Design of an Intel Quantum Control Processor for Quantum Computers

Quantum Computers are growing in scale, which means that the control requirements are also growing. Qubit control electronics are commonly used and discussed, but in this talk we introduce the Quantum Control Processor (QCP), which is responsible for orchestrating the control electronics using inspiration from classical CPU design. The QCP interprets Quantum Instruction Set Architecture (QISA) binary instructions (an extension of standard CPU instructions) into low-level control signals that are distributed to analog signal generators. The QCP will allow scalable control of a quantum processor by enabling: addressing large numbers of qubits, automatic gate recalibration, error correction & logical qubit operation and distributed processing for hybrid quantum algorithms. In this talk, we discuss the key design considerations and elements of the QCP and the QISA.