we can compute a T-count-optimal circuit in time polynomial in the T-count and dimension of U . We give a provable classical algorithm that solves COUNT-T (decision) in time O N 2 ( c − 1 ) ⌈ m c ⌉ p o l y ( m , N ) and space O N 2 ⌈ m c ⌉ p o l y ( m , N ) , where N = 2 n and c ⩾ 2. This gives a space-time trade-off for solving this problem with variants of meet-in-the-middle techniques. We also introduce an asymptotically faster multiplication method that shaves a factor of N 0.7457 off of the overall complexity. Lastly, beyond our improvements to the rigorous algorithm, we give a heuristic algorithm that outputs a T-count-optimal circuit and has space and time complexity poly( m , N ), under some assumptions. In our heuristic algorithm we developed a novel way of pruning the search space. While our heuristic method still scales exponentially with the number of qubits (though with a lower exponent), there is a large improvement by going from exponential to polynomial scaling with m . We implemented our heuristic algorithm with up to 4 qubit unitaries and obtained a significant improvement in time. For all benchmark and random unitaries we studied, the T-count returned by our algorithm is at most the T-count of their circuits shown in previous papers.

arXiv:2006.12440•Quantum Science and Technology•Oct 7, 2021•29 citations
Abstract Before executing a quantum algorithm, one must first decompose the algorithm into machine-level instructions compatible with the architecture of the quantum computer, a process known as quantum compiling. There are many different quantum circuit decompositions for the same algorithm but it is desirable to compile leaner circuits. A fundamentally important cost metric is the T count—the number of T gates in a circuit. For the single qubit case, optimal compiling is essentially a solved problem. However, multi-qubit compiling is a harder problem with optimal algorithms requiring classical runtime exponential in the number of qubits. Here, we present and compare several efficient quantum compilers for multi-qubit Clifford + T circuits. We implemented our compilers in C++ and benchmarked them on random circuits, from which we determine that our TODD compiler yields the lowest T counts on average. We also benchmarked TODD on a library of reversible logic circuits that appear in quantum algorithms and found that it reduced the T count for 97% of the circuits with an average T -count saving of 20% when compared against the best of all previous circuit decompositions.
Before executing a quantum algorithm, one must first decompose the algorithm into machine-level instructions compatible with the architecture of the quantum computer, a process known as quantum compiling. There are many different quantum circuit decompositions for the same algorithm but it is desirable to compile leaner circuits. A fundamentally important cost metric is the TTT count -- the number of TTT gates in a circuit. For the single qubit case, optimal compiling is essentially a solved problem. However, multi-qubit compiling is a harder problem with optimal algorithms requiring classical runtime exponential in the number of qubits. Here, we present and compare several efficient quantum compilers for multi-qubit Clifford + TTT circuits. We implemented our compilers in C++ and benchmarked them on random circuits, from which we determine that our TODD compiler yields the lowest TTT counts on average. We also benchmarked TODD on a library of reversible logic circuits that appear in quantum algorithms and found that it reduced the TTT count for 97\% of the circuits with an average TTT-count saving of 20\% when compared against the best of all previous circuit decompositions.
Among the cost metrics characterizing a quantum circuit, the T -count stands out as one of the most crucial as its minimization is particularly important in various areas of quantum computation such as fault-tolerant quantum computing and quantum circuit simulation. In this work, we contribute to the T -count reduction problem by proposing efficient T -count optimizers with low execution times. In particular, we greatly improve the complexity of TODD, an algorithm currently providing the best T -count reduction on various quantum circuits. We also propose some modifications to the algorithm which are leading to a significantly lower number of T gates. In addition, we propose another algorithm which has an even lower complexity and that achieves a better or equal T -count than the state of the art on most quantum circuits evaluated. We also prove that the number of T gates in the circuit obtained after executing our algorithms on a Hadamard-free circuit composed of n qubits is upper bounded by n ( n + 1 ) / 2 + 1 , which improves on the worst-case T -count of existing optimization algorithms. From this we derive an upper bound of ( n + 1 ) ( n + 2 h ) / 2 + 1 for the number of T gates in a Clifford + T circuit where h is the number of internal Hadamard gates in the circuit, i.e. the number of Hadamard gates lying between the first and the last T gate of the circuit.
The efficiency of compiling high-level quantum algorithms into instruction sets native to quantum computers defines the moment in the future when we will be able to solve interesting and important problems on quantum computers. In my work I focus on the new methods for compiling single qubit operations that appear in many quantum algorithms into single qubit operations natively supported by several popular architectures. In addition, I study several questions related to synthesis and optimization of multiqubit operations. \n \n \nWhen studying the single qubit case, I consider two native instruction sets. The first one is Clifford+T; it is supported by conventional quantum computers implementing fault tolerance protocols based on concatenated and surface codes, and by topological quantum computers based on Ising anyons. The second instruction set is the one supported by topological quantum computers based on Fibonacci anyons. I show that in both cases one can use the number theoretic structure of the problem and methods of computational algebraic number theory to achieve improvements over the previous state of the art by factors ranging from 10 to 1000 for instances of the problem interesting in practice. This order of improvement might make certain interesting quantum computations possible several years earlier. \n \n \nThe work related to multiqubit operations is on exact synthesis and optimization of Clifford+T and Clifford circuits. I show an exact synthesis algorithm for unitaries generated by Clifford+T circuits requiring exponentially less number of gates than previous state of the art. For Clifford circuits two directions are studied: the algorithm for finding optimal circuits acting on a small number of qubits and heuristics for larger circuits optimization. The techniques developed allows one to reduce the size of encoding and decoding circuits for quantum error correcting codes by 40-50\\% and also finds their applications in randomized benchmarking protocols.
Quantum Circuit Pre-Synthesis: Learning Local Edits to Reduce TTT-count
Compiling quantum circuits into Clifford+TTT gates is a central task for fault-tolerant quantum computing using stabilizer codes. In the near term, TTT gates will dominate the cost of fault tolerant implementations, and any reduction in the number of such expensive gates could mean the difference between being able to run a circuit or not. While exact synthesis is exponentially hard in the number of qubits, local synthesis approaches are commonly used to compile large circuits by decomposing them into substructures. However, composing local methods leads to suboptimal compilations in key metrics such as TTT-count or circuit depth, and their performance strongly depends on circuit representation. In this work, we address this challenge by proposing \textsc{Q-PreSyn}, a strategy that, given a set of local edits preserving circuit equivalence, uses a RL agent to identify effective sequences of such actions and thereby obtain circuit representations that yield a reduced TTT-count upon synthesis. Experimental results of our proposed strategy, applied on top of well-known synthesis algorithms, show up to a 20%20\%20% reduction in TTT-count on circuits with up to 25 qubits, without introducing any additional approximation error prior to synthesis.
Quantum circuits for basic mathematical functions such as the square root are required to implement scientific computing algorithms on quantum computers. Quantum circuits that are based on Clifford+T gates can easily be made fault tolerant, but the T gate is very costly to implement. As a result, reducing T-count has become an important optimization goal. Further, quantum circuits with many qubits are difficult to realize, making designs that save qubits and produce no garbage outputs desirable. In this work, we present a T-count optimized quantum square root circuit with only 2 ṡ n + 1 qubits and no garbage output. To make a fair comparison against existing work, the Bennett’s garbage removal scheme is used to remove garbage output from existing works. We determined that our proposed design achieves an average T-count savings of 43.44%, 98.95%, 41.06%, and 20.28% as well as qubit savings of 85.46%, 95.16%, 90.59%, and 86.77% compared to existing works.
Abstract An important part of reaping computational advantage from a quantum computer is to reduce the quantum resources needed to implement a desired quantum algorithm. Quantum algorithms that are too large to be practical on noisy intermediate scale quantum devices will require fault-tolerant error correction. This work focuses on reducing the physical cost of implementing quantum algorithms when using the state-of-the-art fault-tolerant quantum error correcting codes, in particular, those for which implementing the T gate consumes vastly more resources than the other gates in the gate set. More specifically, in this paper we consider the group of unitaries that can be exactly implemented by a quantum circuit consisting of the Clifford + T gate set. The Clifford + T gate set is a universal gate set and in this group, using state-of-the-art surface codes, the T gate is by far the most expensive component to implement fault-tolerantly. So it is important to minimize the number of T gates necessary for a fault-tolerant implementation. Our primary interest is to compute a circuit for a given n -qubit unitary U , using the minimum possible number of T gates (called the T-count of unitary U ). We consider the problem COUNT-T, the optimization version of which aims to find the T-count of U . In its decision version the goal is to decide if the T-count is at most some positive integer m . Given an oracle for COUNT-T, we can compute a T-count-optimal circuit in time polynomial in the T-count and dimension of U . We give a provable classical algorithm that solves COUNT-T (decision) in time O N 2 ( c − 1 ) ⌈ m c ⌉ p o l y ( m , N ) and space O N 2 ⌈ m c ⌉ p o l y ( m , N ) , where N = 2 n and c ⩾ 2. This gives a space-time trade-off for solving this problem with variants of meet-in-the-middle techniques. We also introduce an asymptotically faster multiplication method that shaves a factor of N 0.7457 off of the overall complexity. Lastly, beyond our improvements to the rigorous algorithm, we give a heuristic algorithm that outputs a T-count-optimal circuit and has space and time complexity poly( m , N ), under some assumptions. In our heuristic algorithm we developed a novel way of pruning the search space. While our heuristic method still scales exponentially with the number of qubits (though with a lower exponent), there is a large improvement by going from exponential to polynomial scaling with m . We implemented our heuristic algorithm with up to 4 qubit unitaries and obtained a significant improvement in time. For all benchmark and random unitaries we studied, the T-count returned by our algorithm is at most the T-count of their circuits shown in previous papers.