Molecular Architecture Workshop

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

The primary objective of this workshop was to bring together some of the leading experts in complex silicon-level microsystems with key leaders from the molecular devices community to provide some initial thoughts on how to develop future answers to the following questions: - How can molecular level interactions driving such systems be expressed in more abstract ways, how can these abstractions be translated into "primitive" building blocks, and how should modeling and design tools be built to emphasize such interactions? - How does one develop new design strategies for combining such primitive building blocks into larger functional subsystems and then scale into even larger molecular systems, what might some of these design strategies entail, and what might be lifted from our experiences with silicon? - What needs to surround a new technology to allow it to scale into complete, designable, complex sys-tems that can communicate with the outside, including legacy technologies such as silicon? - What are long term potentials for such technologies, as seen by complex system architects? - Where can they help solve bottlenecks that exist in current silicon technology microsystems? - Are there new models of computation or system design for which these new technologies are particu-larly well suited? Given that the bulk of the attendees were primarily architects of computational silicon microsystems, a second objective of the workshop was to re-energize the computer architecture community to develop alter-native or mixed models of computation, new microarchitectural techniques, design tools and approaches for both the new technologies, mixes of old and new, and even port back into silicon. A final objective was to help both the system architecture and the new technology communities begin to develop the dialogs necessary to advance such technologies in a timely manner, and maximize the Government's investments in new programs such as NSF's Molecular Architecture Initiative.