Vectorizing Quantum Control: A RISC-V Vector Extension Architecture for Scalable Qubit Systems
By Xiaorang Guo, Kun Qin, Yanbin Chen, Carsten Trinitis and Martin Schulz
Technical University of Munich, Germany

Abstract
The Quantum Control Processor (QCP) bridges the gap between compiler toolchains and control electronics, and is responsible for translating compiled quantum circuits into executable instructions that directly manipulate qubits and handle measurement feedback. However, existing designs rely primarily on customized instruction sets, limiting design reuse and requiring significant effort to build supporting toolchains. Furthermore, efficiently addressing qubits and scheduling operations in highly scalable scenarios remains a critical challenge. In this work, we present a vectorized quantum control approach built upon the RISC-V Vector (RVV) engine with a quantum-oriented extension. Leveraging the high parallelism of RVV, our approach can address up to 128 qubits in a single instruction. We also embed parameterized rotation information into the instruction set, enabling dynamic tuning of gate rotations in hybrid quantum-classical programs. To support mid-circuit measurements, we design a hardware-based halt-resume protocol that resumes pipeline execution within 80ns of receiving the measurement result. Comprehensive evaluation using both RISC-V toolchains and FPGA prototypes demonstrates that our design achieves up to 2.52× speedup over the baseline in program execution time, with excellent scalability.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- RISC-V Debug & Trace IP
- RISC-V IOPMP IP
- Gen#2 of 64-bit RISC-V core with out-of-order pipeline based complex
- 64-bit RISC-V core with in-order single issue pipeline. Tiny Linux-capable processor for IoT applications.
- Multi-core capable RISC-V processor with vector extensions
Related Articles
- VMXDOTP: A RISC-V Vector ISA Extension for Efficient Microscaling (MX) Format Acceleration
- VolTune: A Fine-Grained Runtime Voltage Control Architecture for FPGA Systems
- A Direct Memory Access Controller (DMAC) for Irregular Data Transfers on RISC-V Linux Systems
- An FPGA-Based SoC Architecture with a RISC-V Controller for Energy-Efficient Temporal-Coding Spiking Neural Networks
Latest Articles
- Vectorizing Quantum Control: A RISC-V Vector Extension Architecture for Scalable Qubit Systems
- FlexViT: A Flexible FPGA-based Accelerator for Edge Vision Transformers
- LIB-TRAP: Standard Cell Library Hardware Trojan Risk Assessment and Prevention
- Exploring Side-Channel Protections in Hardware Implementations of PQC ML-KEM Verification
- CVA6-RT: an Open-Source Time-Predictable RV64 Processor for Mixed-Criticality Systems