Reliability of Noisy Quantum Computing Devices

Noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices are valuable platforms for testing the tenets of quantum computing, but these devices are susceptible to errors arising from de-coherence, leakage, cross-talk and other sources of noise. This raises concerns for ensuring the stability of program results when using NISQ devices as strategies for mitigating errors generally require well-characterized and reliable error models. Here, we quantify the reliability of NISQ devices by assessing the necessary conditions for generating stable results within a given tolerance. We use similarity metrics derived from device characterization data to analyze the stability of performance across several key features: gate fidelities, de-coherence time, SPAM error, and cross-talk error. We bound the behavior of these metrics derived from their joint probability distribution, and we validate these bounds using numerical simulations of the Bernstein-Vazirani circuit tested on a superconducting transmon device. Our results enable the rigorous testing of reliability in NISQ devices and support the long-term goals of stable quantum computing.