Quantum Computer Systems: Research for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computers (Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture)

This book targets computer scientists and engineers who are familiar with concepts in classical computer systems but are curious to learn the general architecture of quantum computing systems. It gives a concise presentation of this new paradigm of computing from a computer systems' point of view without assuming any background in quantum mechanics. As such, it is divided into two parts. The first part of the book provides a gentle overview on the fundamental principles of the quantum theory and their implications for computing. The second part is devoted to state-of-the-art research in designing practical quantum programs, building a scalable software systems stack, and controlling quantum hardware components. Most chapters end with a summary and an outlook for future directions. This book celebrates the remarkable progress that scientists across disciplines have made in the past decades and reveals what roles computer scientists and engineers can play to enable practical-scale quantum computing.

Yongshan Ding is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, advised by Fred Chong. Before UChicago, he received his dual B.Sc. degrees in Computer Science and Physics from Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests are in computer architectures, quantum algorithms, quantum information, and error correction. He builds systems that enable efficient scheduling and mapping from high-level circuits to noisy near-term devices and designs algorithms using tools from property testing, representation theory, and topology.Fred Chong is the Seymour Goodman Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. He is also Lead Principal Investigator for the EPiQC Project (Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing), an NSF Expedition in Computing. Chong received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1996 and was a faculty member and Chancellor’s fellow at UC Davis from 1997–2005. He was also a Professor of Computer Science, Director of Computer Engineering, and Director of the Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing at UCSB from 2005–2015. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, and eight best paper awards. His research interests include emerging technologies for computing, quantum computing, multicore and embedded architectures, computer security, and sustainable computing.