Quantum Architecture Research Papers

The Quantum Architecture Research Center
Paper Abstract

The Effect of Communication Costs in
Solid-State Quantum Computing Architectures
Dean Copsey, Mark Oskin, Tzvetan Metodiev,
Frederic T. Chong, Isaac Chuang, and John Kubiatowicz

Appears in Proceedings of the 15th ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA 2003)

Quantum computation has become an intriguing technology with which to attack difficult problems and to enhance system security. Quantum algorithms, however, have been analyzed under idealized assumptions without important physical constraints in mind. In this paper, we analyze two key constraints: the short spatial distance of quantum interactions and the short temporal life of quantum data.

In particular, quantum computations must make use of extremely robust error correction techniques to extend the life of quantum data. We present optimized spatial layouts of quantum error correction circuits for quantum bits embedded in silicon. We analyze the complexity of error correction under the constraint that interaction between these bits is near neighbor and data must be propagated via swap operations from one part of the circuit to another.

We discover two interesting results from out quantum layouts. First, the recursive nature of quantum error correction circuits requires an additional communication technique more powerful than near-neighbor swaps -- too much error accumulates if we attempt to swap over long distances. We show that quantum teleportation can be used to implement recursive structures. We also show that the reliability of the quantum swap operation is the limiting factor in solid-state quantum computation.

[ Paper: PDF (128K), Postscript (1.69M), Compressed Postscript (386K)]

Last modified on 06/01/2003 by John Kubiatowicz.