Distributed Quantum Circuit Optimisation: Evaluating Global and Local encodings

2026-05-04

AI Summary

This study investigates the interplay between quantum circuit optimization and circuit partitioning in distributed architectures, explicitly balancing computational cost, communication overhead, and classical preprocessing expenses. Building upon telegate-based partitioning, the authors systematically evaluate global, local, and hybrid compilation strategies across large-scale quantum algorithm benchmarks, using metrics such as gate count, circuit depth, number of non-local gates, and compilation overhead. Their findings reveal that global optimization significantly reduces both computational resources and compilation costs; local optimization, despite not explicitly accounting for communication, implicitly mitigates communication overhead; and hybrid strategies achieve a favorable trade-off between computational and communication efficiency at the expense of substantially increased compilation time. This work uncovers the inconsistent impacts of optimization strategies on distributed execution performance, offering new insights for designing efficient distributed quantum compilers.

Abstract

As distributed quantum architectures begin to emerge, understanding the interaction between quantum circuit optimisation and circuit partitioning becomes increasingly important. In this work, we study how circuit optimisation influences distributed quantum workloads under system-level trade-offs. We compare three compilation strategies (global optimisation, local optimisation, and a hybrid approach) across a large benchmark suite of quantum algorithms. Using telegate-based partitioning, we evaluate the resulting distributed circuits in terms of gate counts, circuit depth, the number of induced non-local gates, and compilation overhead, thereby approximating computational, communication, and classical preprocessing costs. Our results show that circuit optimisation does not uniformly benefit distributed execution. Global optimisation minimises computational resources and achieves the lowest compilation overhead. Local optimisation can reduce communication cost even though it is not explicitly communication-aware. The hybrid strategy can simultaneously reduce both computational and communication overhead, but at the expense of significantly increased compilation time.

Problem

• Distributed Quantum Computing
• Quantum Circuit Optimisation
• Circuit Partitioning
• Compilation Strategies
• Non-local Gates

Innovation

• Distributed Quantum Computing
• Quantum Circuit Optimisation
• Circuit Partitioning
• Compilation Strategies
• Non-local Gates