RCS 2 organizational comments

The following points were discussed by the organizing committee.

Rebooting Computing participants are asked to find future technology options in an expansive way. There is a lot of precedent for identifying technology options that are subjectively or quantitatively better than current technology. However, Rebooting Computing encourages participants to look further. First, the current technology (CMOS, or Moore's Law) will continue to advance for some time. Technology options should be compared against the endpoint of road maps rather than current products. Furthermore, there are multiple radical technologies under consideration. It will be important to see how the forward-looking technologies stack up against each other.


RCS 2 is viewing applications as the driver for technology requirements. The committee is proposing three applications classes:

• Mobile computing
• Learning and reasoning, based on the "executive assistant" from RCS 1
• Servers and supercomputers

The four technology classes being proposed are (in no particular order):

1. Neuromorphic, or brain inspired
2. Incremental improvements on CMOS
3. Adiabatic and Reversible
4. Approximate computing

Many of the combinations of the applications and a technology are currently topic of research:

 

(*NLP = Natural Language Processing; *CNT = Carbon Nanotube; *JJ = Josephson Junction)

The organizing committee discussed the following timeline:

Pre-RCS 2: The blog and website will be seeded with information about Rebooting Computing. Also, some participants will be encouraged to create summary information of technology areas. These will provide context for the program at the RCS 2 event.

At RCS 2: Participants will be encouraged to form groups around self-consistent technology ideas. For example, people advocating a hardware technology in conjunction with people interested in a specific aspect of the applications.

Over summer 2014: Participants will be encouraged to maintain a persistent involvement through the website, blog, e-mail, and personal interactions.

At RCS 3, around October 2014: The goal of this event will be to enable participants to offer "rebooted computing" ideas in forum of people that can appreciate the ideas, including contrasting multiple approaches to computing.