This week, I read numerous research papers to expand upon my understanding of quantum computing and the current benchmarking suites that exist for todays NISQ era quantum computers. I also downloaded the software necessary to develop and benchmark various quantum circuits.

I first read Teague J. Tomesh’s dissertation entitled Co-Designing Quantum Computer Architectures and Algorithms to Bridge the Quantum Resource Gap. This dissertation explains the development and applications of the SupermarQ benchmarking suite. I noted each aspect of the suite’s design as characteristics to keep in mind during my evaluation of various quantum benchmarking systems. I also noted each element of the feature vectors that he utilizes, and I found the concept of program communication, as well as the “degree” of a qubit, especially interesting. This paper neatly demonstrated that quantum computing has a preference for different architectures depending on the specific application. It gave cross-platform comparisons for practical applications, and provided examples of times when a superconducting quantum computer functions more efficiently than a trapped ion quantum computer and vice versa.

I then moved on to reading the official SupermarQ documentation before diving into the code itself. This suite emphasises the idea that single-number metrics are far less effective than an entire suite of benchmarks in quantifying performance across multiple realistic applications. I have now downloaded both Qiskit, a software platform for work on utility-scale quantum computers, as well as the SupermarQ software.