  Note: This preprint has been superseded by arXiv:1806.04318.
  Recent advances in nanotechnology have enabled researchers to control
individual quantum mechanical objects with unprecedented accuracy, opening the
door for both quantum and extreme-scale conventional computing applications. As
these devices become larger and more complex, the ability to design them such
that they can be simply controlled becomes a daunting and computationally
infeasible task. Here, motivated by ideas from compressed sensing, we introduce
a protocol for the Compressed Optimization of Device Architectures (CODA). It
leads naturally to a metric for benchmarking device performance and optimizing
device designs, and provides a scheme for automating the control of gate
operations and reducing their complexity. Because CODA is computationally
efficient, it is readily extensible to large systems. We demonstrate the CODA
benchmarking and optimization protocols through simulations of up to eight
quantum dots in devices that are currently being developed experimentally for
quantum computation.
