Qunnect and Cisco have unveiled what they say is the first entanglement-swapping demonstration of its kind over deployed metro-scale fibre using a commercial quantum networking system. The demonstration combined Qunnect's room-temperature quantum hardware with Cisco's quantum networking software stack. The net result of the project is regarded by the partners as being able to bring practical quantum networks closer to scalable deployment, validating a spoke-and-hub model for scaling quantum networks through commercial datacentres.
Cisco aims to "build high-fidelity quantum networks to unlock the potential for large-scale quantum data centers," Kompella told Telecompetitor in an interview. The company is working closely with IBM on the research, with IBM's role focused primarily on the computing side, while Cisco tackles the networking side. Quantum computers use concepts of quantum physics. They're more powerful than traditional non-quantum computers, known in quantum jargon as "classical" computers. But, as of today, there is no way to network quantum computers.
The idea is that there are multiple types of quantum computers that rely on different qubit technologies such as superconducting qubits or photonic qubits. Quantum computers can also have different types of processors and different quantum models. Building large quantum computers with more than 1,000 logical qubits is prohibitively expensive. Relying on a homogeneous qubit infrastructure limits the types of problems a quantum computer can work on, according to solicitation documents.
