Cisco Systems on Thursday demonstrated a switching chip it says can connect quantum computers that use different underlying technologies, marking another step in the company's effort to assemble an internet of quantum machines using the same connective logic that underpins today’s internet. Rather than attempt to build its own quantum computer, Cisco is focusing on linking machines developed by a variety of players.
Major technology companies including Alphabet's Google and IBM are developing quantum computing technology. Quantum systems today are created using diverse approaches: some platforms manipulate rubidium atoms suspended in a vacuum with lasers, while others rely on superconducting circuits that must be cooled to near absolute zero.
Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president and general manager of Outshift, Cisco’s emerging technologies and incubation group, said researchers working on quantum computing believe multiple approaches may have useful strengths going forward. Cisco’s switch is intended to operate at room temperature and to work over standard telecommunications fiber-optic cables, translating between different quantum hardware types. "You can speak any language," Pandey said.
While Cisco projects that large networks of quantum computers are not likely to arrive until the 2030s, the company sees more immediate potential for its switch in security applications. Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s president and chief product officer, highlighted this nearer-term use case.
The company framed the security angle around a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics: information can exist in more than one state until it is measured. The oft-cited Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment illustrates how a quantum system can be in multiple states simultaneously until observation occurs.
Cisco’s switch can link multiple quantum sensors, which are commercially available today, into a network in what is known as an entangled state. According to Cisco, if an unauthorized party - or a malicious artificial intelligence agent controlled by hackers - were present on the network and attempted to eavesdrop, the act of collecting information would collapse the entanglement state and thereby reveal the intrusion.
"If you can start detecting behaviors of what is happening on the network through a quantum switch, it changes your defense posture almost entirely," Patel said.
This demonstration positions Cisco as an interoperability play among quantum technologies rather than a competitor building quantum processors. The company is emphasizing translation and connectivity at room temperature using existing fiber-optic infrastructure as the pathway to tying together heterogeneous quantum platforms, while noting that broad-scale quantum networks remain a longer-term prospect.