Quantum Architecture Research Papers

The Quantum Architecture Research Center
Paper Abstract

Datapath and Control for Quantum Wires
Nemanja Isailovic, Mark Whitney, Yatish Patel, John Kubiatowicz, Dean Copsey, Frederic T. Chong, Isaac L. Chuang, and Mark Oskin.

To Appear in Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO 2004).

As quantum computing moves closer to reality the need for basic architectural studies becomes more pressing. Quantum wires, which transport quantum data, will be a fundamental component in all anticipated silicon quantum architectures. Since they cannot consist of a stream of electrons, as in the classical case, quantum wires must fundamentally be designed differently. In this paper, we present two quantum wire designs: a swap wire, based on swapping of adjacent qubits, and a teleportation wire, based on the quantum teleportation primitive. We characterize the latency and bandwidth of these two alternatives in a device-independent way. Furthermore, unlike classical wires, quantum wires need control signals in order to operate. We explore the complexity of the control mechanisms and the fundamental tension between the scale of quantum effects and the scale of the classical logic needed to control them. This ``pitch-matching'' problem imposes constraints on minimum wire lengths and wire intersections, leading us to use a SIMD approach for the control mechanisms. We ultimately show that qubit decoherence imposes a basic limit on the maximum communication distance of the swapping wire, while relatively large overhead imposes a basic limit on the minimum communication distance of the teleportation wire.

[ Paper: PDF (368K), Postscript (2646K), Compressed Postscript (681K)]

Last modified on 04/01/2003 by John Kubiatowicz.