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