Benchmarking the performance of quantum computing software for quantum circuit creation, manipulation and compilation
Paul D. Nation, Abdullah Ash Saki, Sebastian Brandhofer, Luciano Bello, Shelly Garion, Matthew Treinish, Ali Javadi-Abhari
Abstract
We present Benchpress, a benchmarking suite for evaluating the performance and range of functionality of multiple quantum computing software development kits. This suite consists of a collection of over 1,000 tests measuring key performance metrics for a wide variety of operations on quantum circuits composed of up to 930 qubits and $${\mathcal{O}}(1{0}^{6})$$ two-qubit gates, as well as an execution framework for running the tests over multiple quantum software packages in a unified manner. Here we give a detailed overview of the benchmark suite and its methodology and generate representative results over seven different quantum software packages. The flexibility of the Benchpress framework enables benchmarking that not only keeps pace with quantum hardware improvements but also can preemptively gauge the quantum circuit processing costs of future device architectures. In this Resource, the authors present an open-source extensible benchmark tool, Benchpress, for evaluating the performance of mainstream quantum computing software. Benchpress was demonstrated to perform over 1,000 tests with up to 930 qubits to compare the performance of quantum software, providing insight into how to best use current programming stacks.