SPQR – Smart Precision for Quantum Resilience#

Quantum computers promise breakthroughs in medicine discovery, climate-smart cities, and secure communications. But today’s machines are fragile: qubits are noisy, computations are short-lived, and reliable results often demand more hardware than we have. SPQR - Smart Precision for Quantum Resilience - tackles this by pairing the practicality of “good-enough” computing with the power of quantum technology.

In many applications, perfect accuracy isn’t necessary everywhere. SPQR brings this insight to quantum software. Its precision-aware compiler keeps high accuracy where results truly depend on it and safely relaxes it where the application can tolerate tiny errors. That choice matters: it leads to shorter circuits, fewer gates, and fewer qubits, so there’s less time and space for noise to ruin the computation.

The compiler also treats error handling intelligently. Instead of using heavy, expensive error correction at every step, SPQR assigns strong protection to the most sensitive parts and lighter schemes - or simple error detection - where it’s safe. This trims overhead while preserving trustworthy outcomes.

SPQR’s first targets are quantum machine learning and numerical linear algebra - workloads dominated by matrix operations that naturally benefit from controlled simplifications. Built on modern, modular compiler infrastructure (MLIR), the toolchain is designed to interoperate with classical software and to adapt across different quantum hardware platforms.

Over four years, SPQR will deliver automatic circuit generation, resource-aware error management, and validation on representative use cases. The goal is simple and ambitious: match precision and protection to purpose, so quantum computing becomes more efficient, more resilient, and closer to everyday impact.

Duration#

This project is scheduled to run from 2026-04-01 to 2030-03-31 (4 years).

Funding Credits#

SPQR – Smart Precision for Quantum Resilience is a project funded by the Research Council of Norway under the thematic call Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal.

This project is a collaboration between the System Software Group at NTNU, Norway and the HEAP Lab at Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

Principal Investigator is Stefano Cherubin.