The QiController is a qubit control and readout platform developed at IPE. To interface with the QiController, the open source, Python-based QiCode experiment description language is used. While being successfully used in the field with real quantum devices, there are better ways for visualizing, debugging and optimizing the pulses utilized by the QiController for qubit communication.

In this Master thesis, a simulator for QiCode is to be developed. The goal is to be as accurate as possible with respect to the signals being sent to the qubit while keeping the runtime overhead of the simulator low, so that it can be used comfortably.

The relevant parts of the QiController firmware are written in VHDL. The proposed architecture should therefore simulate the actual VHDL code. Using the VHDL Procedural Interface (VHPI), the simulator driver can be written in C++ or C. Open source simulators, such as NVC or GHDL, support this interface. Facilitating the Python C API, a user must be able to input QiCode and as a result get, for example, a numpy array (or similar) with the data sent to the qubit devices.

The focus of this work should be on creating a framework for simulating the logic used for driving a single qubit while at the same time enabling future extensions for multiple qubits.

Tasks:

• Get to know how the QiController communicates with a qubit, it’s core features and identify it’s interfaces.
• Development of a VHDL module to enable VHPI access to the firmware modules.
• Development of a C or C++ program to drive the VHDL module.
• Implementation of a Python user interface for the C or C++ program.

Requirements:

• Knowledge of C or C++, Python and VHDL
• No particular physics knowledge is required

Field:

• Electrical Engineering or Computer Science