IBM and Cisco want to build a quantum internet by the late 2030s
Silicon Valley technology titans IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. are looking beyond artificial intelligence to the next big thing: quantum computing.
Today they announced plans to collaborate on a large-scale and fault-tolerant network that will enable tens of thousands of so-called “qubits” to work together to solve some of the world’s most complex problems. The companies said they hope to realize their vision within just five years by linking two separate quantum computers and entangling their qubits, before expanding this network to many dozens of machin…
IBM and Cisco want to build a quantum internet by the late 2030s
Silicon Valley technology titans IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. are looking beyond artificial intelligence to the next big thing: quantum computing.
Today they announced plans to collaborate on a large-scale and fault-tolerant network that will enable tens of thousands of so-called “qubits” to work together to solve some of the world’s most complex problems. The companies said they hope to realize their vision within just five years by linking two separate quantum computers and entangling their qubits, before expanding this network to many dozens of machines over a distributed network.
Ultimately, they’re aiming to build the foundation of a “quantum internet” by the late 2030s. It’s intended to support ultra-secure communications and advanced sensor networks for seismic monitoring, climate change and other applications.
Of course, IBM and Cisco acknowledge that a lot of work needs to be done to achieve that goal, and their immediate ambitions are somewhat more modest. They said they hope to be able to conduct an initial proof-of-concept demonstration before the end of 2030, when they plan to show how it’s possible to entangle qubits – which replace the traditional “bits” in classic computers – from two separate quantum machines located in distinct cryogenic environments.
Entanglement, where multiple qubits work in unison, is vital for quantum computing to achieve its potential, because it’s thought to be the only way to achieve the scale necessary to make them useful. To do this, IBM and Cisco said they’ll need to build an entirely new networking stack, with novel components such as microwave-optical transducers and supporting software.
A roadmap for the quantum internet
Cisco is working on a complex hardware and software stack for quantum networking that aims to preserve extremely fragile quantum states, distribute entanglement resources, facilitate teleportation between quantum computers, and synchronize their operations with sub-nanosecond precision.
Once they demonstrate a proof-of-concept, they’ll need to show they can scale beyond just linking two quantum computers. That will require them to link multiple geographically distant quantum machines over much longer distances. To do that, they’ll innovate new optical-photon and microwave-optical transducer technologies, Cisco said.
In addition, the companies will need to develop a new kind of interface for quantum computers. To that end, IBM is working on the development of a new quantum networking unit or QNU that will link quantum processing units or QPUs. The interface will have to be able to take “stationary quantum information” and convert this into “flying” quantum information that can be distributed to other machines in the network, IBM explained.
On the software side, Cisco is developing a high-speed protocol framework that will be able to reconfigure the quantum network continuously and dynamically so that entanglements can be distributed to the QNUs once they’ve finished their partial computations.
In addition, the companies are investigating how a new kind of “network bridge” might use multiple Cisco quantum network nodes to link hundreds of IBM QPUs through its QNU interface, first within a single data center, and later an entire group of physically distant facilities. This will ensure the quantum network can scale over large distances, and is key to building the foundations of a quantum internet.
Cisco General Manager and Senior Vice President Vijoy Pandey said it’s not enough to just keep making bigger quantum machines with more and more qubits. To make them truly useful, they must be connected into giant clusters so they can combine their processing power.
“IBM is building quantum computers with aggressive roadmaps for scale-up, and we are bringing quantum networking that enables scale-out,” he said. “Together, we are solving this as a complete system problem including the hardware to connect quantum computers, the software to run computations across them, and the networking intelligence that makes it work.”
If the companies can develop this architecture, IBM’s quantum computers would theoretically be able to tackle workloads with such massive computational demands that they could not even be done by all of the world’s existing classical computers working in concert. It could support computations with up to trillions of “quantum gates,” which are the fundamental entangling operations required for transformative quantum applications, such as complex material and medicine design.
There are a lot of very big “ifs” in the companies’ plans, but they do believe it will one day be possible to create a massive quantum internet made up of thousands of distributed quantum machines, perhaps as soon as the late 2030s. If that happens, it would enable the development of quantum sensors, quantum communications and other quantum-based technologies that can share information at a planetary scale.
IBM Research Director and Fellow Jay Gambetta said the company’s roadmap calls for the development of large-scale and fault-tolerant quantum computers by the end of the decade. Once that’s done, they’ll need to link up multiple machines to achieve their full potential.
“By working with Cisco to explore [how to create] a distributed network, we will pursue how to scale quantum’s computational power,” he said. “And as we build the future of compute, our vision will push the frontiers of what quantum computers can do.”
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