Advancing Computing's Foundation of US Industry & Society

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the need for new computing approaches beyond Moore's Law to sustain IT's transformative impact on US society, especially in AI, medicine, and industry, amid the end of traditional hardware scaling.

Contribution

It advocates for a multipronged effort to develop innovative computing methods beyond Moore's Law to support future AI and societal advancements.

Findings

Highlighting the importance of hardware-software synergy in AI progress

Identifying the end of Moore's Law as a challenge for future computing

Proposing a strategic approach for next-generation computing development

Abstract

While past information technology (IT) advances have transformed society, future advances hold even greater promise. For example, we have only just begun to reap the changes from artificial intelligence (AI), especially machine learning (ML). Underlying IT's impact are the dramatic improvements in computer hardware, which deliver performance that unlock new capabilities. For example, recent successes in AI/ML required the synergy of improved algorithms and hardware architectures (e.g., general-purpose graphics processing units). However, unlike in the 20th Century and early 2000s, tomorrow's performance aspirations must be achieved without continued semiconductor scaling formerly provided by Moore's Law and Dennard Scaling. How will one deliver the next 100x improvement in capability at similar or less cost to enable great value? Can we make the next AI leap without 100x better hardware? This whitepaper argues for a multipronged effort to develop new computing approaches beyond Moore's Law to advance the foundation that computing provides to US industry, education, medicine, science, and government. This impact extends far beyond the IT industry itself, as IT is now central for providing value across society, for example in semi-autonomous vehicles, tele-education, health wearables, viral analysis, and efficient administration. Herein we draw upon considerable visioning work by CRA's Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative (IEEE RCI), enabled by thought leader input from industry, academia, and the US government.