Measuring the capabilities of quantum computers

Proctor, Timothy; Rudinger, Kenneth; Young, Kevin; Nielsen, Erik; Blume-Kohout, Robin

doi:10.1038/s41567-021-01409-7

Measuring the capabilities of quantum computers

Journal Article · Mon Dec 20 00:00:00 EST 2021 · Nature Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01409-7· OSTI ID:1841976

^[1]; ^[1]; ^[1]; Nielsen, Erik ^[1]; ^[1]

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States). Quantum Performance Lab.

Quantum computers can now run interesting programs, but each processor’s capability—the set of programs that it can run successfully—is limited by hardware errors. These errors can be complicated, making it difficult to accurately predict a processor’s capability. Benchmarks can be used to measure capability directly, but current benchmarks have limited flexibility and scale poorly to many-qubit processors. We show how to construct scalable, efficiently verifiable benchmarks based on any program by using a technique that we call circuit mirroring. With it, we construct two flexible, scalable volumetric benchmarks based on randomized and periodically ordered programs. We use these benchmarks to map out the capabilities of twelve publicly available processors, and to measure the impact of program structure on each one. We find that standard error metrics are poor predictors of whether a program will run successfully on today’s hardware, and that current processors vary widely in their sensitivity to program structure.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)

Grant/Contract Number:: NA0003525

OSTI ID:: 1841976

Report Number(s):: SAND--2021-12259J; 700534

Journal Information:: Nature Physics, Journal Name: Nature Physics Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 18; ISSN 1745-2473

Publisher:: Nature Publishing Group (NPG)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Efficient flexible characterization of quantum processors with nested error models Nielsen, Erik; Rudinger, Kenneth; Proctor, Timothy New Journal of Physics, Vol. 23, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ac20b9	journal	September 2021
Error-Robust Quantum Logic Optimization Using a Cloud Quantum Computer Interface Carvalho, Andre R. R.; Ball, Harrison; Biercuk, Michael J. Physical Review Applied, Vol. 15, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.15.064054	journal	June 2021
Fair Sampling Error Analysis on NISQ Devices Golden, John; Bärtschi, Andreas; O'Malley, Daniel arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2101.03258	text	January 2021

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