IEEE Rebooting Computing
The Task Force on Rebooting Computing, housed within IEEE Computer Society, is the new home for the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative. Founded in 2013 by the IEEE Future Directions Committee, Rebooting Computing has provided an international, interdisciplinary environment where experts from a wide variety of computer-related fields can come together to explore novel approaches to future computing. IEEE Rebooting Computing began as a global initiative launched by IEEE that proposes to rethink the concept of computing through a holistic look at all aspects of computing, from the device itself to the user interface. As part of its work, IEEE Rebooting Computing provides access to various resources like conferences and educational events, feature and scholarly articles, reports, and videos.
History
IEEE Future Directions Committee established an "IEEE Rebooting Computing" working group in late 2012 with the broad vision of "rebooting" the entire field of computer technology. The activities of this working group are carried out by the IEEE Rebooting Computing Committee, a team of volunteers from ten participating IEEE Societies and Councils, in conjunction with IEEE Future Directions staff members.The term "rebooting computing" was coined by IEEE Life Fellow, Peter Denning, as part of an early U.S. National Science Foundation-sponsored project focused on revamping computer education.
In order to achieve its goal of rebooting computing, IEEE Rebooting Computing hosted four invitation-only summits between 2013 and 2015 in Washington, D.C., and Santa Cruz, California. These summits addressed the future of computing from a holistic point of view.
In 2014, IEEE Rebooting Computing adopted its logo, consisting of an exploding infinity symbol. The logo is intended to suggest the absence of limits for future computing technology.
IEEE Rebooting Computing announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors in March 2015. This led in May 2016 to the formation of the IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems, which incorporated the previous mission of ITRS in semiconductor device fabrication and expanded it to encompass alternative technologies, computer architectures, and system applications.
In September 2015, IEEE Rebooting Computing announced support for the National Strategic Computing Initiative. Established under Executive Order 13072 issued by U.S. President Barack Obama in July 2015, the NSCI calls for a coordinated Federal strategy in high-performance computing research, development, and deployment.
In October 2015, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, an interagency program of the U.S. government, announced a "Nanotechnology-Inspired Grand Challenge in Future Computing". A key document cited by NNI as part of this grand challenge is a white paper, co-sponsored by IEEE Rebooting Computing and ITRS, entitled Sensible Machines.
In 2017, the IEEE New Initiatives Committee renewed the mandate of the Rebooting Computing Initiative, with five major activities: the International Conference on Rebooting Computing, IRDS, the Industry Summit on the Future of Computing, the Low-Power Image Recognition Challenge, and a Workshop on the Confluence of Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity. In 2018, a new activity was added to promote the development of quantum computing.
Purpose
IEEE Rebooting Computing Task Force aims to help return the computing industry to exponential computer-performance scaling, which stalled in 2005 due to energy inefficiencies of CMOS-based classical computers. Historically, computer processing power doubled every 18 months due to increasing densities of transistors per semiconductor unit. To alleviate challenges brought on by limitations in computer architectures and sustain regular processing performance gains, there was a move toward instruction-level parallelism and superscalar microprocessors. However, with rising costs associated with greater power consumption brought on by this approach signaling the end of Moore's Law, IEEE introduced the IEEE Rebooting Computing initiative.Incorporating three fundamental pillars of rebooting computing, including energy efficiency, security, and Human Computer Interface, the initiative seeks to overcome setbacks and challenges relating to the deceleration of computational power and capacity. In turn, these efforts may also be applied in other technology sectors, such as the Internet of Things.
Current work
With the goal of identifying new directions in computing and aiding industry in returning to historical exponential scaling of computer performance, IEEE Rebooting Computing encompasses a variety of activities, products, and services. Among these efforts are an online web portal, technical community, publications, conferences, and events. IEEE Rebooting Computing also maintains a collaborative partnership with IRDS, as well as responding to and participating in national and international initiatives, the NSCI and the "Nanotechnology Inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing".IEEE Rebooting Computing Web Portal
The web portal is the primary online home for IEEE Rebooting Computing. The website provides relevant news, information, and resources to users, such as articles authored by IEEE experts and third-party publications. It also includes access to a list of both IEEE-sponsored and general industry conferences and events, videos, and historical data from IEEE Rebooting Computing's past summits.IEEE Rebooting Computing Podcasts
The web portal also hosts the IEEE Rebooting Computing Podcast, which is a collection of interviews with leaders in the field, updated monthly. This collection is also hosted on the video website IEEE.tv.IEEE Rebooting Computing Technical Community
IEEE Technical Communities are virtual communities for practitioners, subject matter experts, researchers, and other technology professionals interested in specific topic areas. Open to any interested individual, the IEEE Computer Society Rebooting Computing Technical Community serves as a venue for the distribution and dissemination of news, announcements, and other information from those societies and councils taking part in the IEEE Rebooting Computing initiative. An email newsletter is distributed monthly to several thousand community members, and includes free access to specially selected recent articles of interest from the IEEE Xplore library of journals and conference proceedings. IEEE membership is not required to become a member of the IEEE Rebooting Computing Technical Community.IEEE Rebooting Computing conferences and events
IEEE Rebooting Computing sponsors, co-sponsors, and takes part in a variety of technology conferences and events worldwide. Conference and event programming is designed to stimulate discussion of existing and emerging technologies, including challenges, benefits, and opportunities. Typically lasting anywhere from a single day to a week or more, conference and event programming generally encompasses keynote addresses, panel discussions, paper presentations, poster sessions, tutorials, and workshops in one or more tracks.IEEE Rebooting Computing Summits
During its first several years, the initiative's flagship event series was its Rebooting Computing Summits. The inaugural IEEE Rebooting Computing Summit was held in December 2013 in Washington, D.C. The event drew business and industry, government, and academic representatives both from the U.S. and internationally for a variety of plenary lectures and brainstorming sessions.Based on the first event, a second IEEE Rebooting Computing Summit was held in May 2014 in Santa Cruz, California. Following a similar format to the first summit, a group of invited business and trade, academia, and government experts took part in discussing neuromorphic engineering, approximate computing, and adiabatic / reversible computing.
With the first two summits serving as the event's basis, IEEE Rebooting Computing held a third summit in October 2014, in Scotts Valley, California. The theme for the third summit was "Rethinking Structures of Computation", and focused on the topics of parallel computing, security, approximation, and Human-Computer Interaction. As part of the event, attendees took part in plenary talks, a poster session, and heard details of a new government initiative in future computing research.
A fourth IEEE Rebooting Computing Summit, with a theme of "Roadmapping the Future of Computing: Discovering How We May Compute" was held in December 2015, in Washington D.C. The event included plenary talks and breakout groups in the three tracks of "Probabilistic/Approximate Computing", "Neuromorphic Computing", and "Beyond CMOS/3D Computing", with a fourth track on "Superconducting Computing". The summit also hosted speakers from other programs promoting future computing, both governmental and industrial, including DARPA, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, ITRS, NSCI, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Semiconductor Research Corporation.