Pinball: A Cryogenic Predecoder for Quantum Error Correction Decoding Under Circuit-Level Noise

Scaling fault tolerant quantum computers, especially cryogenic systems, to millions of qubits is challenging due to poorly-scaling data processing and power consumption overheads. One key challenge is the design of decoders for real-time quantum error correction (QEC), which demands high data rates for error processing; this is particularly apparent in systems with cryogenic qubits and room temperature (RT) decoders. In response, cryogenic predecoding using lightweight logic has been proposed to handle common, sparse errors in the cryogenic domain. However, prior work only accounts for a subset of error sources present in real-world quantum systems with limited accuracy, often degrading performance below a useful level in practical scenarios. Furthermore, prior reliance on SFQ logic precludes detailed architecture-technology co-optimization. To address these shortcomings, this paper introduces Pinball, a comprehensive design in cryogenic CMOS of a QEC predecoder tailored to realistic, circuit-level noise. By accounting for error generation and propagation through QEC circuits, our design achieves higher predecoding accuracy, outperforming logical error rates (LER) of the current state-of-the-art cryogenic predecoder by nearly six orders of magnitude. Remarkably, despite operating under much stricter power and area constraints, Pinball also reduces LER by 32.58x and 5x, respectively, compared to the state-of-the-art RT predecoder and RT ensemble configurations. By increasing cryogenic coverage, we also reduce syndrome bandwidth up to 3780.72x. Through co-design with 4 K-characterized 22 nm FDSOI technology, we achieve a peak power consumption under 0.56 mW. Voltage/frequency scaling and body biasing enable 22.2x lower typical power consumption, yielding up to 67.4x total energy savings. Assuming a 4 K power budget of 1.5 W, our predecoder supports up to 2,668 logical qubits at d=21.