  This work compares the overhead of quantum error correction with concatenated
and topological quantum error-correcting codes. To perform a numerical
analysis, we use the Quantum Resource Estimator Toolbox (QuRE) that we recently
developed. We use QuRE to estimate the number of qubits, quantum gates, and
amount of time needed to factor a 1024-bit number on several candidate quantum
technologies that differ in their clock speed and reliability. We make several
interesting observations. First, topological quantum error correction requires
fewer resources when physical gate error rates are high, white concatenated
codes have smaller overhead for physical gate error rates below approximately
10E-7. Consequently, we show that different error-correcting codes should be
chosen for two of the studied physical quantum technologies - ion traps and
superconducting qubits. Second, we observe that the composition of the
elementary gate types occurring in a typical logical circuit, a fault-tolerant
circuit protected by the surface code, and a fault-tolerant circuit protected
by a concatenated code all differ. This also suggests that choosing the most
appropriate error correction technique depends on the ability of the future
technology to perform specific gates efficiently.
