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Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers

An Integer Programming Model for the Optimal Qubit Allocation

Hyeonseok Choi, In-Chan Choi

Published Apr 15, 2021• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

A qubit allocation problem is to find an assignment of logical qubits in a quantum algorithm to the physical qubits of a quantum computing device. The physical qubits are often configured in a coupling map, which is a directed graph that represents communication relationship between adjacent physical qubits. A proper qubit allocation satisfies all logical qubit communication relationship in a quantum circuit by conforming to the coupling map restriction. To find the proper qubit allocation, we often need to change the quantum circuit by using a set of circuit transformations, which include reversal, bridge, and swap. Such a transformation results in the quantum circuit with newly added quantum gates and subsequenlty causes extra quantum errors. In this study, we propose an integer programming model that minimizes the sum of the quantum costs of the circuit transformation. In our model, all three circuit transformations are considered. Moreover, we present the results of the computational experiment in which our model is compared with heuristic procedures from previous studies.

DOI
10.7232/jkiie.2021.47.2.199

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A qubit allocation problem is to find an assignment of logical qubits in a quantum algorithm to the physical qubits of a quantum computing device. The physical qubits are often configured in a coupling map, which is a directed graph that represents communication relationship between adjacent physical qubits. A proper qubit allocation satisfies all logical qubit communication relationship in a quantum circuit by conforming to the coupling map restriction. To find the proper qubit allocation, we often need to change the quantum circuit by using a set of circuit transformations, which include reversal, bridge, and swap. Such a transformation results in the quantum circuit with newly added quantum gates and subsequenlty causes extra quantum errors. In this study, we propose an integer programming model that minimizes the sum of the quantum costs of the circuit transformation. In our model, all three circuit transformations are considered. Moreover, we present the results of the computational experiment in which our model is compared with heuristic procedures from previous studies.
We consider the problem of mapping a logical quantum circuit onto a given hardware with limited 2-qubit connectivity. We model this problem as an integer linear program, using a network flow formulation with binary variables that includes the initial allocation of qubits and their routing. We consider several cost functions: an approximation of the fidelity of the circuit, its total depth, and a measure of cross-talk, all of which can be incorporated in the model. Numerical experiments on synthetic data and different hardware topologies indicate that the error rate and depth can be optimized simultaneously without significant loss. We test our algorithm on a large number of quantum volume circuits, optimizing for error rate and depth; our algorithm significantly reduces the number of CNOTs compared to Qiskit’s default transpiler SABRE [ 19 ] and produces circuits that, when executed on hardware, exhibit higher fidelity.
Rapid progress in the physical implementation of quantum computers gave birth to multiple recent quantum machines implemented with superconducting technology. In these NISQ machines, each qubit is physically connected to a bounded number of neighbors. This limitation prevents most quantum programs from being directly executed on quantum devices. A compiler is required for converting a quantum program to a hardware-compliant circuit, in particular, making each two-qubit gate executable by mapping the two logical qubits to two physical qubits with a link between them. To solve this problem, existing studies focus on inserting SWAP gates to dynamically remap logical qubits to physical qubits. However, most of the schemes lack the consideration of time-optimality of generated quantum circuits, or are achieving time-optimality with certain constraints. In this work, we propose a theoretically time-optimal SWAP insertion scheme for the qubit mapping problem. Our model can also be extended to practical heuristic algorithms. We present exact analysis results by using our model for quantum programs with recurring execution patterns. We have for the first time discovered an optimal qubit mapping pattern for quantum fourier transformation (QFT) on 2D nearest neighbor architecture. We also present a scalable extension of our theoretical model that can be used to solve qubit mapping for large quantum circuits.
Abstract Modular and networked quantum architectures can scale beyond the qubit count of a single device, but executing a circuit across modules requires implementing non-local two-qubit gates using shared entanglement (ebits) and classical communication, making ebit cost a central resource in distributed execution. The resulting distributed quantum circuit (DQC) problem is combinatorial, motivating prior heuristic approaches such as hypergraph partitioning. In this work, we decouple module allocation from distribution. For a fixed module allocation (i.e., assignment of each qubit to a specific quantum processing unit), we formulate the remaining distribution layer as an exact binary integer programming (BIP). This yields solver optimal distributions for the fixed allocation subproblem and can be used as a post-processing step on top of any existing allocation method. We derive compact BIP formulations for four or more modules and a tighter specialization for three modules. Across a diverse benchmark suite, BIP post-processing reduces ebit cost by up to 20% for random circuits and by more than an order of magnitude for some arithmetic circuits. While the method incurs offline classical overhead, it is amortized when circuits are executed repeatedly.
Modular and networked quantum architectures can scale beyond the qubit count of a single device, but executing a circuit across modules requires implementing non-local two-qubit gates using shared entanglement (ebits) and classical communication, making ebit cost a central resource in distributed execution. The resulting distributed quantum circuit (DQC) problem is combinatorial, motivating prior heuristic approaches such as hypergraph partitioning. In this work, we decouple module allocation from distribution. For a fixed module allocation (i.e., assignment of each qubit to a specific Quantum Processing Unit), we formulate the remaining distribution layer as an exact binary integer programming (BIP). This yields solver-optimal distributions for the fixed-allocation subproblem and can be used as a post-processing step on top of any existing allocation method. We derive compact BIP formulations for four or more modules and a tighter specialization for three modules. Across a diverse benchmark suite, BIP post-processing reduces ebit cost by up to 20\% for random circuits and by more than an order of magnitude for some arithmetic circuits. While the method incurs offline classical overhead, it is amortized when circuits are executed repeatedly.
Abstract In this work we propose a high-quality decomposition approach for qubit routing by swap insertion. This optimization problem arises in the context of compiling quantum algorithms formulated in the circuit model of computation onto specific quantum hardware. Our approach decomposes the routing problem into an allocation subproblem and a set of token swapping problems. This allows us to tackle the allocation part and the token swapping part separately. Extracting the allocation part from the qubit routing model of Nannicini et al. (Optimal qubit assignment and routing via integer programming, 2021, http://arxiv.org/abs/2106.06446 ), we formulate the allocation subproblem as a binary linear program. Herein, we employ a cost function that is a lower bound on the overall routing problem objective. We strengthen the linear relaxation by novel valid inequalities. For the token swapping part we develop an exact branch-and-bound algorithm. In this context, we improve upon known lower bounds on the token swapping problem. Furthermore, we enhance an existing approximation algorithm which runs much faster than the exact approach and typically is able to determine solutions close to the optimum. We present numerical results for the fully integrated allocation and token swapping problem. Obtained solutions may not be globally optimal due to the decomposition and the usage of an approximation algorithm. However, the solutions are obtained fast and are typically close to optimal. In addition, there is a significant reduction in the number of artificial gates and output circuit depth when compared to various state-of-the-art heuristics. Reducing these figures is crucial for minimizing noise when running quantum algorithms on near-term hardware. As a consequence, using the novel decomposition approach leads to compiled algorithms with improved quality. Indeed, when compiled with the novel routing procedure and executed on real hardware, our experimental results for quantum approximate optimization algorithms show an significant increase in solution quality in comparison to standard routing methods.
Modular quantum computing architectures are a promising alternative to monolithic QPU (Quantum Processing Unit) designs for scaling up quantum devices. They refer to a set of interconnected QPUs or cores consisting of tightly coupled quantum bits that can communicate via quantum-coherent and classical links. In multi-core architectures, it is crucial to minimize the amount of communication between cores when executing an algorithm. Therefore, mapping a quantum circuit onto a modular architecture involves finding an optimal assignment of logical qubits (qubits in the quantum circuit) to different cores with the aim to minimize the number of expensive inter-core operations while adhering to given hardware constraints. In this paper, we propose for the first time a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) technique to encode the problem and the solution for both qubit allocation and inter-core communication costs in binary decision variables. To this end, the quantum circuit is split into slices, and qubit assignment is formulated as a graph partitioning problem for each circuit slice. The costly inter-core communication is reduced by penalizing inter-core qubit communications. The final solution is obtained by minimizing the overall cost across all circuit slices. To evaluate the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct a detailed analysis using a representative set of benchmarks having a high number of qubits on two different multi-core architectures. Our method showed promising results and performed exceptionally well with very dense and highly-parallelized circuits that require on average 0.78 inter-core communications per two-qubit gate.