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Title: IBM, Cisco Outline Plans For Networks of Quantum Computers By Early
2030s

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/20/2251...

IBM and Cisco plan to link quantum computers over long distances by the early
2030s, "with the goal of demonstrating the concept is workable by the end of
2030," reports Reuters. "The move could pave the way for a quantum internet,
though executives at the two companies cautioned that the networks would
require technologies that do not currently exist and will have to be
developed with the help of universities and federal laboratories." From the
report: The challenge begins with a problem: Quantum computers like IBM's sit
in massive cryogenic tanks that get so cold that atoms barely move. To get
information out of them, IBM has to figure out how to transform information
in stationary "qubits" -- the fundamental unit of information in a quantum
computer -- into what Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research and an IBM
fellow, told Reuters are "flying" qubits that travel as microwaves. But those
flying microwave qubits will have to be turned into optical signals that can
travel between Cisco switches on fiber-optic cables. The technology for that
transformation -- called a microwave-optical transducer -- will have to be
developed with the help of groups like the Superconducting Quantum Materials
and Systems Center, led by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near
Chicago, among others. Along the way, Cisco and IBM will also publish open-
source software to weave all the parts together.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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