QC Design Pioneers GPU-Accelerated Quantum Fault-Tolerance Design
MARCH 20, 2025. Ulm, Germany.
QC Design has achieved a GPU-acceleration breakthrough in Plaquette, its state-of-the-art software for designing and optimizing fault tolerance architectures. By collaborating with NVIDIA to integrate the NVIDIA cuQuantum SDK, Plaquette now leverages the cuTensorNet library to perform high-performance, full-state simulations of fault-tolerant quantum circuits. This advancement dramatically enhances fault-tolerant design, enabling simulations at unprecedented scale and performance.
This integration positions Plaquette at the forefront of quantum fault-tolerance simulations, enabling quantum hardware companies and researchers to model more than 400 qubits on a single NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada Generation GPU equipped with only 20GB of memory. This represents a substantial improvement compared to current state-of-the-art Monte Carlo simulators, which typically support around 60 qubits using high-end CPUs with 120GB RAM. Furthermore, Plaquette's GPU-powered simulations achieve at least a 180-fold increase in sampling speed for circuits containing 60 qubits compared to CPU-based solutions.
❝ Accurate full-state simulations of fault-tolerant circuits are critical for understanding and mitigating complex imperfections such as coherent errors and amplitude damping. By leveraging NVIDIA's accelerated tools, we're providing quantum hardware developers with unprecedented simulation performance, significantly accelerating progress toward practical, fault-tolerant quantum computing. ❞
said Dr. Ish Dhand, co-founder and CEO of QC Design.
As part of the work, QC Design is expanding GPU support within Plaquette, integrating GPU acceleration as a core feature and ensuring compatibility with cutting-edge NVIDIA accelerated computing.
❝ Developments in fault tolerance are key for quantum computing to deliver on its transformational potential. By leveraging NVIDIA accelerated computing for fault tolerant simulations QC Design is enabling researchers and engineers to make practical quantum computers a reality. ❞
said Sam Stanwyck, Group Product Manager for quantum computing of NVIDIA.
The work underscores QC Design's focus on building design software that addresses the problems faced by companies designing and manufacturing quantum computers. QC Design continues to set new standards in quantum fault-tolerance design by precisely capturing over 20 hardware imperfections that impact quantum processor performance for the broadest class of fault-tolerance protocols published in literature, far exceeding the capabilities of existing open-source tools.
About QC Design:
QC Design accelerates the development of fault-tolerant quantum computers with its flagship software, Plaquette. Plaquette enables quantum hardware teams to simulate, analyze, and optimize quantum architectures under realistic conditions with unmatched precision—capturing more than 20 hardware imperfections that affect quantum computation. QC Design empowers quantum hardware teams to reduce costs, shorten development cycles, and enhance system scalability.