Modular software for real-time quantum control systems
Leon Riesebos, Brad Bondurant, Jacob Whitlow, Junki Kim, Mark G. Kuzyk, Tianyi Chen, Samuel Phiri, Ye Wang, Chao Fang, Andrew Van Horn, Jungsang Kim, Kenneth R. Brown
Abstract
Real-time control software and hardware is essential for operating quantum computers.In particular, the software plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between quantum programs and the quantum system.Unfortunately, current control software is often optimized for a specific system at the cost of flexibility and portability.We propose a systematic design strategy for modular real-time quantum control software and demonstrate that modular control software can reduce the execution time overhead of kernels by 63.3% on average while not increasing the binary size.Our analysis shows that modular control software for two distinctly different systems can share between 49.8% and 91.0% of covered code statements.To demonstrate the modularity and portability of our software architecture, we run a portable randomized benchmarking experiment on two different ion-trap quantum systems.