sTuring up Moore Trouble: Collaborative Design for Sustainable Computing, Processing-in-Memory, and Quantum Computing

Abstract: Since the earliest machines, “computing” has been a collaborative design problem.  Computers are collaborative design between a hardware technology and the need to solve problems that exceed what could be reasonably done by hand.  Only with the establishment of modern computers have developments become more siloed.  But with the ending of Dennard Scaling colloquially referred to as Moore’s Law, many new technologies have been proposed to continue advancement.  In this new ethos, collaborative design and breaking down of silos has become a pre-requisite for more than incremental advancement in computing.  In this talk, I will discuss three recent case studies from my own research that rely on collaborative design.  (1) CORUSCANT and POD-RACING leverage a spintronic Racetrack Memory that utilizes a transverse access along Racetrack nanowires to implement multi-operand bulk-bitwise logic, multi-operand addition, and two operand multiplication for both integer and floating-point arithmetic.  (2) GREENCHIP is a sustainable computer architecture and system design flow that considers the holistic carbon implications of design choices including exotic technologies by examining both embodied and operational carbon.  (3) SNAIL Quantum Architectures leverage the physical properties of a parametric quantum modulator to collaboratively design both the best possible quantum gates and quantum topologies to realize improved Quantum computers.

Bio: Alex K. Jones received the BS degree in 1998 in physics from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, USA, and the MS and PhD degrees in 2000 and 2002, respectively, in ECE from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. He is a Professor of ECE and CS at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He is currently serving as a Program Director at the US NSF in the CNS Division of the CISE Directorate. Dr. Jones' research interests include compilation for configurable systems and architectures, scaled and emerging memory, reliability and fault tolerance, quantum computing, and sustainable computing. He is the author of more than 200 publications in these areas. His research is funded by the NSF, DARPA, NSA, ARO, private foundations, and industry. He is an active member of program committees in the computer architecture, design automation, and sustainable computing areas. He is the steering committee chair for the IEEE International Green and Sustainable Computing Conference, an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computers, and Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems Journal. He is a senior member of the IEEE and the ACM. Alex is also an active musician; he is the principal clarinetist of the Pittsburgh Philharmonic and freelance musician active with both orchestral and chamber music.