NWQEC

Overview

NWQEC is a C++/Python toolkit for fault-tolerant quantum circuit transpilation. Key capabilities include:

• Parsing OpenQASM 2.0 circuits into an internal circuit representation.
• Converting arbitrary circuits to Clifford+T using the gridsynth algorithm [1].
• Counting Clifford+T gates without generating the final circuit.
• Producing Pauli-Based Circuits (PBC) with Tfuse optimisation for T-count reduction [2,3].
• Applying Clifford reduction optimization [4], which preserves circuit parallelism while reducing non-T overhead.
• Leveraging a tableau-based IR for high-performance PBC passes [2].

Requirements

• Python 3.8+ (for PyPI installation)

For building from source:

• C++17 toolchain and CMake ≥ 3.16
• Python build dependencies: scikit-build-core, pybind11

Platform Support

NWQEC relies on GMP and MPFR mathematical libraries and is currently supported on macOS and Linux with full C++ gridsynth backend functionality. The build system automatically downloads prebuilt GMP/MPFR binaries for these platforms.

For Windows users, we recommend using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

The C++ gridsynth backend provides significant acceleration for Clifford+T synthesis (20× speed-up on an 18-qubit QFT benchmark).

Installation

Install from PyPI (Recommended)

pip install nwqec

Build from Source

For development or building custom wheels:

pip install -U pip
pip install scikit-build-core pybind11
pip install .

C++ Development

For advanced users or performance-critical applications, NWQEC provides native C++ executables that offer direct access to the transpilation engine without Python overhead.

Built executables:

• nwqec-cli: Complete circuit transpilation pipeline with QASM I/O
• gridsynth: High-precision single-angle synthesis (header-only C++ implementation)

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

Prebuilt GMP/MPFR binaries are automatically downloaded during the build process. See C++ CLI guide for details.

Quick Start (Python)

import nwqec

circuit = nwqec.load_qasm("example_circuits/qft_n18.qasm")
print(circuit.stats())

clifford_t = nwqec.to_clifford_t(circuit, keep_ccx=False)
print("WITH_GRIDSYNTH_CPP:", nwqec.WITH_GRIDSYNTH_CPP)
print("Clifford+T gate counts:", clifford_t.count_ops())

# Exact Clifford+T counts without generating the final circuit.
ct_counts = nwqec.get_clifford_t_counts(circuit, rz_err="total", epsilon=1e-2)
print("Clifford+T counts without final circuit generation:", ct_counts)

# Optional RZ synthesis error policies:
#   per-gate: fixed epsilon per RZ (default 1e-10)
#   total:    total budget split over all RZ gates (default 1e-2)
#   relative: epsilon(theta) = abs(theta) * epsilon (default 1e-2)
budgeted = nwqec.to_clifford_t(circuit, rz_err="total", epsilon=1e-2)

# Pauli-Based Circuit + Tfuse
pbc = nwqec.to_pbc(circuit)
pbc_opt = nwqec.fuse_t(pbc)
print("T count before Tfuse:", pbc.count_ops().get("t_pauli", 0))
print("T count after Tfuse:", pbc_opt.count_ops().get("t_pauli", 0))

# Clifford reduction optimization
clifford_reduced = nwqec.to_clifford_reduction(circuit)
print(f"Depth reduction over Clifford+T: {clifford_t.depth() / clifford_reduced.depth():.2f}x")
print(f"Depth reduction over PBC: {pbc.depth() / clifford_reduced.depth():.2f}x")

Further Documentation

• Python API reference: docs/python_api.md
• C++ CLI guide: docs/cpp_cli.md

Repository Layout

• include/nwqec/ — public headers (analysis, core, parser, passes, gridsynth, tableau)
• python/nwqec/ — Python package and pybind11 bindings
• tools/ — C++ command-line utilities (nwqec-cli, gridsynth)
• docs/ — additional documentation
• tests/ — Python tests

References

1. Neil J. Ross, and Peter Selinger. "Optimal ancilla-free Clifford+ T approximation of z-rotations." arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.2975 (2014).
2. Meng Wang, Chenxu Liu, Sean Garner, Samuel Stein, Yufei Ding, Prashant J. Nair, and Ang Li. "Tableau-Based Framework for Efficient Logical Quantum Compilation." arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.02721 (2025).
3. Sean Garner, Chenxu Liu, Meng Wang, Samuel Stein, and Ang Li. "STABSim: A Parallelized Clifford Simulator with Features Beyond Direct Simulation." arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.03092 (2025).
4. Meng Wang, Chenxu Liu, Samuel Stein, Yufei Ding, Poulami Das, Prashant J. Nair, and Ang Li. "Optimizing FTQC Programs through QEC Transpiler and Architecture Codesign." arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.15434 (2024).

Citation format

Please cite our papers:

• Meng Wang, Chenxu Liu, Samuel Stein, Yufei Ding, Poulami Das, Prashant J. Nair, and Ang Li. "Optimizing FTQC Programs through QEC Transpiler and Architecture Codesign." arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.15434 (2024).
• Meng Wang, Chenxu Liu, Sean Garner, Samuel Stein, Yufei Ding, Prashant J. Nair, and Ang Li. "Tableau-Based Framework for Efficient Logical Quantum Compilation." arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.02721 (2025).

Bibtex:

@article{wang2024optimizing,
  title={Optimizing FTQC Programs through QEC Transpiler and Architecture Codesign},
  author={Wang, Meng and Liu, Chenxu and Stein, Samuel and Ding, Yufei and Das, Poulami and Nair, Prashant J and Li, Ang},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.15434},
  year={2024}
}
@article{wang2025tableau,
  title={Tableau-Based Framework for Efficient Logical Quantum Compilation},
  author={Wang, Meng and Liu, Chenxu and Garner, Sean and Stein, Samuel and Ding, Yufei and Nair, Prashant J and Li, Ang},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.02721},
  year={2025}
}

Acknowledgments

PNNL-IPID: 33474-E, iEdison No. 0685901-25-0171

The development of this software was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) under contract number DE-SC0012704, (Basic Energy Sciences, PNNL FWP 76274). It was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Quantum Science Center (QSC). The development used resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The development used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. This software was also supported by the Quantum Algorithms and Architecture for Domain Science Initiative (QuAADS), under the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). PNNL is a multi-program national laboratory operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract No. DE-AC05-76RL01830.