Did Cisco change the future of Quantum Computing

Añadido: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Now this is really interesting. Quantum computing is getting closer and closer.

[00:00:05]Cisco have just announced a new quantum networking switch. So the Cisco universal quantum switch is designed to route quantum information between systems while preserving it. That's really important. It also has a conversion engine that translates between all encoding and entanglement options at input and output. One of the problems with quantum computers is that they encode information in different ways and until now no switch could accept and translate between all the major encoding modalities without destroying the quantum information in the process. So the Cisco quantum switch is designed to address this challenge for the first time. Routing quantum information while preserving it at room temperature on existing fiber with a Cisco conversion engine that translates between encoding modalities at input and output. Cisco believe that connecting quantum systems is the key to achieving true scalability and now it's taken a critical step toward making that vision a reality. But they do say that while this is a significant achievement, it's only the beginning, the road ahead is long. So don't expect a product to be sold until say one to two years away.

[00:01:17]Timelines could change, but this is a proof of concept rather than a commercial product available today. So why do we need this? The problem at the moment is that quantum computers are currently only at 100 to 1,000 cubits.

[00:01:31]Think of a cubit as something similar to bits in classical computing.

[00:01:37]Is that all you can say?

[00:01:40]>> Positive and negative. Now you're a bit >> but in quantum computing it can be both a zero and one at the same time. So again a cubit or quantum bit is the basic unit of information used to encode data in quantum computing. It can be best understood as the quantum equivalent of the traditional bit used by classical computers to encode information in binary. So at the moment we stuck at 100 to 1,000 cubits. For practical quantum use cases we need 100,000 plus physical cubits. So we want hundreds of thousands or even millions of cubits. So one option is to build bigger quantum computers. In other words, scale them up, make them bigger and bigger. Another option that Cisco is working on is scale out. So rather than having one massive quantum computer, we have multiple quantum computers working together in a quantum network and we distribute the quantum state across nodes to create one logical quantum computing domain. This is very similar to what we do in traditional or classical networking where we have multiple devices working together across a network. Think of an AI cluster as an example. thousands of GPUs working together as part of a training set connected via a network. The problem at the moment however well until Cisco had this announcement is that quantum computers are connected directly. This results in the n squed problem. In other words, if we have say four quantum computers, we need 12 connections between them because they are connected directly to each other. Basically point-to-point links between the servers. Now, if you had 10 servers, that would result in 90 connections. 100 servers results in 9,900 connections.

[00:03:29]This is not scalable. So, we need to replace this and put a switch in the middle here and have the devices connect to a switch. And that's what Cisco have developed. Not just for classical computing, but in this case for quantum computing. Think about devices in an office. If you've got 20 computers, you're not connecting every computer to each other. you're connecting them to a central device such as a switch or group of switches which reduces the number of connections that are required. So the idea here is that we have this quantum switch from Cisco that connects quantum computers and note they can be different types of quantum computers. So we can switch between different modalities. So the idea here is that this quantum computer could talk to this quantum computer as an example. We can send information through the quantum network or quantum switch. And at the moment, I believe this has been tested or is capable at going up to 100 kilometers.

[00:04:25]So, it's not just within a data center.

[00:04:27]It can extend further and has been tested in New York. Now, this could be used as an example to connect quantum sensors at scale or share entanglement sources. So rather than having your own entanglement source that can now be shared between different people across this network, this provides photon entanglement switching. The whole idea with entanglement which has a lot of applications for instance in high frequency trading is that rather than sending data from one device across a network to another device as bits in a classical network, we have the photons shared between two entities. When the state of one photon changes, it instantaneously changes on the other photon. So if we have high-speed trading as an example, we can have a starting point where something happens instantaneously on both sides whether they 100 kilometers apart or in theory thousands of kilometers apart or across the entire globe. When the state of one changes, it instantaneously changes on the other side rather than having to be limited by the speed of light. It preserves the quantum information while performing entanglement switching.

[00:05:37]That's really important. Quantum computing is really sensitive. So we need to be able to preserve the quantum information when switching across the network. It also provides converters for connecting with different quantum computing modalities. So we've got some examples here such as polarization which is the orientation of light waves. Time bin in other words the timing of light pulses. The frequency bin the color or frequency of light. path which is the physical or spatial path. So this is made possible because of Cisco's conversion engine which is at the heart of the quantum switch. The output modality can match the input or be an entirely different one enabling the quantum switch to connect and translate between quantum systems that were never designed to talk to each other originally. And this is really important if you want to build a quantum network that can scale across different vendors and technologies. It's high performance one nancond switching time average of less than 4% encoding or entanglement penalty. It uses very low power consumes less than 1 millatt of power. One of the big points that Cisco making here is that it doesn't have to be in a specific chamber like low low temperature chamber. This can operate at room temperatures over existing fiber and operates at telecom frequencies. So you can use infrastructure that you've got already with a quantum network. Now this is a whole new infrastructure very different to traditional networking. So Cisco are developing quantum hardware such as the quantum switch. They are developing quantum network protocols which are very different to the traditional networking protocols that we used to such as TCP IP that doesn't exist in a quantum network. They also have quantum network aware applications.

[00:07:20]So, as an example, quantum alert can be used alongside a traditional network to check if someone has tapped into the network. Really cool how they can mix quantum with traditional networking. So, if I tap your network, you immediately know that the network has been tapped.

[00:07:35]They can sync information as I mentioned in high frequency trading. There are other applications such as quantum compile and quantum sync. I've already mentioned quantum sync where we have like a starting gun for high-speed trading where two devices start at exactly the same time. When the property changes on one photon, it immediately is available on the other side. It's not limited by the speed of light. Now, this isn't the only product that Cisco have released. They've also released their quantum network entanglement chip which generates the entangled photons that quantum networks rely on to transmit information. They've also released Cisco's network aware quantum compiler which orchestrates how quantum algorithms are distributed and executes across multiple quantum processes. Okay, so what do you think about this announcement? Are you interested in quantum computing or don't you care? I think you need to be aware of this because all encryption such as RSA which is used throughout the world will be broken when quantum computing arrives.

[00:08:36]It will affect all of us. So it's really interesting to see the speed of development of quantum computing and in this case quantum networking to help with the speed of uptake or speed of arrival of quantum computing that's scalable and uh usable in the real world. But what are your thoughts about this? Let me know.