The US is planning a quantum internet

The Internet grew out of a distributed network of traffic exchanges between universities and research centers in the United States. The same foundation will become the basis for the emergence and development of the quantum Internet. Today we can only guess what forms the quantum Internet will take, whether it will be filled with cats (Schrodinger’s), or whether it will help in the leapfrog development of science and technology. But he will, and that says it all.

At the request of US President Donald Trump, the 2021 budget for the development of quantum information science (QIS, quantum information science) should be doubled. Previously we Reported, that as part of the development of exascale computing in the United States, $2021 billion can be allocated for 5,8. $237 million is allocated for research in the field of quantum information. Of this amount, $XNUMX million is allocated for planning and initial deployment of the base for the quantum Internet is intended $ 25 million.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will play a leading role in creating a quantum network for traffic exchange, so to speak, of a new generation. The quantum Internet will be built on existing regional nodes created by laboratories under the ministry. For example, it is planned to use a quantum data exchange point created at the University of Chicago as one of the nodes. The partners in this case were the Department of Energy laboratories Argonne and Fermi. The university recently launched an 83-km test bed for quantum communications experiments that will help usher in the arrival of the quantum Internet.

Another ministry laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), is leading the development of quantum nodes for traffic exchange in New York and the “northeast” of the country. In the western United States, the Department of Energy is collaborating on this issue with the Northwest Quantum Nexus association, which includes Pacific Northwest National Lab, Microsoft Quantum and the University of Washington, with plans to eventually connect all 17 national laboratories to the quantum Internet, in addition to those interested in joining the process.

The thing is that the time for the quantum Internet has not yet come. But when did this stop you from mastering the budget? Many things have yet to be invented. We don't even say release and install. To justify the development, they put forward the argument that the future Internet will be hybrid, combining the regular Internet and the quantum one. This allows a broad mass of developers to be involved in the development of new technologies and new equipment in order to eventually create something revolutionary.

“The Digital Internet will be the foundation, and when combined with the Quantum Internet, the result will be a heterogeneous computing network of incredible power and potential.” We can also add here that these must be networks that cannot be hacked. Also, the quantum Internet will have to provide the possibility of distributed quantum computing or the possibility of cluster operation of remote quantum computers. But from this point we are entering the realm of bold science fiction, and this is not our genre.

Source: 3dnews.ru