Quantum simulation is the foundation for the design of many algorithms which share subroutines known as quantum simulation kernels. Optimizing the compilation of these kernels is crucial, involving two key components: 1) circuit synthesis and 2) qubit mapping. However, existing circuit synthesis methods either overlook qubit connectivity constraints (QCCs) or prioritize minimizing gate count over optimizing circuit depth. Similarly, current qubit mapping techniques do not work well with circuit synthesis methods. To address these limitations, we propose PauliForest, which comprises a connectivity-aware circuit synthesis algorithm and a Pauli-oriented qubit mapping algorithm. The synthesis algorithm employs heuristic strategies to generate shallower circuits, while the qubit mapping algorithm seamlessly collaborates with the circuit synthesis process. Compared to the state-of-the-art Paulihedral compiler, our approach significantly reduces both CNOT gate counts (by 13%) and circuit depths (by 25%). Experiments on a noisy simulator and a real superconducting quantum computer show that our algorithm can improve the fidelity of quantum circuit execution compared to Paulihedral.
Quantum simulation is the foundation for the design of many algorithms which share subroutines known as quantum simulation kernels. Optimizing the compilation of these kernels is crucial, involving two key components: 1) circuit synthesis and 2) qubit mapping. However, existing circuit synthesis methods either overlook qubit connectivity constraints (QCCs) or prioritize minimizing gate count over optimizing circuit depth. Similarly, current qubit mapping techniques do not work well with circuit synthesis methods. To address these limitations, we propose PauliForest, which comprises a connectivity-aware circuit synthesis algorithm and a Pauli-oriented qubit mapping algorithm. The synthesis algorithm employs heuristic strategies to generate shallower circuits, while the qubit mapping algorithm seamlessly collaborates with the circuit synthesis process. Compared to the state-of-the-art Paulihedral compiler, our approach significantly reduces both CNOT gate counts (by 13%) and circuit depths (by 25%). Experiments on a noisy simulator and a real superconducting quantum computer show that our algorithm can improve the fidelity of quantum circuit execution compared to Paulihedral.
The quantum simulation kernel is an important subroutine appearing as a very long gate sequence in many quantum programs. In this paper, we propose Paulihedral, a block-wise compiler framework that can deeply optimize this subroutine by exploiting high-level program structure and optimization opportunities. Paulihedral first employs a new Pauli intermediate representation that can maintain the high-level semantics and constraints in quantum simulation kernels. This naturally enables new large-scale optimizations that are hard to implement at the low gate-level. In particular, we propose two technology-independent instruction scheduling passes, and two technology-dependent code optimization passes which reconcile the circuit synthesis, gate cancellation, and qubit mapping stages of the compiler. Experimental results show that Paulihedral can outperform state-of-the-art compiler infrastructures in a wide-range of applications on both near-term superconducting quantum processors and future fault-tolerant quantum computers.
The quantum simulation kernel is an important subroutine appearing as a very long gate sequence in many quantum programs. In this paper, we propose Paulihedral, a block-wise compiler framework that can deeply optimize this subroutine by exploiting high-level program structure and optimization opportunities. Paulihedral first employs a new Pauli intermediate representation that can maintain the high-level semantics and constraints in quantum simulation kernels. This naturally enables new large-scale optimizations that are hard to implement at the low gate-level. In particular, we propose two technology-independent instruction scheduling passes, and two technology-dependent code optimization passes which reconcile the circuit synthesis, gate cancellation, and qubit mapping stages of the compiler. Experimental results show that Paulihedral can outperform state-of-the-art compiler infrastructures in a wide-range of applications on both near-term superconducting quantum processors and future fault-tolerant quantum computers.
In quantum computing, the efficient optimization of Pauli string decompositions is a crucial aspect for the compilation of quantum circuits for many applications, such as chemistry simulations and quantum machine learning. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for the synthesis of trotterized time-evolution operators that results in circuits with significantly fewer gates than previous solutions. Our synthesis procedure takes the qubit connectivity of a target quantum computer into account. As a result, the generated quantum circuit does not require routing, and no additional CNOT gates are needed to run the resulting circuit on a target device. We compare our algorithm against Paulihedral and TKET, and show a significant improvement for randomized circuits and different molecular ansatzes. We also investigate the Trotter error introduced by our ordering of the terms in the Hamiltonian versus default ordering and the ordering from the baseline methods and conclude that our method on average does not increase the Trotter error.
We propose a scalable, hierarchical qubit mapping and routing algorithm that harnesses the power of circuit synthesis. First, we decompose large circuits into subcircuits small enough to be directly resynthesized. For each block, we pre-synthesize them for all permutations of its input and output qubits. Following this offline step, we employ a permutation-aware, block-based generalization of the popular SABRE mapping algorithm. This mapping step stitches together blocks by choosing an input-output permutation that minimizes intrablock gate count and required inter-block communication (SWAP and bridge gates). Our approach has a twofold advantage: 1) circuit synthesis may eliminate more two-qubit gates than other optimizing compilers; 2) considering all permutations of input and output qubits eliminates communication operations transparently. In contrast, other mapping algorithms can only introduce communication operations. We show that we can produce better-quality circuits than commercial compilers: shorter by up to 68% (18% on average) fewer gates than Qiskit, up to 36% (9% on average) fewer gates than Tket. We outperform BQSkit, a permutation-unaware, synthesis-based compiler, by up to 67% (21% on average) fewer gates. We also exceed experimental optimal mappers such as OLSQ in quality (10.7% shorter circuits) and time to solution. Our scalable, heuristic approach can be seamlessly integrated into any quantum circuit compiler or optimization infrastructure, and it applies well to any qubit technology, such as superconducting and trapped ions.
The current phase of quantum computing is in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era. On NISQ devices, two-qubit gates such as CNOTs are much noisier than single-qubit gates, so it is essential to minimize their count. Quantum circuit synthesis is a process of decomposing an arbitrary unitary into a sequence of quantum gates, and can be used as an optimization tool to produce shorter circuits to improve overall circuit fidelity. However, the time-to-solution of synthesis grows exponentially with the number of qubits. As a result, synthesis is intractable for circuits on a large qubit scale. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical, block-by-block opti-mization framework, QGo, for quantum circuit optimization. Our approach allows an exponential cost optimization to scale to large circuits. QGo uses a combination of partitioning and synthesis: 1) partition the circuit into a sequence of independent circuit blocks; 2) re-generate and optimize each block using quantum synthesis; and 3) re-compose the final circuit by stitching all the blocks together. We perform our analysis and show the fidelity improvements in three different regimes: small-size circuits on real devices, medium-size circuits on noisy simulations, and large-size circuits on analytical models. Our technique can be applied after existing optimizations to achieve higher circuit fidelity. Using a set of NISQ benchmarks, we show that QGo can reduce the number of CNOT gates by 29.9% on average and up to 50% when compared with industrial compiler optimizations such as t|ket). When executed on the IBM Athens system, shorter depth leads to higher circuit fidelity. We also demonstrate the scalability of our QGo technique to optimize circuits of 60+ qubits, Our technique is the first demonstration of successfully employing and scaling synthesis in the compilation tool chain for large circuits. Overall, our approach is robust for direct incorporation in production compiler toolchains to further improve the circuit fidelity.
We present an algorithm for compiling arbitrary unitaries into a sequence of gates native to a quantum processor. As CNOT gates are error-prone for the foreseeable Noisy-Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices era, our A* inspired algorithm minimizes their count while accounting for connectivity. We discuss the formulation of synthesis as a search problem as well as an algorithm to find solutions. For a workload of circuits with complexity appropriate for the NISQ era, we produce solutions well within the best upper bounds published in literature and match or exceed hand tuned implementations, as well as other existing synthesis alternatives. In particular, when comparing against state-of-the-art available synthesis packages we show 2.4× average (up to 5.3×) reduction in CNOT count. We also show how to re-target the algorithm for a different chip topology and native gate set while obtaining similar quality results. We believe that tools like ours can facilitate algorithmic exploration and guide gate set discovery for quantum processor designers, as well as being useful for optimization in the quantum compilation tool-chain.