Quality, Speed, and Scale: three key attributes to measure the performance of near-term quantum computers

Defining the right metrics to properly represent the performance of a quantum computer is critical to both users and developers of a computing system. In this white paper, we identify three key attributes for quantum computing performance: quality, speed, and scale. Quality and scale are measured by quantum volume and number of qubits, respectively. We propose a speed benchmark, using an update to the quantum volume experiments that allows the measurement of Circuit Layer Operations Per Second (CLOPS) and identify how both classical and quantum components play a role in improving performance. We prescribe a procedure for measuring CLOPS and use it to characterize the performance of some IBM Quantum systems.