Methods, systems, and apparatus for performing an entangling operation on a system of qubits. In one aspect, a method includes operating the system of qubits, wherein the system of qubits comprises: a plurality of first qubits, a plurality of second qubits, a plurality of qubit couplers defining nearest neighbor interactions between the first qubits and second qubits, wherein the system of qubits is arranged as a two dimensional grid and each qubit of the multiple first qubits is coupled to multiple second qubits through respective qubit couplers, and wherein operating the system of qubits comprises: pairing multiple first qubits with respective neighboring second qubits; performing an entangling operation on each paired first and second qubit in parallel, comprising detuning each second qubit in the paired first and second qubits in parallel.