An Effective Framework for Full-Stack Benchmarking of Quantum Computers

Carmen G. Almudéver

The advances in quantum hardware with functional quantum processors integrating tens of noisy qubits, together with the availability of near-term quantum algorithms have allowed the development of the so-called full-stacks that bridge quantum applications with quantum devices. In this talk, we will provide an overview of the different layers of the quantum computing full-stack, with emphasis on the software ones that include the compilation of quantum algorithms. We will then discuss the need for optimal physical-aware and algorithm-driven compilation techniques in the midst of the NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-scale quantum) era. We will also focus on key principles for architecting quantum computers such as codesign, optimization and benchmarking and illustrate how the use of structured design space exploration methodologies could help towards the development of a cross-layer codesign framework for full-stack quantum computing systems. Finally, we will talk about the scalability of quantum computing systems, which is one of the main challenges the quantum computing community is currently facing.

Yosuke Ueno, Shinichi Sunami, Toshihide Hinokuma +5 more

Technological advances in neutral-atom platforms have opened a new path toward designing efficient protocols for fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). However, each physical operation is still orders of magnitude slower than on other platforms, such as superconducting qubits. Therefore, architects must identify fast and efficient FTQC architectures, which require reliable modeling tools to explore various design choices across the software, classical hardware, and quantum device stacks of neutral-atom platforms. In this paper, we propose NAQsim, an open-source simulation framework for neutral-atom FTQC architectures based on transversal gates. As its key feature, NAQsim enables detailed full-stack architecture evaluation that opens opportunities to explore previously overlooked performance bottlenecks. As a first use case for NAQsim, we identify one such bottleneck, patch rotations, perform full-stack co-optimization, and finally derive a near-rotation-free architecture (D3-ROT). For practical FTQC benchmark workloads, D3-ROT achieves a 2.27x speedup from this single bottleneck alone, with minimal footprint overhead. These results point to a much broader space of full-stack optimizations that NAQsim makes accessible for transversal surface-code architectures and beyond.

Chenghong Zhu, Lei Zhang, Xin Wang

Timothy J Proctor, Kenneth Rudinger, Mohan Sarovar +3 more

Jordan Hines, Timothy J Proctor

Quantum processors are now able to run quantum circuits that are infeasible to simulate classically, creating a need for benchmarks that assess a quantum processor's rate of errors when running these circuits. Here, we introduce a general technique for creating efficient benchmarks from any set of quantum computations, specified by unitary circuits. Our benchmarks assess the integrated performance of a quantum processor's classical compilation algorithms and its low-level quantum operations. Unlike existing “full-stack benchmarks”, our benchmarks do not require classical simulations of quantum circuits, and they use only efficient classical computations. We use our method to create randomized circuit benchmarks, including a computationally efficient version of the quantum volume benchmark, and an algorithm-based benchmark that uses Hamiltonian simulation circuits. We perform these benchmarks on IBM Q devices and in simulations, and we compare their results to the results of existing benchmarking methods.

Timothy J Proctor, Kevin C Young, Andrew Baczewski +1 more