The Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will collaborate with two research universities in California to develop a testing platform for the quantum internet concept under a five-year, $12.5 million project to be funded by DOE.
Berkeley Lab said its partnership with the University of California and the California Institute of Technology aims to produce a software-based distributed quantum computing network that will link the DOE facility and UC Berkeley.
The project, called Quantum Application Network Testbed for Novel Entanglement Technology, supports the federal government's National Quantum Initiative and is part of a $61 million DOE investment.
Other department funding awards include $12.5 million for a similar testbed development effort at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, $30 million for the establishment of five Nanoscale Science Research Centers and $5 million for the creation of continental-scale quantum internet building blocks.
Quantum networks use light’s quantum properties for encoding more information compared to traditional computing technology, according to Berkeley Lab.
