• 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.
• New faster parallel optimization algorithm implemented on FPGAs and GPUs - Toshiba sees applications to financial engineering.
• New project on DNA-based memory technology - Collaboration between Georgia Tech, Microsoft, University of Washington, and others.

Non-Silicon, Non-von-Neumann Computing – Part II

Access the overview by Sankar Basu, Randal Bryant, Giovanni de Micheli, Thomas Theis, and Lloyd Whitman in Proceedings of the IEEE, August 2020

The editors of the special issue are from the US National Science Foundation, Carnegie Mellon University, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and IBM.

This special issue is a continuation of new research articles on novel computer architectures and devices that was first introduced in a January 2019 special issue.

This is a very broad field, as reflected in the selection of articles included.

This includes articles on error correction in systems of unreliable devices, field programmable analog arrays, spintronic memories, spin-based stochastic logic, deep learning with photonic devices, and quantum computing in noisy systems.

While most of these systems are still in the research stage, and indeed, some may never prove to be practical, they illustrate some of the wide range of technologies that may be applied to non-silicon, non-von-Neumann processors in the next several decades.

Brain-Inspired Computing
Catherine Schuman, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

At the MIT Technology Review Symposium on Future Compute, held in Dec. 2019 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Schuman provided an overview of Brain-Inspired Computing, also known as Neuromorphic Computing.

Biological brains consist of arrays of neurons connected by synapses, with massive parallelism and distributed logic and memory. Early inspiration by the structure of the brain gave rise to the now established field of artificial neural networks (ANNs), which are being widely applied to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Dr, Schuman contrasted these ANNs with networks that emulate brains somewhat more closely, by including spiking neurons that are extremely low in power. These newer systems may have application to AI in mobile edge systems, where power limitation is more critical. Similar systems may also be applied to simulation of biological brains.

Access the video of Dr. Schuman's talk at the MIT Future Compute website.

This Symposium also included many other talks covering the field of future computing, from AI to quantum computing. Access the agenda and the videos for most of these talks at the MIT Future Compute website.

• 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)