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Consider the energy consumption of your quantum circuits

Quantum solutions are typically evaluated in terms of performance, efficiency, speedup or the number of qubits — but not energy consumption. Yet quantum computing comes at a high energy cost. To make sure quantum computing is developed energy-efficiently, it is essential to optimize the design of the circuit, and pay attention to aspects such as the circuit layout and how the execution is done on the quantum computer.

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Fig. 1: Strategies to lower energy consumption in circuit design and execution.

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of, and has received financial support from, the following projects:. OASSIS: PID2021-122554OB-C31/ AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER, UE. PLAGEMIS: Grant TED2021-129245B-C22 funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR. EMMA: Project SBPLY/21/180501/000115, funded by CECD (JCCM) and FEDER funds. Financial support for the execution of applied research projects, within the framework of the UCLM Own Research Plan, co-financed at 85% by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) UNION (2022-GRIN-34110). In addition, the third author (E.D.) has a pre-doctoral FPI (Research Staff Training) contract at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain, for which funding has been received from the European Union through the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+).

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Correspondence to Coral Calero, Macario Polo, Elena Desdentado or Mª Ángeles Moraga.

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Calero, C., Polo, M., Desdentado, E. et al. Consider the energy consumption of your quantum circuits. Nat Rev Phys 7, 352–353 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-025-00846-0

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