To Scale Up or To Scale Out: Evaluating Space-Time Costs of Compiled Logical Circuits on Modular Superconducting Quantum Processors

Quantum Physics arXiv:2608.20462 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 20 Aug 2026] Title:To Scale Up or To Scale Out: Evaluating Space-Time Costs of Compiled Logical Circuits on Modular Superconducting Quantum Processors Authors:Nikiforos Paraskevopoulos, Sebastian de Bone, Mick Christophersen, Simon Storz, A. Mert Bozkurt, Arno Bargerbos, Sebastian Feld View a PDF of the paper titled To Scale Up or To Scale Out: Evaluating Space-Time Costs of Compiled Logical Circuits on Modular Superconducting Quantum Processors, by Nikiforos Paraskevopoulos and 6 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Modular integration has emerged as the main pathway for scaling superconducting quantum processing units (QPUs) beyond the constraints of fabrication yield and physical footprint. Currently, two primary strategies lead this effort. Mirroring the "Scaling Up" and "Scaling Out" approaches in GPU architectures and AI infrastructures, these are: chiplet-based scaling, which preserves dense connectivity and high gate fidelity at the expense of engineering complexity, and distributed architectures, which decouple system scaling from monolithic QPU advancements at the expense of sparser connectivity and lower interconnect quality. To evaluate these approaches, we introduce a quantitative stress test measuring the execution cost of a dense workload of random logical entangling operations using a surface code scheme. Using a dedicated compiler, we compute the space-time cost as the number of network nodes increases, analysing this scaling behaviour across various surface code distances, Bell-state fidelities, and Bell-pair generation times. We find that distributed architectures incur an up to exponential space-time performance penalty compared to an effectively monolithic architecture across all simulations. Our results also show that as the network grows, this penalty manifests in two distinct scaling regimes: a noise-dominated regime constrained by insufficient Bell-state fidelity and generation rates, and a connectivity-dominated regime bottlenecked by lattice-surgery routing congestion. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2608.20462 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2608.20462v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.20462 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Ahmet Mert Bozkurt [view email] [v1] Thu, 20 Aug 2026 18:00:12 UTC (24,520 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled To Scale Up or To Scale Out: Evaluating Space-Time Costs of Compiled Logical Circuits on Modular Superconducting Quantum Processors, by Nikiforos Paraskevopoulos and 6 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-08 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)