Cisco today unveiled a prototype switch it says will significantly accelerate the timeline for practical, distributed, quantum-computing-based networks.
Cisco’s Universal Quantum Switch is designed to connect quantum systems from different vendors, such as IBM, IonQ, Google and Rigetti, in all major qubit encoding technologies, at room temperature, and over standard telecom fiber, according to Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president and general manager of Outshift, Cisco’s emerging technologies and incubation group.
“Today we have quantum computers operating at roughly 100 to 1,000 qubits in size, and from the public roadmaps of leading quantum players, we believe this number [is] going up to 10,000 in the next three years,” Pandey said. “Actual quantum computers will get bigger over time, of course, but it creates a big scalability problem once you start connecting them. What the switch will do is effectively link smaller quantum computers and create a large, distributed quantum computer, allowing faster scaling than building one massive quantum computer alone.”
