Cisco rolls out software aimed at connecting a quantum computing cloud 

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By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Cisco on Thursday announced a new software tool aimed at weaving together quantum computers from various makers into a single cloud, making it easier to develop useful applications.

Major tech firms such as Microsoft , IBM and Google are investing in building out their own quantum computers, which use properties of quantum physics to solve difficult computing problems faster than classical machines. Cisco, a major provider of networking gear for those classical machines, has taken a different track, aiming to create a new category of networking chips to connect quantum machines together.

In addition to quantum networking chips, Cisco is also working on the software that will be needed to connect quantum machines together. The tool announced on Thursday, which Cisco said it would make available for download next week, aims to analyze a quantum computing problem and then split it up across different machines – including machines that use fundamentally different approaches to achieving quantum computing.

Large tech companies and startups are still in heated competition around which kind of quantum computer will work best, but Cisco is aiming to take problems that software developers want to solve and break those problems up and assign them to whichever kind of computer might be best for that piece of the problem.

“You as the customer, as the quantum algorithm developer, should not worry about the kinds of technology that exist,” Vijoy Pandey, senior vice president of Cisco’s Outshift innovation incubator, told Reuters. “We will handle that complexity.”

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Diane Craft)