Network-Based Quantum Computing: an efficient design framework for many-small-node distributed fault-tolerant quantum computing

2026-01-14

AI Summary

This work addresses the scalability limitations of fault-tolerant quantum computing, where individual nodes can host only a small number of logical qubits. To overcome this challenge, the authors propose a Network-Based Quantum Computing (NBQC) framework—the first systematic design of a distributed fault-tolerant architecture tailored for nodes with one to a few logical qubits. The framework employs a networked dataflow model combined with program structure–aware network customization strategies to dynamically maintain inter-node connectivity and optimize resource allocation. Experimental results on representative benchmark tasks demonstrate that NBQC achieves shorter execution times compared to the conventional circuit model and higher node efficiency than measurement-based quantum computing. Furthermore, tailoring the network topology to the program’s access patterns significantly reduces the required number of nodes.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Quantum Machine Learning
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Scalability, Parallel & Distributed Systems

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Foundation models and LLMs for Web-related graphs
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

In fault-tolerant quantum computing, a large number of physical qubits are required to construct a single logical qubit, and a single quantum node may be able to hold only a small number of logical qubits. In such a case, the idea of distributed fault-tolerant quantum computing (DFTQC) is important to demonstrate large-scale quantum computation using small-scale nodes. However, the design of distributed systems on small-scale nodes, where each node can store only one or a few logical qubits for computation, has not been explored well yet. In this paper, we propose network-based quantum computation (NBQC) to efficiently realize distributed fault-tolerant quantum computation using many small-scale nodes. A key idea of NBQC is to let computational data continuously move throughout the network while maintaining the connectivity to other nodes. We numerically show that, for practical benchmark tasks, our method achieves shorter execution times than circuit-based strategies and more node-efficient constructions than measurement-based quantum computing. Also, if we are allowed to specialize the network to the structure of quantum programs, such as peak access frequencies, the number of nodes can be significantly reduced. Thus, our methods provide a foundation in designing DFTQC architecture exploiting the redundancy of many small fault-tolerant nodes.

Problem

• distributed fault-tolerant quantum computing
• small-scale quantum nodes
• logical qubits
• quantum network architecture

Innovation

• Network-Based Quantum Computing
• Distributed Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing
• Logical Qubit
• Node Efficiency
• Quantum Network Architecture