What if We Had a Computer-Aided Design Program for Quantum Computers?
There’s no doubt about it: building quantum computers is hard, and we wish it was easier.
Designing quantum devices is the bedrock of the quantum computing world, and yet, this is an arduous, multi-step process more complex than the design workflow of conventional chips. The quantum hardware designers have to work across several normally-disconnected worlds, developing and benchmarking computer chips that incorporate superconducting metal parts and follow the rules of quantum electrodynamics (QED). This requires a suite of development and analysis techniques without a classical analog. But if we want to actually build and use these amazing devices, we’ll need to find a way to make this process easier.
On the surface, designing a quantum chip should be a lot like designing any other integrated circuit. But a typical integrated circuit goes through a design flow process that’s had decades worth of tuning. As chips have scaled up in transistor count in step with Moore’s law, design tools have matured in kind, becoming automated. Today, a sequence of programs allow chip designers to think in a modular way about integrated circuits with billions of transistors, in a process that rather seamlessly creates and tests designs, then moves them to the fabrication stage.
Quantum computers are not like today’s computer microprocessors, though. Quantum bits are much larger than transistors, and require more complex superconducting circuitry. Computer-aided electronic design automation software covers only some parts of this intricate fabrication process, and using these software packages to design a quantum computer comes with a high barrier to entry.
If we want quantum computers to one day scale and mature in the same way that classical computers have, we’ll need to begin thinking about quantum electronic design automation (EDA) tools in kind. Meanwhile, within our own community, we want to accelerate and lower the barrier to innovation on quantum devices. The IBM Quantum team is therefore beginning to think about what EDA might look like for a quantum processor, and hopes that the community will begin thinking about it, too. Today at the IEEE Quantum Week Conference, the team discussed their vision for this first-of-its-kind project. Led by quantum physicist Zlatko Minev and developed with other IBM Quantum team members, this project is meant for those interested in quantum hardware design: a suite of design automation tools that can be used to devise and analyze superconducting devices, with a focus on being able to integrate the best tools into a quantum hardware designer’s workflow. We’ve code-named the project Qiskit Metal.
We hope that as a community, we might make the process of quantization — bridging the gap between pieces of a superconducting metal on a quantum chip with the computational mathematics of Hamiltonians and Hilbert spaces — available to anyone with a curious mind and a laptop. We want to make quantum device design a streamlined process that automates the laborious tasks as it does with conventional electronic device design. We are writing software with built-in best practices and cutting-edge quantum analysis techniques, all this while seamlessly leveraging the power of conventional EDA tools. The goal of Qiskit Metal is to allow for easy quantum hardware modeling with reduction of design-related errors plus increased speed.
Internally, we have started to test the program’s analysis techniques, and in an upcoming publication, Zlatko Minev, Thomas McConkey & Jay Gambetta will share some early results that demonstrate percent-level agreement between design analysis and experimental hardware. This project is an exciting work in progress in its early development stages, and might not remain “Qiskit Metal” for long. We hope that we can spur the community to begin thinking about design automation for quantum computers, and draw in experts in the field of classical computing to help. Therefore, it’s crucial that we keep this project open source so that engineers around the world can help solve this to-be pressing problem.
We are thrilled to ask the community to work closely with us in developing Qiskit Metal through an early-access program, starting in November. To request early access or to learn more, follow this link.
