Qplacer: Frequency-Aware Component Placement for Superconducting Quantum Computers

  1. Junyao Zhang,
  2. Hanrui Wang,
  3. Qi Ding,
  4. Jiaqi Gu,
  5. Reouven Assouly,
  6. William D. Oliver,
  7. Song Han,
  8. Kenneth R. Brown,
  9. Hai "Helen" Li,
  10. and Yiran Chen
Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers face a critical limitation in qubit numbers, hindering their progression towards large-scale and fault-tolerant quantum computing.
A significant challenge impeding scaling is crosstalk, characterized by unwanted interactions among neighboring components on quantum chips, including qubits, resonators, and substrate. We motivate a general approach to systematically resolving multifaceted crosstalks in a limited substrate area. We propose Qplacer, a frequency-aware electrostatic-based placement framework tailored for superconducting quantum computers, to alleviate crosstalk by isolating these components in spatial and frequency domains alongside compact substrate design. Qplacer commences with a frequency assigner that ensures frequency domain isolation for qubits and resonators. It then incorporates a padding strategy and resonator partitioning for layout flexibility. Central to our approach is the conceptualization of quantum components as charged particles, enabling strategic spatial isolation through a ‚frequency repulsive force‘ concept. Our results demonstrate that Qplacer carefully crafts the physical component layout in mitigating various crosstalk impacts while maintaining a compact substrate size. On device topology benchmarks, Qplacer can reduce the required area for theoretical crosstalk-free layout by 2.61x and 2.25x on average, compared to the results of manual design and classical placement engines, respectively.

Optimized Surface Code Communication in Superconducting Quantum Computers

  1. Ali Javadi-Abhari,
  2. Pranav Gokhale,
  3. Adam Holmes,
  4. Diana Franklin,
  5. Kenneth R. Brown,
  6. Margaret Martonosi,
  7. and Frederic T. Chong
, and several-hundred-qubit"]machines are around the corner. Machines of this scale have the capacity to demonstrate quantum supremacy, the tipping point where QC is faster than the fastest classical alternative for a particular problem. Because error correction techniques will be central to QC and will be the most expensive component of quantum computation, choosing the lowest-overhead error correction scheme is critical to overall QC success. This paper evaluates two established quantum error correction codes—planar and double-defect surface codes—using a set of compilation, scheduling and network simulation tools. In considering scalable methods for optimizing both codes, we do so in the context of a full microarchitectural and compiler analysis. Contrary to previous predictions, we find that the simpler planar codes are sometimes more favorable for implementation on superconducting quantum computers, especially under conditions of high communication congestion.