Taskrunner: A Flexible Framework Optimized for Low Latency Quantum Computing Experiments

Superconducting circuits, as used for quantum computing experiments, are commonly interfaced by microwave pulse sequences with gigahertz frequencies. To generate and analyze these pulses, we developed a versatile FPGA-based electronics platform. The modular FPGA firmware guarantees highest accuracy on the nanosecond timescale. More complex data acquisition and control schemes utilize the real-time co-processor of the heterogeneous Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) through an application-specific framework called Taskrunner. The framework complements the FPGA logic with versatile and low-latent control, data aggregation and evaluation capabilities. Within the framework, user tasks are specified conveniently using standard C language and compiled on the fly directly on the MPSoC platform.In this paper, we present the architecture of our Taskrunner software framework. We also provide timing benchmarks and compare execution times of common quantum computing characterization experiments with an FPGA-only approach.