chips infrastructure
Loading Data Into a Quantum Computer Has a Power Bill
A hardware model puts dynamic energy, fidelity and refrigerator attenuation into the same QRAM calculation.
Summary
A hardware model puts dynamic energy, fidelity and refrigerator attenuation into the same QRAM calculation.
Quantum algorithms often treat coherent access to classical data as free, but a new analysis models a QRAM query as a physical process on superconducting hardware. For a representative bucket-brigade query with a 12-qubit address register, the authors calculate 0.969 fidelity, 3.51 times 10^-4 joules of dynamic energy, 4.38 watts of average dynamic power and 64.4 watts at peak. Changing the operating point and attenuation profile can alter average power by a factor of two or more at fixed target fidelity. These are modeled hardware costs, not measurements from a deployed QRAM.
Why it matters
A hardware model puts dynamic energy, fidelity and refrigerator attenuation into the same QRAM calculation.
Limits and context
- These are modeled hardware costs, not measurements from a deployed QRAM.
Key claims
A hardware model puts dynamic energy, fidelity and refrigerator attenuation into the same QRAM calculation.
Qualification: These are modeled hardware costs, not measurements from a deployed QRAM.
Evidence: source-2026-11-11-010
Sources
- arXiv:2611.14422v1arXiv / Cornell University · primary research
Corrections
No corrections have been recorded for this story.