• US Government Announces New Research Centers in AI and QC - $1B in government labs and universities funded by National Science Foundation and Dept. of Energy.
• Newsletter of IEEE Electron Devices Society features new IRDS™ Roadmap - Provides history of earlier semiconductor roadmaps and an overview of the latest roadmap.
• US Government funds 3 academic-based institutes on quantum information - $75M over five years going to research based at the University of Colorado, University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Illinois.
• Chip Proposals Seek to Revive US Manufacturing - US Congress proposes aid to advance US semiconductor industry.
• CCC Report on Embedded Security Research - Conclusions of Computing Community Consortium Workshop on Embedded Security in Connected Devices.
• DARPA Kicks Off Program in Quantum Computing - University-industry teams will investigate hybrid classical-quantum optimization algorithms.
• RAND Study Advocates Post-Quantum Cryptography - New report proposes development of communication security protocols that are more resistant against future quantum computers.
• Silicon Spin Qubits Demonstrated - Researchers fabricate silicon quantum dots that can operate at temperatures above 1 K.
• DoE issues report on AI for Science - Argonne National Laboratory summarizes town hall meetings on AI, big data, and high performance computing in the next decade.
• Roadmap for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors - IEEE Power Electronics Society releases Roadmap on development of ICs of GaN and SiC for high-power applications.

IRDS™ Executive Summary: Industry Highlights

The International Roadmap for Devices and Systems™ recently released its 2020 edition. This includes 10 topical reports from the International Focus Teams, two White Papers (on “More Than Moore” and “Packaging Integration”), and an Executive Summary.

Any or all of these documents can be downloaded from the IRDS™ Portal. One must register as a member of the IEEE IRDS™ Technical Community, but there is no charge for this registration.

The Executive Summary is an extended overview of the entire roadmap, totaling 60 pages. This also includes a shorter introduction, Section 1.1 on Industry Highlights and Key Messages. This is a new Roadmap section that provides a list of 23 Key Messages about the present and future of the worldwide semiconductor industry, illustrated with a similar number of graphs and figures. Among the key messages are the following:

1) Despite all the predictions that Moore’s Law is ending, the number of transistors per die continues to grow exponentially, due in part to expansion into the 3rd dimension. This trend is likely to continue for at least another 10 years.

2) Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications have become the key drivers for chip and system advanced development, and these are moving from data centers out to edge devices.

3) The semiconductor industry continues to grow strongly, with increases in both edge devices (smart phones and sensors) and data centers.

4) New logic and memory devices with improved performance for future systems are being developed.

5) Quantum computing remains in the research stage, with product manufacturing at least 10 years away.

“No Transistor Left Behind”
Raja Koduri, VP, Intel

Hot Chips is an annual IEEE Symposium on High-Performance Chips usually held in San Francisco, CA, USA in August. This year, due to COVID-19, it was held as a Virtual Conference. Access the Program at the Hot Chips website.

One of the Keynotes was presented by Raja M. Koduri, Senior Vice President, Chief Architect, and General Manager of Architecture, Graphics, and Software at Intel. The video of his presentation is available, and an overview is available at The Next Platform.

The title was “No Transistor Left Behind,” which presented a review and prospect of the computer industry, focusing on how more efficient usage of transistor resources can bring about major improvement in performance, going far beyond the improvement in the transistors themselves. This will require extensive hardware-software co-design throughout the entire industry.

The talk started with a brief tribute to the late Frances Allen, a pioneering computer scientist who developed some of the first compilers.

Mr. Koduri went on to review past development of computer hardware and software, and implications for the future. Each period was characterized by a dominant set of computer applications. Earlier there was the PC era, followed more recently with the Mobile and Cloud era. We are now entering the Intelligence era, characterized by massive growth of data, which can only be handled by AI systems. The demand for processing is rising exponentially, going up by a factor of 1000 by 2025. This will require both general-purpose and specialized processors, enabling exascale performance that goes beyond supercomputers in data centers. This will require a new contract between hardware and software developers.

• Rebooting Computing Video Overview
• IEEE Future Directions
• IEEE Future Directions Blog
• Computing in Science and Engineering on the End of Moore's Law
• IEEE Journal of Exploratory Solid-State Computational Devices and Circuits (JXCDC)
• Arch2030 Workshop Report (PDF, 948 KB)
• Workshop on Neuromorphic Computing
• Workshop on Beyond CMOS Technology
• Update on National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI)
• RC White Paper on Nanocomputers
• IEEE Computer Magazine on Rebooting Computing
• RC-ITRS Report on the Foundation of the New Computer Industry Beyond 2020 (PDF, 947 KB)