Roland Acra Joins Nu Quantum as Board Advisor, Brings Scale-Out Expertise to Quantum Networking

Insider Brief:

• Nu Quantum has appointed Roland Acra, former Cisco CTO and PsiQuantum Chief Business Officer, as Board Advisor to drive its quantum networking goals, leveraging his three decades of experience in data center and scale-out computing.

• Acra envisions Nu Quantum’s Qubit Photon Interfaces (QPIs) as the quantum equivalent of network interface cards, enabling modular, scalable quantum networks by efficiently connecting qubits through enhanced entanglement rates.

• Dr. Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, Nu Quantum’s CEO, emphasized that Acra’s expertise in classical computing scale-out strategies will be integral in advancing Nu Quantum’s infrastructure for quantum network-based scale-out computing.

PRESS RELEASE — In a recent release, Nu Quantum, a quantum entanglement startup, has announced the appointment of Roland Acra, former CTO at Cisco and Chief Business Officer at PsiQuantum, as a Board Advisor to advance its quantum networking ambitions. Acra’s experience spans over three decades in technology leadership, particularly in data center and network-scale computing, as he led Cisco’s $10 billion/year data center division. Under his guidance, new product launches achieved over $100 million in annual revenue within three years, further testifying to his expertise.

Nu Quantum is dedicated to the mission of redefining quantum networking by building infrastructure based on quantum entanglement, with a vision akin to classical scale-out distributed computing. “Looking back at how data centre computing has evolved, we can see how it led to an uncontested preference for the better performance of a scale-out approach over a scale-up approach.” Acra shared.

He added, “Scale-out classical computing has been a huge accelerator of exciting Big Data and AI driven applications. If we pull it off in quantum, we have the potential to bring in the horizon of useful, fault-tolerant quantum computing by several years. That’s a big deal when considering concrete commercial impact.”

Acra also believes Nu Quantum’s QPIs, or Qubit Photon Interfaces, will provide an analogous role in quantum compared to network interface cards in classical systems. As highlighted in a recent announcement, the QPI enables quantum computers to connect to quantum networks by efficiently transferring quantum information between qubits and photons. Using optical microcavities and nanostructured mirrors, the QPI increases entanglement rates while protecting qubit states, making it possible to scale quantum computing infrastructure modularly. Acra commented, “There’s a very striking parallel with classical computing and data centre transformation with what’s going on in the quantum space in terms of networking-based scale-out. You can see strong analogues between network interface cards (NICs) in classical computing and the QPI or Qubit Photon Interface that Nu Quantum is developing – connecting the computing resource to the network.”

Nu Quantum’s CEO, Dr. Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, highlighted the strategic impact of Acra’s guidance in connecting the quantum world to proven scale-out methodologies. “Having Roland’s experience and insight into the scale-out of classical data centres will prove incredibly valuable for us in the next phase of our growth. He has already provided valuable advice and connections and we’re proud he has decided to join us.”