Qu-Trefoil: Large-Scale Quantum Circuit Simulator Working on FPGA With SATA Storages

2026-08-14

AI Summary

This study addresses the memory bottleneck in large-scale quantum circuit simulation by proposing a novel architecture integrating multiple FPGAs with SATA storage arrays. Through the co-design of HLS-based universal gates and HDL integration modules, this system achieves over 43-qubit simulation capacity with 128 TB of storage on a cost-effective platform. Experiments demonstrate that simulating 43+ qubits requires only 3.7 to 13 hours per subsystem, validating both efficiency and robustness. By pioneering a storage-extension paradigm, this work significantly lowers hardware barriers and costs for large-scale quantum simulation while offering high scalability and flexibility.

Abstract

Quantum circuits are fundamental components of quantum computing, and state-vector-based quantum circuit simulation is a widely used technique for tracking qubit behavior throughout circuit evolution. However, simulating a circuit with $n$ qubits requires $2^{n+4}$ bytes of memory, making simulations of more than 40 qubits feasible only on supercomputers. To address this limitation, we propose the Qu-Trefoil, a system designed for large-scale quantum circuit simulations on an FPGA-based platform called Trefoil. Trefoil is a multi-FPGA system connected to eight storage subsystems, each equipped with 32 SATA disks. Qu-Trefoil integrates a suite of HLS-based universal quantum gates, including Clifford gates (Hadamard (H), Pauli-Z (Z), Phase (S), Controlled-NOT (CNOT)), the T gate, and unitary matrix computation, along with HDL-designed modules for system-wide integration. Our extensive evaluation demonstrates the system's robustness and flexibility, covering quantum gate performance, chunk size, disk extensibility, and efficiency across different SATA generations. We successfully simulated quantum circuits with over 43 qubits, which required more than 128 TB of memory, in approximately 3.72 to 13.06 hours on a single storage subsystem equipped with one FPGA. This achievement represents a significant milestone in the advancement of quantum computing simulations. Furthermore, thanks to its unique architecture, Qu-Trefoil is more accessible, flexible, and cost-efficient than other existing simulators for large-scale quantum circuit simulations, making it a viable option for researchers with limited access to supercomputers.

Problem

• Quantum circuit simulation
• Memory bottleneck
• Large-scale simulation
• State-vector

Innovation

• FPGA-based quantum simulation
• SATA storage architecture
• Large-scale quantum circuit
• HLS quantum gates
• Cost-efficient simulator