Extracting Success from IBM's 20-Qubit Machines Using Error-Aware Compilation

Understand

NISQ (Noisy, Intermediate-Scale Quantum) computing requires error mitigation to achieve meaningful computation.

• Our compilation tool development focuses on the fact that the error rates of individual qubits are not equal, with a goal of maximizing the success probability of real-world subroutines such as an adder circuit.
• We begin by establishing a metric for choosing among possible paths and circuit alternatives for executing gates between variables placed far apart within the processor, and test our approach on two IBM 20-qubit systems named Tokyo and Poughkeepsie.
• We find that a single-number metric describing the fidelity of individual gates is a useful but imperfect guide.