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Layout synthesis, an important step in quantum computing, processes quantum circuits to satisfy device layout constraints. In this paper, we construct QUEKO benchmarks for this problem, which have known optimal depths and gate counts. We use QUEKO to evaluate the optimality of current layout synthesis tools, including Cirq from Google, Qiskit from IBM, $mathsf{t}|mathsf{ket}rangle$ from Cambridge Quantum Computing, and recent academic work. To our surprise, despite over a decade of research and development by academia and industry on compilation and synthesis for quantum circuits, we are still able to demonstrate large optimality gaps: 1.5-12x on average on a smaller device and 5-45x on average on a larger device. This suggests substantial room for improvement of the efficiency of quantum computer by better layout synthesis tools. Finally, we also prove the NP-completeness of the layout synthesis problem for quantum computing. We have made the QUEKO benchmarks open-source.
Recent years have witnessed the fast development of quantum computing. Researchers around the world are eager to run larger and larger quantum algorithms that promise speedups impossible to any classical algorithm. However, the available quantum computers are still volatile and error-prone. Thus, layout synthesis, which transforms quantum programs to meet these hardware limitations, is a crucial step in the realization of quantum computing. In this paper, we present two synthesizers, one optimal and one approximate but nearly optimal. Although a few optimal approaches to this problem have been published, our optimal synthesizer explores a larger solution space, thus is optimal in a stronger sense. In addition, it reduces time and space complexity exponentially compared to some leading optimal approaches. The key to this success is a more efficient spacetime-based variable encoding of the layout synthesis problem as a mathematical programming problem. By slightly changing our formulation, we arrive at an approximate synthesizer that is even more efficient and outperforms some leading heuristic approaches, in terms of additional gate cost, by up to 100%, and also fidelity by up to 10x on a comprehensive set of benchmark programs and architectures. For a specific family of quantum programs named QAOA, which is deemed to be a promising application for near-term quantum computers, we further adjust the approximate synthesizer by taking commutation into consideration, achieving up to 75% reduction in depth and up to 65% reduction in additional cost compared to the tool used in a leading QAOA study.
We present a synthesis framework to map logic networks into quantum circuits for quantum computing. The synthesis framework is based on LUT networks (lookup-table networks), which play a key role in conventional logic synthesis. Establishing a connection between LUTs in a LUT network and reversible single-target gates in a reversible network allows us to bridge conventional logic synthesis with logic synthesis for quantum computing, despite several fundamental differences. We call our synthesis framework LUT-based Hierarchical Reversible Logic Synthesis (LHRS). Input to LHRS is a classical logic network; output is a quantum network (realized in terms of Clifford+$T$ gates). The framework offers to trade-off the number of qubits for the number of quantum gates. In a first step, an initial network is derived that only consists of single-target gates and already completely determines the number of qubits in the final quantum network. Different methods are then used to map each single-target gate into Clifford+$T$ gates, while aiming at optimally using available resources. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in automatically synthesizing IEEE compliant floating point networks up to double precision. As many quantum algorithms target scientific simulation applications, they can make rich use of floating point arithmetic components. But due to the lack of quantum circuit descriptions for those components, it can be difficult to find a realistic cost estimation for the algorithms. Our synthesized benchmarks provide cost estimates that allow quantum algorithm designers to provide the first complete cost estimates for a host of quantum algorithms. Thus, the benchmarks and, more generally, the LHRS framework are an essential step towards the goal of understanding which quantum algorithms will be practical in the first generations of quantum computers.
Quantum computation promises significant computational advantages over classical computation for some problems. However, quantum hardware suffers from much higher error rates than in classical hardware. As a result, extensive quantum error correction is required to execute a useful quantum algorithm. The decoder is a key component of the error correction scheme whose role is to identify errors faster than they accumulate in the quantum computer and that must be implemented with minimum hardware resources in order to scale to the regime of practical applications. In this work, we consider surface code error correction, which is the most popular family of error correcting codes for quantum computing, and we design a decoder micro-architecture for the Union-Find decoding algorithm. We propose a three-stage fully pipelined hardware implementation of the decoder that significantly speeds up the decoder. Then, we optimize the amount of decoding hardware required to perform error correction simultaneously over all the logical qubits of the quantum computer. By sharing resources between logical qubits, we obtain a 67% reduction of the number of hardware units and the memory capacity is reduced by 70%. Moreover, we reduce the bandwidth required for the decoding process by a factor at least 30x using low-overhead compression algorithms. Finally, we provide numerical evidence that our optimized micro-architecture can be executed fast enough to correct errors in a quantum computer.
Current, near-term quantum devices have shown great progress in recent years culminating with a demonstration of quantum supremacy. In the medium-term, however, quantum machines will need to transition to greater reliability through error correction, likely through promising techniques such as surface codes which are well suited for near-term devices with limited qubit connectivity. We discover quantum memory, particularly resonant cavities with transmon qubits arranged in a 2.5D architecture, can efficiently implement surface codes with substantial hardware savings and performance/fidelity gains. Specifically, we *virtualize logical qubits* by storing them in layers distributed across qubit memories connected to each transmon. Surprisingly, distributing each logical qubit across many memories has a minimal impact on fault tolerance and results in substantially more efficient operations. Our design permits fast transversal CNOT operations between logical qubits sharing the same physical address which are 6x faster than lattice surgery CNOTs. We develop a novel embedding which saves ~10x in transmons with another 2x from an additional optimization for compactness. Although Virtualized Logical Qubits (VLQ) pays a 10x penalty in serialization, advantages in the transversal CNOT and area efficiency result in performance comparable to 2D transmon-only architectures. Our simulations show fault tolerance comparable to 2D architectures while saving substantial hardware. Furthermore, VLQ can produce magic states 1.22x faster for a fixed number of transmon qubits. This is a critical benchmark for future fault-tolerant quantum computers. VLQ substantially reduces the hardware requirements for fault tolerance and puts within reach a proof-of-concept experimental demonstration of around 10 logical qubits, requiring only 11 transmons and 9 attached cavities in total.
A large multitude of scientific computing tools is available today. This article gives an overview of available tools and explains the main application fields. In addition basic principles of number representations in computing and the resulting truncation errors are treated. The selection of tools is for those students, who work in the field of accelerator beam dynamics.