Will Quantum Computers Scale without Inter-Chip Comms? A Structured Design Exploration to the Monolithic vs Distributed Architectures Quest

Conference Paper (2020)
Author(s)

Santiago Rodrigo (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya)

Sergi Abadal (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya)

Eduard Alarcón (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya)

Carmen Garcia García Almudever (TU Delft - QCD/Almudever Lab)

Research Group
QCD/Almudever Lab
Copyright
© 2020 Santiago Rodrigo, Sergi Abadal, Eduard Alarcon, Carmen G. Almudever
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1109/DCIS51330.2020.9268630
More Info
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Publication Year
2020
Language
English
Copyright
© 2020 Santiago Rodrigo, Sergi Abadal, Eduard Alarcon, Carmen G. Almudever
Research Group
QCD/Almudever Lab
ISBN (electronic)
9781728191324
Reuse Rights

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Abstract

Being a very promising technology, with impressive advances in the recent years, it is still unclear how quantum computing will scale to satisfy the requirements of its most powerful applications. Although continued progress in the fabrication and control of qubits is required, quantum computing scalability will depend as well on a comprehensive architectural design considering a distributed multi-core approach as an alternative to the traditional monolithic version, hence including a communications perspective. However, this goes beyond introducing mere interconnects. Rather, it implies consolidating the full communications stack in the quantum computer structure. In this paper, we propose a double full-stack architecture encompassing quantum computation and quantum communications, which we use to address the monolithic versus distributed question with a structured design methodology. For that, we revisit the different quantum computing layers to capture and model their essence by highlighting the open design variables and performance metrics. Using behavioral models and actual measurements from existing quantum computers, the results of simulations suggest that multicore architectures may effectively unleash the full quantum computer potential.

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