Quantum Networks: Cisco and Nvidia Bet on Hybrid Setups

Nvidia and Cisco are two of the major players in the quantum networking space, but they're not betting on building standalone quantum systems. Instead, they believe that hybrid setups combining classical and quantum components will be the key to success.

Cisco engineer Luca Della Chiesa spoke at QDA Forum 2026 about the importance of interfaces between different quantum systems, which he likened to an 'elephant in the room'. According to him, these interfaces form a bottleneck that prevents quantum components from working together at scale. The winner in this space will be whoever builds the best system, not just the best qubits or entanglement rate.

Cisco's presentation illustrated how a classical backend network can power quantum processing units, linked with an as-yet undefined protocol or standard. Della Chiesa emphasized that any new quantum setup would need to integrate with existing data centers, rather than starting from scratch.

Nvidia's EMEA director for supercomputing and AI, Andy Grant, also spoke at QDA about the company's hybrid vision for quantum processing units. He described how Nvidia's NVQLink interconnection can plug into existing supercomputers to act as extra accelerators. The setup includes an AI-based predecoder that compresses error information before it gets transferred to the decoder, helping keep quantum information from environmental noise and decoherence.

Nvidia's open quantum platform is comprised of a supercomputer running CUDA-Q algorithms to solve and compile, and a quantum system processor running Cudaq-realtime and CUDA-Q quantum error correction. The company believes that AI can accelerate quantum computing at multiple stages, not just for analyzing results afterward.