The following is a guest blog post from CCC Vice Chair and Post Moore’s Law Computing Task Force Chair Mark Hill from University of Wisconsin-Madison and former CCC Chair and Artificial Intelligence Task Force Chair Greg Hager from Johns Hopkins University.  In a recent article, “Chips off the Old Block: Computers Are Taking Cues From Human Brains,” the New York Times highlighted the latest new wave of innovation in computer hardware, the foundation of Information Technology that has so altered our world. Like many generations of innovation before it, these innovations are being driven by the insatiable need for additional computing capacity, in this case due to the new demands of the […]

The following blog was written by CCC Vice Chair Mark D. Hill, with contributions from Sarita Adve and Alvin Lebeck.  As readers of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) blog know, CCC seeks to promote information technology research by exposing and developing synergies among researchers, research beneficiaries, and research funders. CCC does this through visioning activities, white papers, a blog, etc. CCC is pleased to see some of its efforts amplified by specific research communities, e.g., artificial intelligence. Here I highlight my own computer architecture community to encourage you to emulate this amplification in your community. Over the years, CCC has conducted a number of visioning activities related to computer architecture including 2012’s 21st Century Computer Architecture, 2016’s Arch2030: A Vision of Computer Architecture […]

The following is a guest blog post by H.-S. Philip Wong from Stanford University.  I just came back from the exciting 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). I am not a computer architect. So one may wonder why I showed up at this workshop; maybe because it is in Seoul and I am hungry for Korean BBQ? First, I must thank Tom and Luis for inviting me to give the keynote talk at the Workshop. It was a wonderful opportunity for a device technologist like myself to have conversations with computer architects. Device technology research for the […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A key driver behind the amazing progress in computer performance and computer cost-performance has been Moore’s Law (doubling transistors per chip every two years) and Dennard Scaling (doing so at roughly constant power). Many have been warning that there are challenges with both and that new action is need to use transistors more efficiently. See for example the National Academies 2011 report “The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level?” and the Computer Community Consortium 2012 white paper “21st Century Computer Architecture”. Intel has long been a contrarian […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Full disclosure: He had the pleasure of working with one of the authors of the discussed paper—Sarita Adve—on her 1993 Ph.D. Great conundrums include: * Will I drink coffee or tea? * Shall I have cake or ice cream? * Should I use a cache or scratchpad? While most readers will not face the last choice, it is important for saving time and energy in the devices we love by keeping frequently-used information close at hand. Caches are the workhorse of modern computers, feeding the processor with data […]