Superconducting qubits are pivotal in advancing quantum computing, poised for scale but limited by the complexity and fidelity of their control and readout systems, relying on RF and signal processing infrastructure. This survey serves as a comprehensive and technically grounded review of control and readout architectures tailored for superconducting qubits. Synthesizing insights from device physics, circuit design, microwave engineering, signal processing, and cryogenic integration, this work details the practicalities of RF pulse generation, signal synthesis, and readout signal analysis for quantum systems. it covers key requirements, parameters, and pulse engineering techniques, including commonly used envelopes like Gaussian and DRAG designs. Moving to the system level, this survey systematically classifies and critically analyses current architectural strategies (covering key areas like frequency conversion, waveform management, and system infrastructure) and technology platforms (including adaptive classical control stacks, cryogenic CMOS circuits, and novel interconnects and interfaces), evaluating their trade-offs in performance. Extensive literature analysis identifies prevailing limitations such as wiring complexity, thermal budget constraints, latency, and power consumption, while highlighting underexplored opportunities for on-chip signal processing and novel interconnects, drawing analogies to advanced communication systems design. By consolidating diverse control paradigms and critically evaluating their trade-offs, this survey provides a unified foundation for designing next-generation quantum control stacks. Finally, a forward-looking roadmap outlines key trends in monolithic integration, cryo-compatible digital architectures, and physics-informed hardware co-design, offering both a retrospective synthesis and a prospective vision for quantum hardware engineering beyond the NISQ era.
Superconducting qubits are pivotal in advancing quantum computing, poised for scale but limited by the complexity and fidelity of their control and readout systems, relying on RF and signal processing infrastructure. This survey serves as a comprehensive and technically grounded review of control and readout architectures tailored for superconducting qubits. Synthesizing insights from device physics, circuit design, microwave engineering, signal processing, and cryogenic integration, this work details the practicalities of RF pulse generation, signal synthesis, and readout signal analysis for quantum systems. it covers key requirements, parameters, and pulse engineering techniques, including commonly used envelopes like Gaussian and DRAG designs. Moving to the system level, this survey systematically classifies and critically analyses current architectural strategies (covering key areas like frequency conversion, waveform management, and system infrastructure) and technology platforms (including adaptive classical control stacks, cryogenic CMOS circuits, and novel interconnects and interfaces), evaluating their trade-offs in performance. Extensive literature analysis identifies prevailing limitations such as wiring complexity, thermal budget constraints, latency, and power consumption, while highlighting underexplored opportunities for on-chip signal processing and novel interconnects, drawing analogies to advanced communication systems design. By consolidating diverse control paradigms and critically evaluating their trade-offs, this survey provides a unified foundation for designing next-generation quantum control stacks. Finally, a forward-looking roadmap outlines key trends in monolithic integration, cryo-compatible digital architectures, and physics-informed hardware co-design, offering both a retrospective synthesis and a prospective vision for quantum hardware engineering beyond the NISQ era.
This review aims to provide researchers, experimentalists, and quantum engineers with an updated and technically grounded perspective on the implementation of quantum gates in superconducting NISQ devices. The goal is to establish a comprehensive bridge between theoretical quantum circuit synthesis and its practical, experimental implementation, focusing on superconducting quantum technologies. We systematically examine the diverse landscape of superconducting qubits and processor architectures, ranging from conventional transmons to alternative and unconventional designs, evaluating their unique design trade-offs, connectivity constraints, device physics, and materials impact. Moving from theory to actual implementation, we detail how single- and two-qubit operations are synthesized via microwave-driven and flux-activated pulses. We here present our pulse engineering, wave shaping, calibration workflows, demonstrating how to bridge the gap between abstract gate models and real-world hardware limitations in the direction of a hardware-software co-design framework. To validate these operations, we choose benchmarking methodologies with the purpose to get the more efficient metric for the specific evaluation aspect, including truth tables and quantum process tomography. Therefore, we both discuss the theoretical concepts behind the gate synthesis and show experimental implementation of most fundamental gates by proposing a practical workflow.
Quantum computing has made significant strides, with hardware platforms now advanced enough to tackle the challenges of scaling up to larger and more robust systems. Central to this progression is the interface between quantum processors, comprising isolated qubits, and the classical systems required for their control and readout. As these systems transition from few-qubit devices to fault-tolerant architectures, the complexity of this quantum-classical interaction poses significant engineering challenges. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have emerged as an adaptable and efficient solution, offering realtime control, low-latency operations, and seamless integration. This review delves into current FPGA-based platforms, including commercial systems, as well as open-source solutions developed by academic research groups. The architecture, features, and contributions of these platforms to addressing scalability and integration issues are thoroughly examined. Additionally, the review highlights innovations in cryogeniccompatible controllers and explores the potential of Cryo-FPGAs to reduce noise and improve fidelity in quantum systems. By providing a comprehensive analysis of current technologies and identifying opportunities for advancement, this review offers valuable insights for researchers and engineers working to develop scalable quantum computing solutions.
The transition of quantum technologies from laboratory-scale demonstrations to fault-tolerant and deployable systems is increasingly limited by the classical–quantum hardware interface. Although microwave subsystems for several leading quantum-computing platforms have been reviewed previously, the RF-to-terahertz hardware requirements that enable cross-platform maturation remain less systematically addressed. This article critically reviews RF-to-terahertz hardware for quantum technologies, focusing on cryogenic integration, high-density interconnects, and fabrication bottlenecks. Recent experimental efforts from the electronics engineering community are analyzed to identify shared limitations in low-temperature device modeling, thermal management, signal integrity, low-noise amplification, passive microwave structures, control and readout electronics, microwave-to-optical transduction, and scalable packaging. Competing approaches are assessed against common engineering criteria including RF and noise performance, bandwidth, power dissipation and thermal load, integration density, calibration complexity, fabrication reproducibility, and maturity toward scalable deployment. The review argues that future progress is no longer governed only by the optimization of individual components, but by the co-design of materials, devices, interconnects, control architectures, measurement chains, and manufacturing processes. In this framework, scalability, miniaturization, integration density, and reproducibility become central metrics for quantum hardware development. By synthesizing developments across quantum computing, sensing, communication, and networking platforms, this review provides a component-level roadmap for RF, microwave, terahertz, and electronics engineers working toward scalable, manufacturable, and interoperable quantum technology systems.
Superconducting qubits are a leading platform for quantum computation, yet decoherence and scalability challenges continue to limit progress toward fault-tolerant systems. This review synthesizes research on architectures, noise sources, and error correction to clarify performance trade-offs and guide development. The transition from Transmon to Fluxonium has dramatically improved qubit performance, achieving millisecond-scale coherence times. However, this success reveals a fundamental limit of coherence now being primarily restricted by the physical properties of the materials, specifically dielectric losses occurring at the Josephson junction leads and within the surrounding materials. As overcoming these material limits becomes increasingly difficult, system-level engineering determines whether high-coherence qubits can scale.Scaling quantum systems is difficult because current cooling and control systems create too much heat and this forces a shift to integrated digital superconducting circuits and cryogenic light-based links. While these hardware challenges restrict scaling, experiments in error correction show that logical qubits can already outperform physical ones. For example, a distance-7 surface code improved logical qubit lifetime by 2.4×. Achieving practical fault tolerance, however, requires moving beyond simple error models. Future systems must combine techniques like Dynamical Decoupling and Machine Learning-based Optimal Control with dynamic classical control capable of handling complex, correlated faults such as Multi-Bit Burst Errors. Progress in materials, cryogenic system integration for control, and adaptive error management must advance together to realize scalable, high-fidelity quantum hardware.
Quantum chips form the foundational hardware for quantum computing, promising transformative impacts across optimization, secure communications, and artificial intelligence. This paper surveys five leading qubit implementations—superconducting circuits, neutral-atom arrays, trapped ions, photonic systems, and silicon-based quantum dots—highlighting their distinct operating principles, recent milestones, and inherent trade-offs. Superconducting platforms leverage mature microfabrication to achieve hundreds to thousands of qubits with rapid gate times but require millikelvin environments and face millisecond-scale coherence limits. Neutral-atom and ion-trap architectures offer exceptionally long coherence (seconds to hours) and high-fidelity operations, making them ideal for quantum memory and precision simulation, yet scaling remains constrained by control complexity. Photonic chips excel at room-temperature operation and quantum networking via entangled photons, though deterministic two-qubit gates and on-chip integration pose challenges. Silicon quantum dots promise CMOS compatibility and sub-microsecond spin coherence, but demand atomic-scale fabrication precision and advanced cryogenic control. We analyze the tension between qubit count, error rates, and engineering practicality, and discuss emerging solutions such as hybrid integration, advanced error-correction codes, and novel materials. Looking ahead, coordinated optimization across these platforms—combining fast superconducting processors, long-lived atomic memories, photonic interconnects, and scalable silicon arrays—will be critical to transition quantum chips from research prototypes to industrially viable systems that redefine computing, communications, and AI.
For superconducting quantum processors, microwave signals are delivered to each qubit from room-temperature electronics to the cryogenic environment through coaxial cables. Limited by the heat load of cabling and the massive cost of electronics, such an architecture is not viable for millions of qubits required for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Monolithic integration of the control electronics and the qubits provides a promising solution, which, however, requires a coherent cryogenic microwave pulse generator that is compatible with superconducting quantum circuits. Here, we report such a signal source driven by digital-like signals, generating pulsed microwave emission with well-controlled phase, intensity, and frequency directly at millikelvin temperatures. We showcase high-fidelity readout of superconducting qubits with the microwave pulse generator. The device demonstrated here has a small footprint, negligible heat load, great flexibility to operate, and is fully compatible with today's superconducting quantum circuits, thus providing an enabling technology for large-scale superconducting quantum computers.