From my lectures in quantum error correction at CWI in Amsterdam a few weeks ago. It was great to meet the next generation of QEC researchers.
My main message:
1. We need a detailed architecture now: Fault tolerant quantum computers are coming soon and we need a detailed architecture to move to engineering. This motivated our walking cat blueprint (arXiv:2604.19481).
2. Simplicity is the key: A simple architecture makes it easier to design, optimize iterate and build. See for example our MegaQuOp decoder (arXiv:2608.25027) which is the first end-to-end real-time decoder for a large scale FTQC - going far beyond previous work. This is made possible by making the right architecture choices.
3. I hope that quantum computer architecture will grow into an independent academic specialty just like classical computer architecture. There is a lot of exciting work to go at the interface between QEC, quantum hardware, classical control and quantum algorithms.
As an industry researcher, I sometime miss teaching and I had a lot of fun interacting with the students and researchers in one of my favorite city in Europe. Thank you again to the organizers Jonas Helsen, Sebastian Zur,
@dmitry_grinko, Sander Gribling, Subhasree Patro.
@IonQ_Inc