Theme
What is the future of computation beyond the end of the current roadmap for CMOS microprocessors? CMOS is expected to improve in performance by some 100X before reaching maturity. What comes next? The workshop's applications experts will describe problems requiring supercomputers as well as applications for smaller computers that are equally challenging of the technology. However, we will see that these applications are not simple extensions of those in use today, but shift in focus towards computations best fitted to future technology. What are the technology options for computers to drive these applications? While CMOS is destined to mature, proponents of other nanotech devices will show they are eager to take the lead. However, other experts will show that the physics of computation imposes limits that are independent of specific devices. While physics imposes no known upper limit on the computational power of a computer, to proceed much beyond the current roadmap will require new ways of thinking about computation, programming, software, and logic.
Topics
| Applications demanding computer power beyond the limits of CMOS | Device-independent physical limits and how to circumvent them |
| Industry's CMOS roadmap and its endgame | Programming methods for the new technologies |
| Beyond CMOS nanotechnology logic and memory devices | Architectures and operating systems applicable to the new technologies |
Format
Each workshop begins Sunday evening and runs through Thursday lunch, featuring presentations by key contributors to the field in intermixed with working sessions to create a group consensus of promising future directions. The workshop will produce a report suitable for use by decision makers and technologists.
History
This workshop's history dates to two major workshops in the 1990s on the then far-out concept of a "Petaflops" computer. Since Petascale computers are now imminent, the organizers have raised the horizon a million fold and renamed the series around the "Zettaflops" theme. This will be the second major Zettaflops workshop and is documented on the Web at http://www.zettaflops.org.