Cisco shows switch that can connect quantum computers of different kinds

Cisco Systems CSCO.O on Thursday showed a switching chip that it says will be able to connect quantum computers of different types, another step in its effort to eventually connect an internet of quantum machines the way its gear connects the existing internet.

Like other major tech firms such as Alphabet's Google GOOGL.O and IBM IBM.N, Cisco is developing technology for quantum computers, which can tackle problems that existing computers cannot. But rather than enter the fray of making its own computer, Cisco is working with a range of players to connect their machines together.

Quantum computers today are built with a variety of techniques - some hitting rubidium atoms suspended in a vacuum with lasers, or some using superconductors cooled to near absolute zero.

Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president and general manager of Outshift, Cisco's emerging technologies and incubation group, said quantum researchers believe each of those approaches might have valid strengths in the future, and Cisco's switch, which works at room temperature and using standard telecommunications fiber-optic cables, translates between them.

"You can speak any language," Pandey said.

While large networks of quantum computers are not likely to arrive until the 2030s, Cisco's switch could have more immediate applications in security, said Jeetu Patel, Cisco's president and chief product officer. While the chip revealed on Thursday is a prototype, some early uses could arrive as soon as three years from now, Patel said.

The fundamental principle of quantum mechanics is that information can exist in more than one state until it is measured - Schrödinger's famously unlucky cat, for example, could be both alive and dead until the box was opened to check.

Cisco's switch can connect multiple quantum sensors, which are available today, together in a network in what is called an entangled state. If a hacker - or, increasingly, a malicious artificial intelligence agent controlled by hackers - was present on the network and eavesdropping, the quantum sensors would detect it because the entanglement state would collapse due to the collection of information.

"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.

-Stephen Nellis/Reuters