Dataset for A Systematic Methodology to Compute the Quantum Vulnerability Factors for Quantum Circuits

Quantum computing is one of the most promising technology advances of the latest years. Once only a conceptual idea to solve physics simulations, quantum computation is today a reality, with numerous machines able to execute quantum algorithms. One of the hardest challenges in quantum computing is reliability. Qubits are highly sensitive to noise, which can make the output useless. Moreover, lately it has been shown that superconducting qubits are extremely susceptible to external sources of faults, such as ionizing radiation. When adopted in large scale, radiation-induced errors are expected to become a serious challenge for qubits reliability. In this paper, we propose an evaluation of the impact of transient faults in the execution of quantum circuits. Inspired by the Architectural and Program Vulnerability Factors, widely adopted to characterize the reliability of classical computing architectures and algorithms, we propose the Quantum Vulnerability Factor (QVF) as a metric to measure the impact that the corruption of a qubit has on the circuit output probability distribution. First, we model faults based on the latest studies on real machines and recently performed radiation experiments. Then, we design a quantum fault injector, built over Qiskit, and characterize the propagation of faults in quantum circuits. We report the finding of more than 15,000,000 fault injections, evaluating the reliability of three quantum circuits and identifying the faults and qubits that are more likely than others to impact the output. With our results, we give guidelines on how to map the qubits in the real quantum computer to reduce the output error and to reduce the probability of having a radiation-induced corruption to modify the output. Finally, we compare the simulation results with experiments on physical quantum computers.

量子计算是近年来最具发展前景的技术突破之一。曾仅作为解决物理模拟问题的概念性构想，量子计算如今已成为现实，已有多台设备能够运行量子算法。量子计算面临的最严峻挑战之一便是可靠性问题。量子比特（Qubit）对噪声极为敏感，噪声会导致计算输出失效。此外，近期研究表明，超导量子比特极易受到电离辐射等外部故障源的影响。当实现大规模应用时，辐射诱导错误将成为影响量子比特可靠性的重大挑战。本文针对瞬态故障对量子电路运行的影响开展评估研究。受广泛用于表征经典计算架构与算法可靠性的架构与程序脆弱性因子启发，我们提出了量子脆弱性因子（Quantum Vulnerability Factor，QVF），作为衡量量子比特损坏对电路输出概率分布影响的度量指标。首先，我们基于针对真实量子计算机的最新研究以及近期开展的辐射实验构建故障模型。随后，我们基于Qiskit开发了一款量子故障注入器，并对量子电路中的故障传播特性进行了表征。我们报告了超过1500万次故障注入实验的结果，评估了三款量子电路的可靠性，并识别出更易对输出产生影响的故障与量子比特。基于本研究的结果，我们提出了在真实量子计算机上布局量子比特的指导原则，以降低计算输出误差，并减少辐射诱导的比特损坏篡改输出结果的概率。最后，我们将仿真结果与真实量子计算机上的实验结果进行了对比。