Overview
- Cisco, which unveiled the Universal Quantum Switch on Thursday, said the research device links different makers’ quantum computers and sensors by routing entangled photons at room temperature on standard telecom fiber.
- The switch takes a quantum signal in one encoding, converts it inside to a neutral form for routing, then sends it out in the format the receiver uses without measuring it, with support for polarization, time-bin, frequency-bin, and path.
- Cisco and trade press reports say it can reconfigure links in about a nanosecond while using under a milliwatt, with early polarization tests reporting less than 4% loss of quantum state fidelity.
- In February, a Cisco–Qunnect trial over a 17.6-kilometer Brooklyn–Manhattan fiber path carried about 5,400 entangled qubit pairs per hour, according to the companies.
- Commercial use remains years away due to needs like quantum repeaters and an end-to-end stack, though Cisco points to near-term security uses such as entanglement-based eavesdropper detection and analysts see broad quantum networks in the 2030s.