Workshop: Interdisciplinary Challenges beyond the Scaling Limits of Moore's Law. To Be Held in Arlington, VA, August 2-4, 2010.

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The NSF Workshop on "Interdisciplinary Challenges beyond the Scaling Limits of Moore's Law" is organized to explore the scientific issues and technological challenges beyond the scaling limits of Moore's Law with the goal of positioning the U.S. at the forefront of Communications and Computation technologies beyond the physical and conceptual limits of current systems. In accordance with the Moore's Law empirical observation, until recently device integration levels have continued to expand exponentially, and as a result, so has computation power. However, it is now well accepted that current approaches will reach their limits in next 10 years due to a confluence of both fundamental and practical limitations. Continuing evolution of electronics beyond the scaling limits of Moore's Law is likely to require a broader re-thinking, ranging from novel materials and devices, to circuit and system architectures so that new insights can be employed in computation and knowledge processing technologies. Current technologies already provide examples of energy-efficient systems which have evolved for diverse tasks such as embedded approaches in cell phones or specialized task-specific technologies such as in e-readers. The workshop will explore the overcoming of current barriers by fostering interdisciplinary debate and dialog. The workshop will bring together experts from academia, government, and industry in the fields of life sciences, chemistry, physics, mathematics, materials science, engineering, and computer science to discuss new computational devices and new approaches to computation as well as ways to extend progress in current devices and systems. Some broad questions to be addressed will include the future of terascale devices, strategies to minimize energy utilization, novel materials and devices to overcome the voltage-scaling limitation of existing device technology, and new approaches to reliability based on self-healing and programming. Promising directions are expected to include interdisciplinary merging of architectures, algorithms, materials and devices, and signaling approaches for specific applications. The premise is that a coherent engineering where synergistic approaches draw on diverse insights from electrosciences, materials sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, and computer science, will be necessary. An objective of the workshop is to identify promising insights and directions that project solutions for electronics in the decade of the 2020's. Invited speakers will highlight insights and challenges from their disciplinary perspectives and will attempt to answer questions posed to them beforehand. The breakout sessions will focus on defining the most important topics for future research. The discussion will also bring out opportunities and necessary changes in education as the complexity of large scale integrated electronics demands greater interdisciplinary knowledge. The workshop will include presentations by leading practitioners in the fields of semiconductor devices and computer architectures, and by scientists working in the areas of physics, chemistry, mathematics, materials science, molecular electronics and nanoscale systems. The report of this workshop will detail important challenges, fundamental and technological, that are likely to be at the forefront of this field for many years to come. The workshop will be held at the Westin Arlington Gateway Hotel, Arlington, Virginia on August 2-4, 2010. It is expected that the workshop will identify the technological challenges and research opportunities for NSF and the scientific community. The proceedings of the workshop and the list of recommendations will be made available to all participants of the workshop, NSF, other government scientists, industry and policymakers. The intellectual merit of the workshop is in the vigorous debate and discussion that will be fostered and the identification of fruitful and compelling directions that allow electronics and computation to advance even as electronic device dimensions reach their nanoscale limits. The broader outcome of the workshop is in the identification of the interdisciplinary directions and the related educational approaches that are likely to be most suitable in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum.