Noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computing devices offer opportunities to test the principles of quantum computing but are prone to errors arising from various sources of noise. Fluctuations in the noise itself lead to unstable devices that undermine the reproducibility of NISQ results. Here we characterize the reliability of NISQ devices by quantifying the stability of essential performance metrics. Using the Hellinger distance, we quantify the similarity between experimental characterizations of several NISQ devices by comparing gate fidelities, duty cycles, and register addressability across temporal and spatial scales. Our observations collected over 22 months reveal large fluctuations in each metric that underscore the limited scales on which current NISQ devices may be considered reliable.

中文翻译：

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嘈杂的量子计算设备的稳定性

嘈杂的中级量子（NISQ）计算设备提供了测试量子计算原理的机会，但容易出现由各种噪声源引起的错误。噪声本身的波动会导致设备不稳定，从而破坏NISQ结果的可重复性。在这里，我们通过量化基本性能指标的稳定性来表征NISQ设备的可靠性。通过比较门的保真度，占空比和寄存器在时间和空间尺度上的可寻址性，使用赫林格距离，我们可以量化几种NISQ器件的实验特性之间的相似性。我们在22个月内收集到的观察结果表明，每个指标都有很大的波动，突显了当前NISQ设备被认为可靠的规模有限。