QUALE: Quantum architecture layout evaluator

The theoretical study of quantum computation has yielded efficient algorithms for traditionally very hard problems. Correspondingly, the experimental work on technologies for implementing quantum computers has yielded many of the essential discrete components.(1-3) Combining these components to produce an efficient and accurate quantum architecture is an open problem and exploring this design space requires an efficient evaluation framework. To date, all such frameworks have been either highly theoretical (ignoring vital issues like spatial constraints, resource contention, and the durative nature of quantum operations),(4) or limited to systems with less than 40 qubits because of reliance on simulating the exact quantum state of qubits in the system.(5) To address these issues the authors present QUALE, a set of tools for the design and analysis of microarchitectures for ion-trap quantum computers. QUALE allows the user to specify a quantum program in an existing quantum language,(6) apply error correction, schedule the resulting computation on a proposed layout, and determine an upper bound on the expected accuracy of the resulting computation. By conducting analysis on a program-architecture pair QUALE takes into account realistic architectural constraints; by targeting simulation to error as opposed to the whole quantum state, QUALE is able to efficiently simulate large systems containing thousands of quantum. bits.