Architectures for Multinode Superconducting Quantum Computers

Understand

Many proposals to scale quantum technology rely on modular or distributed designs where individual quantum processors, called nodes, are linked together to form one large multinode quantum computer (MNQC).

• One scalable method to construct an MNQC is using superconducting quantum systems with optical interconnects.
• However, a limiting factor of these machines will be internode gates, which may be two to three orders of magnitude noisier and slower than local operations.
• Surmounting the limitations of internode gates will require a range of techniques, including improvements in entanglement generation, the use of entanglement distillation, and optimized software and compilers, and it remains unclear how improvements to these components interact to affect overall system performance, what performance from each is required, or even how to quantify the performance of each.