Środowiskowe Seminarium z Informacji i Technologii Kwantowych

Despite its societal and industrial relevance, how energy consumption will impact the scalability of quantum computers remains a scarcely explored question. Properly addressing it mandates synergies between fundamental research and enabling technologies, the former (resp. the latter) managing the computing performances (resp. the macroscopic resource consumption). This effort requires to set up common methodologies and languages. Here we propose such methodology and apply it to the case of a superconducting fault-tolerant quantum computer. Based on a comprehensive modeling, we study the impact of various parameters on the global power consumption, ranging from the software (quantum error correction code, quantum algorithms) to the hardware (quality of qubits) and engineering parameters (cryogeny, controlling electronics, wiring). Our goal is to provide a unified "full-stack" picture allowing to enhance the energetic scalability of quantum computers. We use our framework to provide realistic estimations of the minimal energetic bill for fault-tolerant quantum computations. In particular, we estimate the minimum energy required to break RSA 2048 on a fault-tolerant quantum computer based on concatenated error correction. Our methodology is general and extendable to other qubits, codes and quantum technologies. Finally, we exhibit some fundamental differences between how (and why) energy is used in quantum computers compared to classical computers.

The Seminar will take a HYBRID form. It will take place in room 1.02 but will be simmultaneously tranmitted via ZOOM under the following link: https://zoom.us/j/92894130767 (Passcode: R6Vx6E).