A real-time and reliable operating system for quantum computers

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Synopsis

Reliable quantum computers (RQCs) are expected to solve difficult practical problems such as quantum chemistry, but it was early recognized that quantum hardware is highly susceptible to noise. Quantum error-correcting codes  are a necessity to guarantee reliable quantum computations, and may require millions of hardware qubits for computations of practical interest. There is a huge gap between the current quantum computers with hundreds of qubits and the million qubits required. Executing the first computation requires integrating the hardware but also improving the resource efficiency of the quantum algorithms. Resource bottlenecks in quantum algorithms are critical to the feasibility of practical quantum computing.

Google’s quantum supremacy demonstration pitted the world’s largest supercomputer against a single quantum chip. A path to further scale up may involve a large supercomputer working together with quantum chips, instead of in competition with them. A realistic approach could be to design and implement the control of RQCs as a quantum operating system (QCOS), based on message passing, executed on supercomputers.

In this talk, I will describe the methods and tools I have been researching and developing for analyzing, compiling, optimizing, and executing error-corrected quantum computations. The medium-term goal is to use these tools during the execution of the first computations. I will detail the interactions existing in the QCOS.

Even in the absence of large scale quantum computers, the QCOS can be used to identify the bottlenecks and to estimate the real resources required for running the first error-corrected quantum computation. The pedagogical aspect of the QCOS will be presented in conjunction with my activity with respect to increasing the awareness and literacy regarding the realities of practical quantum computations.