Last Sunday we released the -02 version of our Internet Draft, "A Quantum Network Architecture". This is a major release. Many things have changed, and hopefully most of the changes count as improvements. (This is an artisanal, human-crafted draft throughout. No AI used!)
This version introduces a lot of topics that haven't yet been discussed in QIRG in any depth: network installation, debugging, and management, especially. It is an architecture draft, aiming toward a concrete implementation, and while those issues might not sound important in research terms they impact various issues in design and implementation, at the architecture level.
The -00 and -01 versions were very preliminary, to put something in front of the group for discussion of the direction. This draft (-02) is the first one that's moderately complete, though I don't think it's finished in any sense of the word.
The draft is available in several forms at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-van-meter-qirg-quantum-network-architecture/
If you want to see the differences from the -01 version:
https://author-tools.ietf.org/iddiff?url1=draft-van-meter-qirg-quantum-network-architecture-01&url2=draft-van-meter-qirg-quantum-network-architecture-02&difftype=--html
If you are interested in contributing, the best way is to comment on the Quantum Internet Research Group (QIRG) mailing list, which is archived for the record. Links to subscribe and to see the archive are available at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/qirg/about/
If you become actively involved in writing substantial new text, or if you just want to nose about in the edit history, the draft is stored in a publicly visible GitHub repository:
https://github.com/moonshot-nagayama-pj/draft-van-meter-qirg-quantum-network-architecture
Bullet-point level summary:
- Addition of fifth plane to the architecture: a device plane, which allows low-level access to device control. This operates at the electrical & mechanical control and data level, not the qubit level.
- Expanded discussion of the four-layer protocol stack, including a glorious ASCII picture of four layers stacked on top of each other.
- Bullet point/short description of seven key architecture decisions.
- Some restructuring, with Quantum Optical Building Blocks moved and Link Structures moved under Links
- Significant discussion of network management throughout, including development, installation, monitoring, and fault isolation and repair (some of the key motivations for the addition of the device plane).
- Some additions of goals and requirements.
- Grammar and writing cleanup throughout.
- Removal of some placeholder text; if I missed anything, please let me know! (Yes, yes, I already spotted "(More to be added here.)" Will fix that one in next release.)
- Expanded discussion of photonic modes (this will likely be moved to the Timing Regimes I-D in a later release).
- *Yet more references. (I'm notorious for writing with a lot of references.)
As you can see, it's long (74 pages, about 14,000 words of central text).
Areas that are still ripe for a lot of work:
- interfaces between the layers in the protocol stack
- in a related topic, "quantum sockets" -- I don't think any of the things out there are really right for integrating into distributed computation
- classical communications -- basically two types, RPC and streaming event, with more that needs to be decided
- naming addressing, and discovery
- multiplexing/resource management -- we have had a couple of projects tackle this in the last fifteen years, but with very approaches and assumptions, and we haven't converged on important design elements yet
- tying into the Timing Regimes I-D, and more prep work for the companion docs to come
Comments VERY welcome -- that's what I-Ds are all about!
