  It is demonstrated that in gate-based quantum computing architectures quantum
walk is a natural mathematical description of quantum gates. It originates from
field-matter interaction driving the system, but is not attached to specific
qubit designs and can be formulated for very general field-matter interactions.
It is shown that, most generally, gates are described by a set of coined
quantum walks. Rotating wave and resonant approximations for field-matter
interaction simplify the walks, factorizing the coin, and leading to pure
continuous time quantum walk description. The walks reside on a graph formed by
the Hilbert space of all involved qubits and auxiliary states, if present.
Physical interactions between different parts of the system necessary to
propagate entanglement through such graph -- quantum network -- enter via
reduction of symmetries in graph edges. Description for several single- and
two-qubit gates are given as examples.
