SC15 Panel Focus for Nov. 17th

Panel Title: Post Moore's Law Computing: Digital versus Neuromorphic versus Quantum

The end of Moore’s Law scaling has sparked research into preserving performance scaling through alternative computational models. This has sparked a debate for the future of computing. Currently, the future of computing is expected to include a mix of quantum, neuromorphic, and digital computing. However, a range of questions remain unanswered for each option.

For example, what problems each approach is most efficient for remains to be determined, and so are issues such as manufacturability, long-term potential, inherent drawbacks, programming, and many others. Can neuromorphic or quantum ever replace digital computing? Can we find alternative CMOS technologies and clever architectures to preserve digital computing performance scaling? What is the upper limit of CMOS?

This is a critical debate for a wide audience, because solving many of tomorrow’s problems requires a reasonable expectation of what tomorrow looks like.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• George Michelogiannakis (Moderator) - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• John Shalf - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Bob Lucas - University of Southern California
• Jun Sawada - IBM Corporation
• Mattias Troyer - ETH Zurich
• David Donofrio - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• Shekhar Bokhar - Intel Corporation

Panel Title: Future of Memory Technology for Exascale and Beyond III

Memory technology is in the midst of profound change as we move into the exascale era. Early analysis, including the DARPA UHPC Exascale Report correctly identified the fundamental technology problem as one of enabling low-energy data movement throughout the system.

However, the end of Dennard Scaling and the corresponding impact on Moore’s Law has begun a fundamental transition in the relationship between the processor and memory system. The lag in the increase in the number of cores compared to what Moore’s Law would provide has proven a harbinger of the trend towards memory systems performance dominating compute capability.

Moderator/Panelist Details:

• Richard Murphy (Moderator) - Micron Technology, Inc.
• Shekhar Borkar - Intel Corporation
• Bill Dally - NVIDIA Corporation
• Wendy Elasser - ARM Ltd.
• Mike Ignatowski - Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
• Doug Joseph - IBM Corporation
• Peter Kogge - University of Notre Dame
• Steve Wallach - Micron Technology, Inc.