Cisco develops universal quantum switch that operates at room temperature

Cisco has developed a research prototype of a universal quantum switch that can route quantum information between systems while preserving it.

The company is looking to extend its enterprise and telecom networking prowess into quantum computing. Cisco has been pushing toward a complete quantum networking program.

Cisco said its Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is designed to accept and translate all quantum system encoding without destroying the information. Cisco said its quantum switch had less than 4% degradation in encoding and entanglement fidelity in proofs of concept.

In addition, the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch also routes quantum information while preserving it at room temperature on existing telecom fiber. Cisco's quantum switch also has a patented conversion engine.

The Cisco news is notable since multiple pure play quantum computing companies are pursuing quantum networking.

Vijoy Pandey, SVP/GM of Outshift, Cisco's Emerging Technologies and Incubation Group, said "connecting quantum systems is the key to achieving true scalability" and that Cisco's quantum switch is just a first critical step.

Pandey said in a blog post:

"Imagine connecting billions of humans and tens of billions of machines with direct cables. That would not be scalable. The Internet materialized because we could connect tens of billions of endpoints through classical switches. The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is the quantum equivalent."

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Cisco said its quantum switch can support all major quantum encoding modalities including polarization, time-bin, frequency-bin and path.

If successful, the Cisco Universal Quantum Switch will be unique because it can handle multiple encoding types, works with existing infrastructure, connects multiple systems that have been siloed and designed for a full rack.

Cisco said it is collaborating with IBM, Qunnect, Atom Computing and others on its quantum switch.