Lin Zhong
Date: Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Time: 11:30 AM -12:30 PM PST
Location:TASC 1 9204, Burnaby campus
Talk Title: How Classical Computer Scientists Can Help Advance Quantum Computing
Abstract: Quantum computing promises unprecedented computational power, yet in practice, quantum hardware remains highly error-prone due to the challenge of isolating quantum states from environmental interference. A primary method for building fault-tolerant quantum systems is through Quantum Error Correction (QEC) codes, which utilize many physical qubits to construct a more reliable logical qubit. During operation, certain qubits are measured, and these measurements are analyzed to determine the errors that have occurred—a classical process known as QEC decoding.
In this talk, we present our results in developing scalable QEC decoders for surface codes, a key class of QEC codes. We demonstrate that crucial QEC decoding algorithms can be parallelized to achieve decoding speeds faster than measurement at unprecedented scales—d=51 for Union Find decoders and d=33 for MWPM decoders. Our experience indicates that classical computer scientists can contribute to advancing quantum computing, even without a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, especially when help from quantum experts is available.
Biography: Lin Zhong is Joseph C. Tsai Professor of Computer Science with Yale University. He received his B.S and M.S. from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. from Princeton University. From 2005 to 2019, he was with Rice University. At Yale, he leads the Efficient Computing Lab to make computing, communication, and interfacing more efficient and effective. He and his students received the best paper awards from ACM MobileHCI, IEEE PerCom, ACM MobiSys (3), ACM ASPLOS and IEEE QCE. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Duncan Award from Rice University, the RockStar Award (2014) and Test of Time Award (2022) from ACM SIGMOBILE. He is a Fellow of IEEE and ACM. More information about his research can be found at http://www.yecl.org.