arXiv subjects

I. Ashraf

Publications and source records attributed to I. Ashraf.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Quantum Accelerator Stack: A Research Roadmap

This paper presents the definition and implementation of a quantum computer architecture to enable creating a new computational device - a quantum computer as an accelerator In this paper, we present explicitly the idea of a quantum accelerator which contains the full stack of the layers of an accelerator. Such a stack starts at the highest level describing the target application of the accelerator. Important to realise is that qubits are defined as perfect qubits, implying they do not decohere and perform good quantum gate operations. The next layer abstracts the quantum logic outlining the algorithm that is to be executed on the quantum accelerator. In our case, the logic is expressed in the universal quantum-classical hybrid computation language developed in the group, called OpenQL. We also have to start thinking about how to verify, validate and test the quantum software such that the compiler generates a correct version of the quantum circuit. The OpenQL compiler translates the program to a common assembly language, called cQASM. We need to develop a quantum operating system that manages all the hardware of the micro-architecture. The layer below the micro-architecture is responsible of the mapping and routing of the qubits on the topology such that the nearest-neighbour-constraint can be be respected. At any moment in the future when we are capable of generating multiple good qubits, the compiler can convert the cQASM to generate the eQASM, which is executable on a particular experimental device incorporating the platform-specific parameters. This way, we are able to distinguish clearly the experimental research towards better qubits, and the industrial and societal applications that need to be developed and executed on a quantum device.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Efficient decomposition of unitary matrices in quantum circuit compilers

Unitary decomposition is a widely used method to map quantum algorithms to an arbitrary set of quantum gates. Efficient implementation of this decomposition allows for translation of bigger unitary gates into elementary quantum operations, which is key to executing these algorithms on existing quantum computers. The decomposition can be used as an aggressive optimization method for the whole circuit, as well as to test part of an algorithm on a quantum accelerator. For selection and implementation of the decomposition algorithm, perfect qubits are assumed. We base our decomposition technique on Quantum Shannon Decomposition which generates O((3/4)*4^n) controlled-not gates for an n-qubit input gate. The resulting circuits are up to 10 times shorter than other methods in the field. When comparing our implementation to Qubiter, we show that our implementation generates circuits with half the number of CNOT gates and a third of the total circuit length. In addition to that, it is also up to 10 times as fast. Further optimizations are proposed to take advantage of potential underlying structure in the input or intermediate matrices, as well as to minimize the execution time of the decomposition.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

OpenQL : A Portable Quantum Programming Framework for Quantum Accelerators

With the potential of quantum algorithms to solve intractable classical problems, quantum computing is rapidly evolving and more algorithms are being developed and optimized. Expressing these quantum algorithms using a high-level language and making them executable on a quantum processor while abstracting away hardware details is a challenging task. Firstly, a quantum programming language should provide an intuitive programming interface to describe those algorithms. Then a compiler has to transform the program into a quantum circuit, optimize it and map it to the target quantum processor respecting the hardware constraints such as the supported quantum operations, the qubit connectivity, and the control electronics limitations. In this paper, we propose a quantum programming framework named OpenQL, which includes a high-level quantum programming language and its associated quantum compiler. We present the programming interface of OpenQL, we describe the different layers of the compiler and how we can provide portability over different qubit technologies. Our experiments show that OpenQL allows the execution of the same high-level algorithm on two different qubit technologies, namely superconducting qubits and Si-Spin qubits. Besides the executable code, OpenQL also produces an intermediate quantum assembly code (cQASM), which is technology-independent and can be simulated using the QX simulator.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

Burst-and-coast swimmers optimize gait by adapting unique intrinsic cycle

This paper addresses the physical mechanism of intermittent swimming by considering the burst-and-coast regime of fish swimming at different speeds. The burst-and-coast regime consists of a cycle with two successive phases: a phase of active undulation powered by the fish muscles followed by a passive gliding phase. Observations of real fish whose swimming gait is forced in a water flume from low to high speed regimes are performed, using a full description of the fish kinematics and mechanics. We first show that fish modulate a unique intrinsic cycle to sustain the demanded speed by modifying the bursting to coasting ratio while maintaining the duration of the cycle constant. Secondly, we show using numerical simulations that the chosen kinematics correspond to optimized gaits over the range of swimming speeds tested.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Quantum Computer Architecture: Towards Full-Stack Quantum Accelerators

This paper presents the definition and implementation of a quantum computer architecture to enable creating a new computational device - a quantum computer as an accelerator. In this paper, we present explicitly the idea of a quantum accelerator which contains the full stack of the layers of an accelerator. Such a stack starts at the highest level describing the target application of the accelerator. The next layer abstracts the quantum logic outlining the algorithm that is to be executed on the quantum accelerator. In our case, the logic is expressed in the universal quantum-classical hybrid computation language developed in the group, called OpenQL, which visualised the quantum processor as a computational accelerator. The OpenQL compiler translates the program to a common assembly language, called cQASM, which can be executed on a quantum simulator. The cQASM represents the instruction set that can be executed by the micro-architecture implemented in the quantum accelerator. In a subsequent step, the compiler can convert the cQASM to generate the eQASM, which is executable on a particular experimental device incorporating the platform-specific parameters. This way, we are able to distinguish clearly the experimental research towards better qubits, and the industrial and societal applications that need to be developed and executed on a quantum device. The first case offers experimental physicists with a full-stack experimental platform using realistic qubits with decoherence and error-rates while the second case offers perfect qubits to the quantum application developer, where there is no decoherence nor error-rates. We conclude the paper by explicitly presenting three examples of full-stack quantum accelerators, for an experimental superconducting processor, for quantum accelerated genome sequencing and for near-term generic optimisation problems based on quantum heuristic approaches.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

eQASM: An Executable Quantum Instruction Set Architecture

A widely-used quantum programming paradigm comprises of both the data flow and control flow. Existing quantum hardware cannot well support the control flow, significantly limiting the range of quantum software executable on the hardware. By analyzing the constraints in the control microarchitecture, we found that existing quantum assembly languages are either too high-level or too restricted to support comprehensive flow control on the hardware. Also, as observed with the quantum microinstruction set QuMIS, the quantum instruction set architecture (QISA) design may suffer from limited scalability and flexibility because of microarchitectural constraints. It is an open challenge to design a scalable and flexible QISA which provides a comprehensive abstraction of the quantum hardware. In this paper, we propose an executable QISA, called eQASM, that can be translated from quantum assembly language (QASM), supports comprehensive quantum program flow control, and is executed on a quantum control microarchitecture. With efficient timing specification, single-operation-multiple-qubit execution, and a very-long-instruction-word architecture, eQASM presents better scalability than QuMIS. The definition of eQASM focuses on the assembly level to be expressive. Quantum operations are configured at compile time instead of being defined at QISA design time. We instantiate eQASM into a 32-bit instruction set targeting a seven-qubit superconducting quantum processor. We validate our design by performing several experiments on a two-qubit quantum processor.

cs.AR↗

arXiv2018

Mapping of Lattice Surgery-based Quantum Circuits on Surface Code Architectures

Quantum error correction (QEC) and fault-tolerant (FT) mechanisms are essential for reliable quantum computing. However, QEC considerably increases the computation size up to four orders of magnitude. Moreover, FT implementation has specific requirements on qubit layouts, causing both resource and time overhead. Reducing spatial-temporal costs becomes critical since it is beneficial to decrease the failure rate of quantum computation. To this purpose, scalable qubit plane architectures and efficient mapping passes including placement and routing of qubits as well as scheduling of operations are needed. This paper proposes a full mapping process to execute lattice surgery-based quantum circuits on two surface code architectures, namely a checkerboard and a tile-based one. We show that the checkerboard architecture is 2x qubit-efficient but the tile-based one requires lower communication overhead in terms of both operation overhead (up to 86%) and latency overhead (up to 79%).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

cQASM v1.0: Towards a Common Quantum Assembly Language

The quantum assembly language (QASM) is a popular intermediate representation used in many quantum compilation and simulation tools to describe quantum circuits. Currently, multiple different dialects of QASM are used in different quantum computing tools. This makes the interaction between those tools tedious and time-consuming due to the need for translators between theses different syntaxes. Beside requiring a multitude of translators, the translation process exposes the constant risk of loosing information due to the potential incompatibilities between the different dialects. Moreover, several tools introduce details of specific target hardware or qubit technologies within the QASM syntax and prevent porting the code to other hardwares. In this paper, we propose a common QASM syntax definition, named cQASM, which aims to abstract away qubit technology details and guarantee the interoperability between all the quantum compilation and simulation tools supporting this standard. Our vision is to enable an extensive quantum computing toolbox shared by all the quantum computing community.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

An Experimental Microarchitecture for a Superconducting Quantum Processor

Quantum computers promise to solve certain problems that are intractable for classical computers, such as factoring large numbers and simulating quantum systems. To date, research in quantum computer engineering has focused primarily at opposite ends of the required system stack: devising high-level programming languages and compilers to describe and optimize quantum algorithms, and building reliable low-level quantum hardware. Relatively little attention has been given to using the compiler output to fully control the operations on experimental quantum processors. Bridging this gap, we propose and build a prototype of a flexible control microarchitecture supporting quantum-classical mixed code for a superconducting quantum processor. The microarchitecture is based on three core elements: (i) a codeword-based event control scheme, (ii) queue-based precise event timing control, and (iii) a flexible multilevel instruction decoding mechanism for control. We design a set of quantum microinstructions that allows flexible control of quantum operations with precise timing. We demonstrate the microarchitecture and microinstruction set by performing a standard gate-characterization experiment on a transmon qubit.

quant-ph↗