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Assessing the Elephant in the Room in Scheduling for Current Hybrid HPC-QC Clusters

Paolo Viviani, Roberto Rocco, Matteo Barbieri, Gabriella Bettonte, Elisabetta Boella, Marco Cipollini, Jonathan Frassineti, Fulvio Ganz, Sara Marzella, Daniele Ottaviani, Simone Rizzo, Alberto Scionti, Chiara Vercellino, Giacomo Vitali, Olivier Terzo, Bartolomeo Montrucchio, Daniele Gregori

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of integrating quantum computers with existing HPC facilities, highlighting QPU scarcity, hardware heterogeneity, and misaligned access models as barriers to efficient resource allocation and scheduling. It frames three integration paradigms—loosely-coupled workflows, virtual QPUs, and malleability—as complementary strategies to enable practical near-term HPC-QC operation in heterogeneous environments. The authors provide a conceptual evaluation of these approaches, outlining their benefits, limitations, and suitability to different hardware and workload characteristics. The work aims to establish a practical blueprint for open, multi-tenant HPC-QC integration that can guide policy, scheduling, and software-stack development in the near term.

Abstract

Quantum computing resources are among the most promising candidates for extending the computational capabilities of High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. As a result, HPC-quantum integration has become an increasingly active area of research. While much of the existing literature has focused on software stack integration and quantum circuit compilation, key challenges such as hybrid resource allocation and job scheduling-especially relevant in the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum era-have received less attention. In this work, we highlight these critical issues in the context of integrating quantum computers with operational HPC environments, taking into account the current maturity and heterogeneity of quantum technologies. We then propose a set of conceptual strategies aimed at addressing these challenges and paving the way for practical HPC-QC integration in the near future.

Assessing the Elephant in the Room in Scheduling for Current Hybrid HPC-QC Clusters

TL;DR

The paper addresses the challenge of integrating quantum computers with existing HPC facilities, highlighting QPU scarcity, hardware heterogeneity, and misaligned access models as barriers to efficient resource allocation and scheduling. It frames three integration paradigms—loosely-coupled workflows, virtual QPUs, and malleability—as complementary strategies to enable practical near-term HPC-QC operation in heterogeneous environments. The authors provide a conceptual evaluation of these approaches, outlining their benefits, limitations, and suitability to different hardware and workload characteristics. The work aims to establish a practical blueprint for open, multi-tenant HPC-QC integration that can guide policy, scheduling, and software-stack development in the near term.

Abstract

Quantum computing resources are among the most promising candidates for extending the computational capabilities of High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. As a result, HPC-quantum integration has become an increasingly active area of research. While much of the existing literature has focused on software stack integration and quantum circuit compilation, key challenges such as hybrid resource allocation and job scheduling-especially relevant in the current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum era-have received less attention. In this work, we highlight these critical issues in the context of integrating quantum computers with operational HPC environments, taking into account the current maturity and heterogeneity of quantum technologies. We then propose a set of conceptual strategies aimed at addressing these challenges and paving the way for practical HPC-QC integration in the near future.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 5 sections, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. HPC-QC integration overview
  3. Current HPC-QC integration challenges
  4. Proposed integration ideas
  5. Summary and future work

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Time scales of relevant quantum jobs/shots. Jobs on neutral atoms machines include the calibration time for an arbitrary register geometry.
  • Figure 2: A Quantum-HPC workload executed as a loosely-coupled, independently scheduled workflow.
  • Figure 3: Representation of the asynchronous job submission to a real QPU leveraging virtual QPUs to allow multitenancy.
  • Figure 4: Representation of an use case featuring malleability properties to handle the release and retrieval of resources when switching from classical to Quantum-oriented workloads.