CAREER: Applications and Architectures with Heterogeneous Superconducting Qubits

量子计算机可以帮助解决物理、化学、材料设计、优化和机器学习中一些最复杂的问题。构建量子计算机的主要挑战之一是在存在量子噪声的情况下证明稳健的量子信息处理。在过去的十年中，在实现容错量子计算方面取得了巨大的理论和实验进展。虽然这些进展已经使几个原理验证逻辑量子比特实验成为可能，但将量子系统扩展到许多应用所需的逻辑量子比特的数量和质量需要新一代的系统工具流程。该项目的目标是开发基于异质超导量子比特的实用架构，以及其关键的编译和基准测试工具，这将允许应用程序容错执行，同时需要更少的资源，从而更接近在近期硬件上实现实际量子优势的目标。教育和推广活动将朝着建立一个从K-12到研究生水平的持续和可持续的管道前进。 该项目设想了一种基于超导电路的容错架构，其中廉价、有噪音的量子位和昂贵、纠错的量子位可以共存。将开发智能编译软件，以将应用程序映射到这种异构体系结构上，同时为容错节省大量资源。通过深入借鉴量子信息和计算机架构的思想，该计划为跨学科合作创造了新的机会，并通过公开讲座，软件库和外展活动向更广泛的受众展示量子计算。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Quantum computers can help solve some of the most complex problems in physics, chemistry, material design, optimization, and machine learning. One of the leading challenges in building quantum computers is to demonstrate robust quantum information processing in the presence of quantum noise. In the last decade, tremendous theoretical and experimental progress has been made toward realizing fault tolerant quantum computation. While these advances have made possible several proof-of-principle logical qubit experiments, scaling quantum systems to the quantity and quality of logical qubits needed by many applications requires a new generation of systems tool flows. The goal of this project is to develop a practical architecture based on heterogeneous superconducting qubits, as well as its crucial compiling and benchmarking tools, that will allow applications to be executed fault tolerantly while requiring fewer resources, bringing closer the goals of practical quantum advantage on near-term hardware. Education and outreach activities will make advances toward creating a sustained and sustainable pipeline from K-12 through graduate levels. This project envisions a fault-tolerant architecture based on superconducting circuits where cheap, noisy qubits and expensive, error-corrected qubits can co-exist. Intelligent compilation software will be developed to map applications onto this heterogeneous architecture, while achieving significant resource savings for fault tolerance. By drawing deeply on ideas from quantum information and computer architecture, the program creates new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and exposes a broader audience to quantum computing through open lectures, software libraries, and outreach events.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.