Quantum testbeds for advancing hardware: Examples from QSCOUT

The Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed (QSCOUT) located at Sandia National Laboratories is a “white box” quantum processor based on trapped ions available to the scientific community as of 2021 (https://qscout.sandia.gov). During the process of running user code, we encountered numerous unforeseen challenges, resulting in hardware improvements to the system for the next round of experiments. I will present how working with user teams – and the testbed model in general – has accelerated progress in gate implementation and calibration, software, and classical control hardware.