Special Issue in Quantum Computing
—Despite its tremendous potential, it is still unclear how quantum computing will scale to satisfy the requirements of its most powerful applications. Among other issues, there are hard limits to the number of qubits that can be integrated into a single chip. Multi-core architectures are a firm candidate for unlocking the scalability of quantum processors. Nonetheless, the vulnerability and complexity of quantum communications make this a challenging approach. A comprehensive design should imply consolidating the communications stack in the quantum computer architecture. In this paper, we explain how this vision, by entangling communications and computation in the core of the design, may help to solve the open challenges. We also summarize the first results of our application of structured design methodologies backing this vision. With our work, we hope to contribute with design guidelines that may help unleash the potential of quantum computing.