Machine learning has emerged as a promising approach for the accurate state discrimination of multiplexed superconducting qubits. However, existing methods often rely on large, resource-intensive models, posing challenges for efficient hardware deployment. In this work, we present a lightweight neural network optimized via knowledge distillation, achieving a 99% reduction in model size while maintaining comparable readout fidelity. Furthermore, we implement the proposed approach on a Xilinx FPGA, achieving a readout latency of only 32 ns
Machine learning has emerged as a promising approach for the accurate state discrimination of multiplexed superconducting qubits. However, existing methods often rely on large, resource-intensive models, posing challenges for efficient hardware deployment. In this work, we present a lightweight neural network optimized via knowledge distillation, achieving a 99% reduction in model size while maintaining comparable readout fidelity. Furthermore, we implement the proposed approach on a Xilinx FPGA, achieving a readout latency of only 32 ns
Superconducting qubits are among the most promising candidates for building quantum information processors. Yet, they are often limited by slow and error-prone qubit readout-a critical factor in achieving high-fidelity operations. While current methods, including deep neural networks, enhance readout accuracy, they typically lack support for mid-circuit measurements essential for quantum error correction, and they usually rely on large, resource-intensive network models. This paper presents KLiNQ, a novel qubit readout architecture leveraging lightweight neural networks optimized via knowledge distillation. Our approach achieves around a 99% reduction in model size compared to the baseline while maintaining a qubitstate discrimination accuracy of 91%. KLiNQ facilitates rapid, independent qubit-state readouts that enable mid-circuit measurements by assigning a dedicated, compact neural network for each qubit. Implemented on the Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA, our design can perform the discrimination within 32 ns. The results demonstrate that compressed neural networks can maintain highfidelity independent readout while enabling efficient hardware implementation, advancing practical quantum computing.
Measuring a qubit state is a fundamental yet error-prone operation in quantum computing. These errors can arise from various sources, such as crosstalk, spontaneous state transitions, and excitations caused by the readout pulse. Here, we utilize an integrated approach to deploy neural networks onto field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). We demonstrate that implementing a fully connected neural network accelerator for multi-qubit readout is advantageous, balancing computational complexity with low latency requirements without significant loss in accuracy. The neural network is implemented by quantizing weights, activation functions, and inputs. The hardware accelerator performs frequency-multiplexed readout of five superconducting qubits in less than 50 ns on a radio frequency system on chip (RFSoC) ZCU111 FPGA, marking the advent of RFSoC-based low-latency multi-qubit readout using neural networks. These modules can be implemented and integrated into existing quantum control and readout platforms, making the RFSoC ZCU111 ready for experimental deployment.
Reliable qubit readout is a critical bottleneck toward fault-tolerant quantum computing (FTQC). In superconducting quantum processors, readout operations are both error-prone and high-latency. These challenges become more severe in frequency-multiplexed architectures, where signal crosstalk among neighboring qubits significantly degrades readout fidelity. Existing machine learning (ML)-based approaches rely on feed-forward neural networks (FNNs) that suffer from large parameter sizes and lack an end-to-end network that jointly addresses relaxation errors and discriminates qubit states.
In this work, we present a multi-stage qubit state discriminator based on the Mamba model, which enables efficient sequence modeling with linear complexity. The first stage performs initial state discrimination, followed by a refinement stage that identifies and mitigates relaxation-induced errors. Our lightweight model achieves a geometric mean readout fidelity of 0.906, outperforming the best-reported state-of-the-art method while reducing parameter size by 49.6%; our optimal model further reaches 0.911. Both models remain robust across varying input trace lengths, maintaining a high fidelity of 0.893 at readout durations as short as 500 ns, achieving up to a 26% reduction in logical error rate over prior work in quantum error correction (QEC).
Measuring a qubit state is a fundamental but error-prone task in quantum computing. As the number of qubits increases, scalable readout demands multiplexed qubit measurement, which often suffers from crosstalk and other nonidealities. The conventional approach of qubit state detection often struggles with scalability and noise resilience. Neural network (NN)-based discriminators have emerged as a promising alternative, offering superior performance for inferring qubit states from multiplexed signals. However, their deployment on hardware platforms like Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) is hindered by computation complexity, resource constraints, and latency. In this work, we present an end-to-end methodology for designing and deploying quantized NN-based multi-qubit state discriminators on FPGAs. We demonstrate that implementing a fully connected neural network accelerator for multi-qubit readout is advantageous, balancing computational complexity with low latency requirements without significant loss in accuracy. We significantly reduce the FPGA footprint and latency of the neural network by employing quantization-aware training (QAT) to quantize weights, activations, and inputs, and leveraging automated mapping flows for efficient, hardware-aware design-space exploration and optimization. The hardware accelerator performs frequency-multiplexed readout of five superconducting qubits in 26.7 ns, on a radio frequency system on chip (RFSoC) ZCU111 FPGA. These modules can be implemented and integrated into existing FPGA based quantum control and readout platforms, making them ready for experimental deployment.
Fast and accurate qubit-state assignment is essential for feedback, calibration, and error correction in quantum processors. In superconducting platforms, frequency-multiplexed readout makes this task intrinsically multivariate as measured traces can encode crosstalk, qubit-state relaxation events, and other transient nonidealities that are not fully captured by conventional matched filtering. Here, we introduce spiking neural network (SNN) discriminators for superconducting qubit readout. By processing the measurement window in successive time chunks, the networks exploit temporal structure and update classification scores as data arrive, rather than waiting until the end of the readout window. The spiking networks outperform matched-filter discrimination and approach the accuracy of a full-trace artificial neural network. Beyond reaching the performance of artificial neural networks, the key advantage of SNNs is that they provide a streaming, time-resolved estimate of the qubit state that evolves as the readout signal is acquired. Using quantisation-aware training and hls4ml synthesis, we further demonstrate that each FPGA inference update can be completed before the next readout chunk arrives. These results establish spiking neural networks as a promising route to low-latency, real-time qubit readout on FPGA hardware, with broader implications for time-critical quantum-control and scientific-inference applications.
Quantum processors require rapid and high-fidelity simultaneous measurements of many qubits. While superconducting qubits are among the leading modalities toward a useful quantum processor, their readout remains a bottleneck. Traditional approaches to processing measurement data often struggle to account for crosstalk present in frequency-multiplexed readout, the preferred method to reduce the resource overhead. Recent approaches to address this challenge use neural networks to improve the state-discrimination fidelity. However, they are computationally expensive to train and evaluate, resulting in increased latency and poor scalability as the number of qubits increases. We present an alternative machine learning approach based on next-generation reservoir computing that constructs polynomial features from the measurement signals and maps them to the corresponding qubit states. This method is highly parallelizable, avoids the costly nonlinear activation functions common in neural networks, and supports real-time training, enabling fast evaluation, adaptability, and scalability. Despite its lower computational complexity, our reservoir approach is able to maintain high qubit-state-discrimination fidelity. Relative to traditional methods, our approach achieves error reductions of up to 50% and 11% on single- and five-qubit datasets, respectively, and delivers up to 2.5x crosstalk reduction on the five-qubit dataset. Compared with recent machine-learning methods, evaluating our model requires 100x fewer multiplications for single-qubit and 2.5x fewer for five-qubit models. This work demonstrates that reservoir computing can enhance qubit-state discrimination while maintaining scalability for future quantum processors.