Price and Payoff: Non-Determinism in Fault Tolerant Quantum Computation
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866915994129137664 |
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| author | Awasthi, Aditi Sethi, Sayam Khan, Sahil Ravi, Gokul Subramanian Baker, Jonathan Mark |
| author_facet | Awasthi, Aditi Sethi, Sayam Khan, Sahil Ravi, Gokul Subramanian Baker, Jonathan Mark |
| contents | A promising approach to achieving scalable fault-tolerant quantum computation is the use of quantum error correction (QEC) codes augmented with magic states i.e. resource states produced via distillation, cultivation, or $R_z$ synthesis and teleported into the circuit as needed. Because magic-state production dominates the space-time volume of fault-tolerant programs, system architects must decide how many production units to allocate. Current approaches rely on deterministic analysis that either provisions for worst-case peak demand (wasting valuable qubit resources on factories that are never simultaneously utilized) or assumes average demand, which increases execution time. In this work, we build a simulation framework that couples circuit scheduling with different stochastic magic state production models, and use it to quantify the impact of non-determinism on circuit execution. We show that non-determinism has a dual effect that deterministic models cannot capture: it inflates total execution time (the price), while deflating peak per-cycle resource demand (the payoff). For distillation-based architectures, this demand smoothing shifts the space-time-optimal provisioning point: fewer factories are needed to minimize space-time volume than deterministic analysis predicts. Across benchmarks, stochastic-aware provisioning reduces space-time volume by up to 27% compared to the deterministic optimum for distillation, while requiring up to 30% fewer factories. We characterize these effects across each preparation mechanism, map the resulting design-space tradeoffs, and demonstrate that static resource estimation systematically mis-characterizes the cost of fault-tolerant execution. Our results establish that stochastic-aware analysis is necessary for right-sizing the factory allocations and should replace deterministic heuristics as the standard methodology for FTQC resource planning. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_07983 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Price and Payoff: Non-Determinism in Fault Tolerant Quantum Computation Awasthi, Aditi Sethi, Sayam Khan, Sahil Ravi, Gokul Subramanian Baker, Jonathan Mark Quantum Physics A promising approach to achieving scalable fault-tolerant quantum computation is the use of quantum error correction (QEC) codes augmented with magic states i.e. resource states produced via distillation, cultivation, or $R_z$ synthesis and teleported into the circuit as needed. Because magic-state production dominates the space-time volume of fault-tolerant programs, system architects must decide how many production units to allocate. Current approaches rely on deterministic analysis that either provisions for worst-case peak demand (wasting valuable qubit resources on factories that are never simultaneously utilized) or assumes average demand, which increases execution time. In this work, we build a simulation framework that couples circuit scheduling with different stochastic magic state production models, and use it to quantify the impact of non-determinism on circuit execution. We show that non-determinism has a dual effect that deterministic models cannot capture: it inflates total execution time (the price), while deflating peak per-cycle resource demand (the payoff). For distillation-based architectures, this demand smoothing shifts the space-time-optimal provisioning point: fewer factories are needed to minimize space-time volume than deterministic analysis predicts. Across benchmarks, stochastic-aware provisioning reduces space-time volume by up to 27% compared to the deterministic optimum for distillation, while requiring up to 30% fewer factories. We characterize these effects across each preparation mechanism, map the resulting design-space tradeoffs, and demonstrate that static resource estimation systematically mis-characterizes the cost of fault-tolerant execution. Our results establish that stochastic-aware analysis is necessary for right-sizing the factory allocations and should replace deterministic heuristics as the standard methodology for FTQC resource planning. |
| title | Price and Payoff: Non-Determinism in Fault Tolerant Quantum Computation |
| topic | Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.07983 |