Energy efficient computing and sensing in the Zettabyte era: From silicon to the cloud

In this paper we will present and discuss some of the great research challenges and opportunities related to 21st century energy efficient computing and sensing devices and systems, in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. In the future, major innovations will require holistic approaches encompassing silicon and cloud technologies and will be centered on big/abundant data and context. There is still an important role to be played by innovations in energy efficient technologies, devices, and system design, building on the success of silicon CMOS. The predicted future global amounts of stored, computed, communicated, and sensed information will certainly challenge the world capability to process and make sense of zettabytes of data, requiring orders of magnitude improvements in energy efficiency.