Factoring 2048 RSA integers in 177 days with 13436 qubits and a multimode memory

We analyze the performance of a quantum computer architecture combining a small processor and a storage unit. By focusing on integer factorization, we show a reduction by several orders of magnitude of the number of processing qubits compared to a standard architecture using a planar grid of qubits with nearest-neighbor connectivity. This is achieved by taking benefit of a temporally and spatially multiplexed memory to store the qubit states between processing steps. Concretely, for a characteristic physical gate error rate of $10^{-3}$, a processor cycle time of 1 microsecond, factoring a 2048 bits RSA integer is shown possible in 177 days with a processor made with 13436 physical qubits and a multimode memory with 2 hours storage time. By inserting additional error-correction steps, storage times of 1 second are shown to be sufficient at the cost of increasing the runtime by about 23 %. Shorter runtimes (and storage times) are achievable by increasing the number of qubits in the processing unit. We suggest realizing such an architecture using a microwave interface between a processor made with superconducting qubits and a multiplexed memory using the principle of photon echo in solids doped with rare-earth ions.