The White House recently released a blog celebrating the one year anniversary of the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI), which was created to ensure continued U.S. leadership in high-performance computing (HPC). The blog details the important steps various Federal agencies have taken to create the foundation for a long-lasting and successful Federal initiative. A few examples are summarized below. See the White House blog to learn more. The Department of Energy (DOE) has invested in a suite of efforts to continue developing the research base for “Post-Moore’s Law era” computing. These activities include convenings, such as a workshop on neuromorphic computing and a science roundtable with representatives from national laboratories and […]

The following blog post is by CCC Vice Chair and University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Mark D. Hill.  I write about a recent Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB), an operating unit within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, workshop report “Continuing Innovation in Information Technology.” This report updates famous “Tire Tracks” diagram for IT (Figure I.1, P. 5). Literally, “tire tracks” is a dense illustration of how federally-funded university research and industrial research and development (R&D) precede the emergence of large IT industries by decades. On one hand, this diagram shows “old” areas like Personal Computers that exceeded $1G annual revenue in the mid-1980s and then exceeded $10G the early 2000s. On the other hand, it […]

The National Privacy Research Strategy by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program (NITRD) has been released!  The National Privacy Research Strategy calls for research in science and engineering that will enable the U.S. to benefit from innovative data use while protecting privacy. Research agencies from across the government participated in the development of the strategy, reviewing existing Federal research activities in privacy-enhancing technologies, soliciting inputs from the private sector, and identifying priorities for privacy research funded by the Federal Government. In May 2015, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) commissioned members of the privacy research community to generate a short report to help guide strategic […]

The following is a Dear Colleague Letter from the National Science Foundation (NSF).  July 1, 2016 Dear Colleague, Advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) are addressing a wide range of economic and societal challenges. For example, researchers are investigating how advances in learning science and technology can help close the educational achievement gap between children in different income classes and aid non-college-educated workers in gaining new technical skills. Additionally, as the nations technically trained workforce grows, it will need new forms of work including entirely new industries to achieve full employment and social progress. However, identifying effective technology and successfully deploying it broadly remains a challenge. For instance, although individualized […]

The following blog post is by CCC executive council member and University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Mark D. Hill, who was loosely involved in the planning this workshop. I just attend the fantastic Architecture 2030 Visioning Workshop, organized by Luis Ceze of the University of Washington and Thomas Wenisch of the University of Michigan, and partially sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). The workshop was open to the public and was held in conjunction with ISCA’16 in Seoul, South Korea on June 19. It had over 130 attendees and included breakout sessions with five groups. The goal of the Architecture 2030 Workshop was to kick off a new round of visioning activities in a public forum, getting input on where our constituents believe […]

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) just released a Request For Information (RFI) on Artificial Intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer great promise for creating new and innovative products, growing the economy, and advancing national priorities in areas such as education, mental and physical health, addressing climate change, and more. Like any transformative technology, however, AI carries risks and presents complex policy challenges along a number of different fronts. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is interested in developing a view of AI across all sectors for the purpose of recommending directions for research and determining challenges and opportunities in this field. The views of the […]