Abstract The systematic evaluation of the performance of Quantum Computers allows users to identify the best platform to execute a certain class of workload, and it can also guide the future developments of hardware companies. The NEASQC Benchmark Suite (TNBS) is a methodology designed in the context of the NEASQC (NExt ApplicationS of Quantum Computing) European project to perform such evaluation across several benchmark cases identified as common in one or several domains of application of Quantum Computing. TNBS follows several design principles identified as relevant after a thorough evaluation of the existing benchmarking methodologies: (1) benchmarks are defined at high-level not being linked to any algorithmic approach or implementation, (2) benchmarks are scalable (in qubits) and their output is classically verifiable, (3) performance metrics may be defined per case to fit the nature of the outputs of each case, and (4) the benchmark report also keeps record of all the relevant components of the execution stack. Finally, in the future, the reports may be submitted to a centralized repository, which is equipped with a web interface allowing a systematic and objective comparison of different platforms across the different cases. The first release of TNBS is composed of 4 benchmark cases and provides a reference implementation in myQLM. Documentation and code are available at https://github.com/NEASQC/WP3_Benchmark .
Abstract The systematic evaluation of the performance of Quantum Computers allows users to identify the best platform to execute a certain class of workload, and it can also guide the future developments of hardware companies. The NEASQC Benchmark Suite (TNBS) is a methodology designed in the context of the NEASQC (NExt ApplicationS of Quantum Computing) European project to perform such evaluation across several benchmark cases identified as common in one or several domains of application of Quantum Computing. TNBS follows several design principles identified as relevant after a thorough evaluation of the existing benchmarking methodologies: (1) benchmarks are defined at high-level not being linked to any algorithmic approach or implementation, (2) benchmarks are scalable (in qubits) and their output is classically verifiable, (3) performance metrics may be defined per case to fit the nature of the outputs of each case, and (4) the benchmark report also keeps record of all the relevant components of the execution stack. Finally, in the future, the reports may be submitted to a centralized repository, which is equipped with a web interface allowing a systematic and objective comparison of different platforms across the different cases. The first release of TNBS is composed of 4 benchmark cases and provides a reference implementation in myQLM. Documentation and code are available at https://github.com/NEASQC/WP3_Benchmark .
Quantum computers have the potential to provide an advantage over classical computers in a number of areas. Numerous metrics to benchmark the performance of quantum computers, ranging from their individual hardware components to entire applications, have been proposed over the years. Objective comparisons are further hampered in practice as different variations of the same metric are used, and the data disclosed together with a reported metric value is often not sufficient to reproduce the measurements. In this poster, we present our recent article, where we address these challenges by providing a review of metrics and benchmarks for quantum computers [1], including 1) a comprehensive collection of benchmarks allowing holistic comparisons of quantum computers, 2) a consistent format of the definitions across all metrics including a transparent description of the methodology and of the main assumptions and limitations, and 3) a reproducible approach by linking the metrics to open-source software used to evaluate them . We identify five areas where international standardization working groups could be established, namely: i) the identification and agreement on the categories of metrics that comprehensively benchmark device performance; ii) the identification and agreement on a set of well-established metrics that together comprehensively benchmark performance; iii) the identification of metrics specific to hardware platforms, including non-gate-based quantum computers; iv) inter-laboratory comparison studies to develop best practice guides for measurement methodology; and v) agreement on what data and software should be reported together with a metric value to ensure trust, transparency and reproducibility. We provide potential routes to advancing these areas. We expect that this work will accelerate the progress of quantum computing hardware towards quantum advantage. [1] D. Lall et al., A Review and Collection of Metrics and Benchmarks for Quantum Computers: Definitions, Methodologies and Software, arXiv:2502.06717.
The rapid development of quantum computing (QC) in the NISQ era urgently demands a low-level benchmark suite and insightful evaluation metrics for characterizing the properties of prototype NISQ devices, the efficiency of QC programming compilers, schedulers and assemblers, and the capability of quantum system simulators in a classical computer. In this work, we fill this gap by proposing a low-level, easy-to-use benchmark suite called QASMBench based on the OpenQASM assembly representation. It consolidates commonly used quantum routines and kernels from a variety of domains including chemistry, simulation, linear algebra, searching, optimization, arithmetic, machine learning, fault tolerance, cryptography, and so on, trading-off between generality and usability. To analyze these kernels in terms of NISQ device execution, in addition to circuit width and depth, we propose four circuit metrics including gate density, retention lifespan, measurement density, and entanglement variance, to extract more insights about the execution efficiency, the susceptibility to NISQ error, and the potential gain from machine-specific optimizations. Applications in QASMBench can be launched and verified on several NISQ platforms, including IBM-Q, Rigetti, IonQ and Quantinuum. For evaluation, we measure the execution fidelity of a subset of QASMBench applications on 12 IBM-Q machines through density matrix state tomography, comprising 25K circuit evaluations. We also compare the fidelity of executions among the IBM-Q machines, the IonQ QPU and the Rigetti Aspen M-1 system. QASMBench is released at: http://github.com/pnnl/QASMBench .
Quantum software tools for a wide variety of design tasks on and across different levels of abstraction are crucial in order to eventually realize useful quantum applications. This requires practical and relevant benchmarks for new software tools to be empirically evaluated and compared to the current state of the art. Although benchmarks for specific design tasks are commonly available, the demand for an overarching cross-level benchmark suite has not yet been fully met and there is no mutual consolidation in how quantum software tools are evaluated thus far. In this work, we propose the MQT Bench benchmark suite (as part of the Munich Quantum Toolkit , MQT) based on four core traits: (1) cross-level support for different abstraction levels, (2) accessibility via an easy-to-use web interface (https://www.cda.cit.tum.de/mqtbench/) and a Python package, (3) provision of a broad selection of benchmarks to facilitate generalizability, as well as (4) extendability to future algorithms, gate-sets, and hardware architectures. By comprising more than 70,000 benchmark circuits ranging from 2 to 130 qubits on four abstraction levels, MQT Bench presents a first step towards benchmarking different abstraction levels with a single benchmark suite to increase comparability, reproducibility, and transparency.
As quantum computing systems continue to mature, there is an increasing need for benchmarking methodologies that capture performance in terms of meaningful, application-level metrics. In this work, we present a scalable framework for application-level quantum benchmarking that is designed to support internal system evaluation and cross-platform comparison across technology providers. Our framework is guided by a set of core principles, including measurability, simplicity, scalability, and extensibility. We present 13 benchmark families that reflect realistic workloads across multiple domains. This enables the systematic evaluation of the quality of solutions, the total execution time, total used energy, as well as Time-to-Solution. The benchmarks are designed to be reproducible, interpretable across stakeholder groups, and adaptable to evolving system capabilities. The framework aims to bridge the gap between low-level performance metrics and real-world value, providing a unified approach to assessing quantum systems. The resulting benchmarks support development and validation and contribute to the foundation of industry-wide benchmarking standards.
The emergence of quantum computers as a new computational paradigm has been accompanied by speculation concerning the scope and timeline of their anticipated revolutionary changes. While quantum computing is still in its infancy, the variety of different architectures used to implement quantum computations make it difficult to reliably measure and compare performance. This problem motivates our introduction of SupermarQ, a scalable, hardware-agnostic quantum benchmark suite which uses application-level metrics to measure performance. SupermarQ is the first attempt to systematically apply techniques from classical benchmarking methodology to the quantum domain. We define a set of feature vectors to quantify coverage, select applications from a variety of domains to ensure the suite is representative of real workloads, and collect benchmark results from the IBM, IonQ, and AQT@LBNL platforms. Looking forward, we envision that quantum benchmarking will encompass a large cross-community effort built on open source, constantly evolving benchmark suites. We introduce SupermarQ as an important step in this direction.
The rapid development of quantum computing (QC) in the NISQ era urgently demands a low-level benchmark suite and insightful evaluation metrics for characterizing the properties of prototype NISQ devices, the efficiency of QC programming compilers, schedulers and assemblers, and the capability of quantum system simulators in a classical computer. In this work, we fill this gap by proposing a low-level, easy-to-use benchmark suite called QASMBench based on the OpenQASM assembly representation. It consolidates commonly used quantum routines and kernels from a variety of domains including chemistry, simulation, linear algebra, searching, optimization, arithmetic, machine learning, fault tolerance, cryptography, etc., trading-off between generality and usability. To analyze these kernels in terms of NISQ device execution, in addition to circuit width and depth, we propose four circuit metrics including gate density, retention lifespan, measurement density, and entanglement variance, to extract more insights about the execution efficiency, the susceptibility to NISQ error, and the potential gain from machine-specific optimizations. Applications in QASMBench can be launched and verified on several NISQ platforms, including IBM-Q, Rigetti, IonQ and Quantinuum. For evaluation, we measure the execution fidelity of a subset of QASMBench applications on 12 IBM-Q machines through density matrix state tomography, which comprises 25K circuit evaluations. We also compare the fidelity of executions among the IBM-Q machines, the IonQ QPU and the Rigetti Aspen M-1 system. QASMBench is released at: http://github.com/pnnl/QASMBench.