Cisco says it has developed a prototype quantum network entanglement chip to help scale quantum networks and connect quantum processors.

The company has also opened a new quantum laboratory in Santa Monica, California, dedicated to developing quantum networking technologies.

Cisco Quantum Entanglement Source Chip
– Cisco

In a blog post outlining the announcements, Vijoy Pandey, SVP at Cisco’s Outshift incubator, said that Cisco’s quantum networking strategy had two focuses: developing quantum networks for both the quantum world and the classical world.

“Just as Cisco helped build infrastructure for the Internet, we’re now creating quantum networking technology that will be the foundation for the quantum Internet, making quantum computing practical years ahead of current timelines,” Pandey wrote. “Our approach could accelerate impactful quantum computing and networking applications from decades away to just 5-10 years.”

The quantum network entanglement chip has been developed at Outshift in collaboration with UC Santa Barbara, and, according to Cisco, can generate pairs of entangled photons that enable “instantaneous connection regardless of distance through quantum teleportation.”

Cisco said the chip operates at standard telecom wavelengths, meaning it can leverage existing fiber optic infrastructure, consumes less than 1 milliwatt of power, and offers one million high-fidelity entanglement pairs per output channel, with a rate of up to 200 million entanglement pairs per second in chip.

The chip also functions at room temperature as a miniaturized Photonic Integrated Chip (PIC) and can therefore be deployed in existing systems, Cisco said.

Meanwhile, Pandey added that in addition to developing the entanglement chip, the newly opened lab will also help to advance research prototypes of other components necessary for building out a quantum networking stack, including entanglement distribution protocols, a distributed quantum computing compiler, Quantum Network Development Kit (QNDK), and a Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) using quantum vacuum noise.

What makes our quantum networking approach powerful is our focus on both software and hardware development,” Pandey said. “By developing our own network hardware components, such as the chip alongside our full software stack, we gain unique insights into how these elements work together to build complete quantum networking infrastructure.”