Quantum Computing and the Design of the Ultimate Accelerator

Quantum computers are domain-specific accelerators that can solve commercially important problems that are beyond the capability of conventional computers. Quantum computing is at an inflection point where small systems with a few dozen qubits have been demonstrated and the number of qubits is expected to increase to several hundred over the coming years. However, the qubit quality is likely to remain quite low making it difficult to execute programs reliably. Furthermore, scaling the designs to a large number of qubits would require specialized hardware that operates at cryogenic conditions. This article describes the compiler and hardware support for enabling reliable and scalable quantum computers.