Quantum computing has the potential to outperform classical computing in specific problem domains, but current systems rely heavily on classical resources for tasks such as quantum circuit compilation. As quantum hardware scales, the energy consumption of these supporting classical processes becomes increasingly important. This thesis investigates the energy consumption of quantum circuit compilation by analyzing existing literature and benchmarking results for different quantum software frameworks. The study focuses on comparing the performance of widely used quantum compilers. Energy consumption is estimated based on processor power models and execution time. Benchmark data from multiplier and quantum Fourier transform circuits are used to evaluate how compiler performance scales with increasing qubit counts and different hardware connectivity constraints. The results show that no single compiler is optimal for all tasks, but significant differences exist in runtime and energy efficiency. Compilers with better scalability, such as Qiskit in many cases, tend to consume less energy for larger circuits, while others exhibit rapidly increasing costs. Additionally, restricted hardware connectivity increases compilation time and energy consumption across most frameworks. The thesis concludes that energy consumption is an important, but unexplored aspect of quantum circuit compilation. As quantum systems grow in size, the classical overhead of compilation may become a limiting factor. Future work should focus on direct measurement of energy consumption and the development of energy-aware compilation techniques.
Quantum computing has the potential to outperform classical computing in specific problem domains, but current systems rely heavily on classical resources for tasks such as quantum circuit compilation. As quantum hardware scales, the energy consumption of these supporting classical processes becomes increasingly important. This thesis investigates the energy consumption of quantum circuit compilation by analyzing existing literature and benchmarking results for different quantum software frameworks. The study focuses on comparing the performance of widely used quantum compilers. Energy consumption is estimated based on processor power models and execution time. Benchmark data from multiplier and quantum Fourier transform circuits are used to evaluate how compiler performance scales with increasing qubit counts and different hardware connectivity constraints. The results show that no single compiler is optimal for all tasks, but significant differences exist in runtime and energy efficiency. Compilers with better scalability, such as Qiskit in many cases, tend to consume less energy for larger circuits, while others exhibit rapidly increasing costs. Additionally, restricted hardware connectivity increases compilation time and energy consumption across most frameworks. The thesis concludes that energy consumption is an important, but unexplored aspect of quantum circuit compilation. As quantum systems grow in size, the classical overhead of compilation may become a limiting factor. Future work should focus on direct measurement of energy consumption and the development of energy-aware compilation techniques.
With the increasing capabilities of quantum systems, the efficient, practical execution of quantum programs is becoming more critical. Each execution includes compilation time, which accounts for substantial overhead of the overall program runtime. To address this challenge, proposals that leverage precompilation techniques have emerged, whereby entire circuits or select components are precompiled to mitigate the compilation time spent during execution. Considering the impact of compilation time on quantum program execution, identifying the contribution of each individual compilation task to the execution time is necessary in directing the community’s research efforts towards the development of an efficient compilation and execution pipeline. In this work, we perform a preliminary analysis of the quantum circuit compilation process in Qiskit, examining the cumulative runtime of each individual compilation task and identifying the tasks that most strongly impact the overall compilation time. Our results indicate that, as the desired level of optimization increases, circuit optimization and gate synthesis passes become the dominant tasks in compiling a Quantum Fourier Transform, with individual passes consuming up to 87% of the total compilation time. Mapping passes require the most compilation time for a GHZ state preparation circuit, accounting for over 99% of total compilation time.
Recent advances in the development of quantum technology have made it possible to run small quantum programs on real quantum computers. This has created a need for compiling methods specific to these quantum computers. Unlike classical computers, if a quantum computation takes too long, the qubits might decohere and lose their information, making the computation useless. Hence, well-optimized quantum programs are a necessity. Like classical computers, quantum computers have registers for qubits that are generally sparsely connected. However, classical compilation methods that rely on copying data from one register to another do not apply to quantum computers because qubits cannot be copied. This problem is called the qubit routing problem. Following classical compilation, one could solve the connectivity constraints by moving the qubits to adjacent qubit registers. However, this requires the addition of SWAP gates throughout the quantum circuit, resulting in a strictly longer program. Additionally, a SWAP gate on qubits is not cheap and requires three CNOT gates each. Instead, in this thesis, we have defined a new method for quantum compilation that is based in the quantum nature of the program to be compiled. Instead of routing the qubits directly, we generate new machine code (in the form of quantum circuits) from an intermediate representation. We call this process quantum circuit synthesis. During synthesis, we make sure that all generated gates are supported by the target quantum hardware. Additionally, if the synthesis process is optimal, the resulting quantum circuit will also be optimal, although the methods proposed in this thesis are all heuristic in nature due to the computational complexity of optimal architecture-aware synthesis. We construct the nested intermediate representation starting from sequences of CNOT circuits interleaved with single qubit gates and incrementally generalize the intermediate representation to a universal representation. In particular, we propose two algorithms for synthesizing CNOT circuits from their parity matrix representation and one algorithm for synthesizing phase polynomials (i.e. CNOT+Rz circuits). Additionally, we show that when combining these methods into the universal representation called Mixed ZX-phase polynomial, it is competitive with existing commercial quantum compilers IBM's Qiskit and Quantinuum's TKET for large circuits. This thesis additionally contains a proposal for a framework to benchmark the quality of circuits used in an algorithm called Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE). This framework attempts to measure how close the solution found by the VQE is to our best estimate of a real molecule (i.e. accuracy), rather than a classical simulation of the approximate molecule as given to the quantum computer (i.e. precision).
Traditional compiler optimization focuses on maximizing performance within the constraints of classical architectures. However, quantum computing presents a fundamentally different paradigm, demanding a new approach to software optimization. This paper proposes a hardware-aware compiler optimization technique, inspired by quantum computing principles, to bridge the gap between high-level programming languages and the specific characteristics of quantum hardware. The core idea is to translate high-level code into quantum circuits while explicitly considering factors like qubit connectivity, gate fidelity, and decoherence. This approach allows for optimization strategies tailored to the unique limitations and opportunities of quantum devices, potentially leading to significant performance improvements compared to generic quantum compilation methods. The compiler operates by analyzing the algorithmic complexity, identifying quantum-native operations, and strategically mapping them onto the available quantum hardware, thereby minimizing the impact of hardware constraints. This paper outlines the framework, key components, and potential optimizations within this hardware-aware compiler.
Practical realizations of quantum computers are poised to deliver outstanding computational capabilities far beyond the reach of any classical supercomputer. While classical systems are reliably implemented using CMOS technology, the fabrication of quantum hardware has not yet reached a commercially viable level of maturity. Nowadays, many different technologies are being developed as competing candidates to build the first error-corrected quantum computer. Among the software resources required to operate such a system, quantum compilers translate a high-level description of a quantum algorithm into low-level, technology-dependent quantum instructions. Many quantum algorithms, including Shor's and Grover's algorithms, require to compute some classical logic functions on the quantum computer. The first part of this thesis deals with the problem of compiling quantum circuits that perform such classical Boolean functions, called oracles, into a fault-tolerant set of instructions. Oracle circuits often demand many resources in terms of the number of qubits and gates. The focus is on compiling quantum circuits starting from multi-level logic networks representing large Boolean functions while minimizing the resource footprint of the obtained quantum circuits. At the same time, the trade-off between memory resources and the number of operations typical of such a compilation process is explored. As part of the effort in reducing the resources required to perform a given quantum program, I also present some quantum circuit optimization techniques. The researched algorithms leverage data structures and techniques borrowed and adapted from classical logic synthesis, e.g., SAT solvers, LUT mapping, and multi-level logic networks. I implemented all the compilation algorithms presented in this thesis as part of open-source projects. In particular, I develop and maintain caterpillar---a C++ header-only library dedicated to the quantum compilation of oracles and quantum memory management. The second part of this thesis describes how to equip quantum programming language compilers with automatic accuracy management. Despite the availability of many of such languages, resource estimation of quantum algorithms does not yet support taking approximation errors into account. This general methodology is applicable to any programming language and I demonstrate its integration into the Q# compiler. The technique consists of providing language support to ease the accuracy-aware programming task. The user can define accuracy parameters that will be automatically optimized according to a constraint and a cost function directly generated from the source code. In the presented practical evaluations, the constraint function is the overall allowed accuracy, while the cost function is application-dependent and related to the number of gates. During the optimization process, such functions are evaluated hundreds of times. For this reason, we extract them as (near-)symbolic expressions, whose evaluation time does not depend on the quantum algorithm size. The algorithms and the methodologies presented in this thesis are part of a widespread effort of the research community to build a complete and efficient software stack to program and control the first practical universal quantum computer.
While extensive research over the past decades has been dedicated to developing scalable quantum computers, the question of their energetic performance has only gained attention more recently, but its importance is now recognized. In fact, quantum computers can only be a viable alternative if their energy cost scales favorably, and some research has shown that there is even a potential quantum energy advantage. In parallel, Rydberg atoms have recently emerged as one of the most promising platforms to implement a large-scale quantum computer. This work aims at contributing first steps to understand the energy efficiency of this platform, by investigating the energy consumption of the different elements of a Rydberg atom quantum computer. First, an experimental implementation of the Quantum Phase Estimation algorithm is analyzed, and an estimation of the energetic cost of executing it is calculated. Then, we derive an estimate of how the energy cost of performing the Quantum Fourier Transform scales with the number of qubits in the Rydberg platform. This analysis facilitates a comparison of the energy consumption of different elements within a Rydberg atom quantum computer, from the preparation of the atoms to the execution of the algorithm, and the measurement of the final state, enabling the evaluation of the energy expenditure of the Rydberg platform and the identification of potential improvements. Finally, we use the Quantum Fourier Transform as an energetic benchmark, comparing the scaling we obtained to that of the execution of the Discrete Fourier Transform in two state-of-the-art classical supercomputers. This comparison indicates that, in an ideal error-free scenario, a quantum energy advantage is achieved in the Rydberg platform for the Fourier Transform, in a regime where classical algorithms are still faster.
Semiconductor spin qubits offer a promising route to compact and scalable quantum computers, combining long coherence times in isotopically purified silicon with compatibility with semiconductor manufacturing. Beyond computational speedup, their energy efficiency is an important consideration for future large-scale systems. We evaluate the power and energy requirements of a Loss-DiVincenzo spin-qubit quantum computer by analyzing the Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) and benchmarking it against the classical Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). We develop a detailed energy budget, identifying cryogenic cooling as the dominant baseline contribution before quantum error correction (QEC). The comparison between the QFT and the classical FFT reveals that, for any quantum workload operating under a polynomially bounded sampling regime, the crossover in energy consumption occurs at smaller problem sizes than the crossover in execution time. Thus, quantum computing can become energetically competitive before achieving a speedup in execution time. We then incorporate surface-code QEC and analyze the energy costs of QEC cycles, gate synthesis, and decoding. At scale, instrumentation and decoding become dominant contributions, while cryogenic cooling imposes a constraint on scalability. We show that optimizing the control-signal demultiplexing ratio can reduce the overall energy cost by approximately two orders of magnitude. For a system with about one million physical qubits, we estimate a power consumption of approximately 100 kW, at least one order of magnitude below that of today's highest-performance classical computing systems.