Quantum computers compared using a new benchmark for real tasks
Benchmarking the computational power of quantum computers
Emerging TechnologiesPerformance
Summary
Quantum computers are being built in many ways, making it hard to compare how good they are. The authors introduce a new test, called QUOPS, that measures how big and how fast quantum computers can run useful programs. They tried this test on some of the best quantum machines from Quantinuum, Google, and IBM. Their results show quantum computers still need to get much more powerful to do important scientific work, encouraging better error correction methods. The same test also works for quantum computers using basic error correction, helping track future progress.
What this means in practice
- •For quantum hardware teams: Compare different quantum computers fairly by measuring the size and speed of real quantum programs they can run successfully.
- •For quantum software developers: Assess the limits of current quantum machines for running useful algorithms and plan development toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Authors
Timothy Proctor, Oliver Hart, Oliver Widzowski Maupin, Matthew Girling, Daniel Hothem, Daniel Mills, Jordan Hines, Karl Mayer, Jacob S. Nelson, Tyler LeBlond, Zohim Chandani, Diego Forlivesi, Piper C. Wysocki, Boldizsár Poór, Joan M. Dreiling, Annie Park, Adam P. Reed, Brian Estey, Cameron Foltz, Akhil Isanaka, M. S. Allman, Michael Mills, Maxwell D. Urmey, Peter E. Siegfried, Audrey Faricy, Jin-Sung Kim, Cristina Cîrstoiu, Andrew D. Baczewski, Charles H. Baldwin, Robin Blume-Kohout
Abstract
Quantum computing hardware is advancing rapidly toward utility-scale machines that will enable scientific breakthroughs. Many teams are pursuing distinct and difficult-to-compare routes to this goal, using different qubit technologies and logical architectures. Tracking progress toward quantum utility therefore requires rigorous benchmarks that measure computational capability relative to utility-scale challenge problems and enable fair comparison across disparate platforms. Here we demonstrate direct, cross-platform measurement of quantum computational capability using a new benchmark that quantifies the size of the largest computationally relevant quantum circuits that a machine can execute successfully and the speed at which it can execute them. We apply this quantum universal operation performance system (QUOPS) experimentally to leading processors from Quantinuum, Google, and IBM, computing directly on physical qubits. Translating state-of-the-art resource requirements for recognized challenge problems that represent useful quantum computation into effective QUOPS circuit sizes shows that computational capability must grow by 5 orders of magnitude, motivating fault-tolerant approaches. We use the same benchmark to assess the performance of a simple fault-tolerant logical-qubit processor implemented on up to eight [[7,1,3]]-encoded logical qubits using Quantinuum Helios-1, and project the growth of capability across successive generations of fault-tolerant quantum computers to show how QUOPS can track progress toward quantum scientific utility.