India, April 24 -- Cisco has announced the Universal Quantum Switch, a research prototype intended to address a key challenge in quantum networking. The development forms part of the company's broader work on full-stack quantum networking, supported by ongoing research, testing and industry collaborations.

Quantum computers encode information in multiple ways, and until now, switching between different encoding methods without disrupting the quantum state has not been possible. The Cisco Universal Quantum Switch is designed to route quantum information while preserving it, operating at room temperature over existing telecommunications fibre.

At the centre of the system is a patented conversion engine that enables translation between dif...