Rethinking computer architecture for throughput computing

Abstract

Summary form only given. The rise of rich media in mobile devices and massive analytics in data centers has created new opportunities and challenges for computer architects. On one hand, commercial computer organizations have been undergoing fast transformation to drastically increase the throughput of processing large amounts of data while keeping the power consumption in check. On the other hand, computer architecture has evolved too slowly to facilitate hardware innovations, software productivity, algorithm advancement and user perceived improvements. In this talk, I will present some major challenges facing the computer architecture research community and some recent advancements in throughput computing. I will conclude by arguing that we must rethink the scope of computer architecture research as we seek to create growth paths for the computer systems industry.