Cisco recently unveiled its Universal Quantum Switch, a research prototype developed to remove a key interoperability hurdle in related networking. The switch works by routing information between different hardware platforms and encoding schemes over standard telecom fibre at room temperature.
The company stated quantum devices typically only communicate with systems using the same encoding, which limits scale and multi-vendor networks.
Cisco noted computers encode information in a different way and stated previously there was previously no switch which could accept and translate all major encoding modalities without destroying the quantum information in the process.
The switch is designed to accept quantum signals in one modality, convert them internally to a common format for routing and then output in the modality required by the receiving system.
Cisco’s patented conversion engine handles all four major encoding types: polarisation, time-bin, frequency-bin and path.
The switch sits alongside Cisco’s quantum entanglement chip and its compiler to form a full-stack quantum networking architecture. Collaborations with IBM, Qunnect and Atom Computing are in play.
Analyst take
J. Gold Associates founder and principal analyst Jack Gold told Mobile World Live quantum is a fundamentally different architecture than traditional digital computers, which means standard switching and networks do not work.
“Quantum essentially works at the atomic level looking for the probabilities of atoms in certain states”, he explained. “It’s hard to do and very unstable, usually requiring near absolute zero temperatures”.
He said there are many different techniques to process quantum data and noted Cisco is attempting to be a transport layer with a translator in the middle to take in one dialect and spit out another.
“Quantum states are extremely delicate and easy to corrupt so doing this is no small feat”. Gold said quantum technology is still in the early stages and is probably several years away from having an impact.
“But what it does show is that Cisco is thinking about how it can be a bridge between quantum compute vendors” which use different languages. “This really is a technology demonstration more than a new product”.
The demonstration is “meant to show that Cisco wants to be at the centre of quantum networks in the future, just as they are today in traditional computing interconnectivity”.
Source: Mobile World Live
Image Credit: Cisco
