CAREER: Co-Designing Compilers and Architectures For High-Performance And Scalable Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

Quantum computers have the potential to accelerate important applications across critical domains, such as chemistry, physics, cryptanalysis, machine learning, drug discovery. By enabling us to solve these complex problems, quantum computers promise a transformative impact on our society. Today, quantum computers with hundreds to thousands of qubit devices are already available. However, despite remarkable progress in recent years, our ability to enter an era of quantum utility and advantage is severely hindered by the hardware's intrinsic vulnerability to errors. In reality, qubit devices do not retain information forever and quantum operations are inherently imperfect. These factors limit us from running most practical quantum algorithms because computational errors plague program outputs. This project aims to tackle this challenge by building quantum architectures and software methodologies that reduce the impact of errors through fault-tolerant program execution. This project is organized into three thrusts. The first thrust focuses on building automated and optimized program compilation methods. The project will primarily build application-specific instructions, optimize resource overheads of fault-tolerant operations, and develop methods for optimized program execution on large quantum systems. The second thrust focuses on advancing qubit control architectures to tackle inefficiencies in real-time instruction scheduling, error correction, and handling of complex errors. The project will design techniques to handle non-uniform operational latencies at scheduling time, build optimized error correction frameworks to detect errors in real-time with a particular focus on resource-efficient quantum error correction codes, and develop hardware-software co-design techniques to handle non-trivial errors, such as hardware defects, qubit losses. The third thrust focuses on building educational materials and engaging in research and teaching activities to train undergraduate and graduate students so that they contribute to the domestic quantum workforce. 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. NSF Award ID: 2544323 | Program: 01002930DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT,01003031DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Poulami Das | Institution: University of Texas at Austin, AUSTIN, TX | Award Amount: $412,008 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2544323 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2544323.html