OCTOBER 2005 BROADSHEET - The Future of Computing

For the first event of CETC's new season of meetings, we were pleased to have Andrew Herbert from Microsoft Research, Ian White from Cambridge University and Keith Clarke from ARM UK, speak on the subject of "The Future of Computing". Our speakers covered the interrelated subjects of hardware, communications and software for tomorrow's computers.

Keith opened the event by talking about trends in the silicon industry and their likely impact on Embedded Computing Systems in the future. The silicon industry has for many decades been able to follow the trend of Moore's law to pack ever increasing numbers of transistors onto silicon integrated circuits, allowing the power and speed of digital CPUs to increase to today's levels which dwarf the powers of bigger machines from earlier eras. However Moore's law is becoming costly to follow - semiconductor fabs are becoming increasingly more expensive and are moving out of step with the achievable increases in power. Device sizes of 90nm are proving more difficult to realise than anticipated and the next step to 65nm is expected to prove even more difficult to achieve. Something has to change and Keith explained how processing power increases, would in future be sustained by moving to multiprocessor architectures - more than one processor running in tandem on the same CPU - a step which the large silicon technology suppliers realise is required. However such architectures, long considered to not be necessary, require complex computer management programmes to make them operate, along with fast communications to move data around and between chips and peripheral components.

Ian then took up the story to show how optical communications technology has delivered firstly the capacity to move information around the world, and then around local area networks, as component fabrication costs have plummeted from £10,000 per transmitter to now just $12. Device speeds have also increased massively, such that devices are now available which can run at 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s; moreover multiple wavelengths of light can be multiplexed together to deliver terra-bit/s data speeds through single fibres. With processors operating at 50giga operations/second, and data needing to be moved around computers and across large multiprocessor back-planes, thoughts are turning to using on chip optical interconnects to launch and receive communication signals. Many fabrication challenges remain, with a target of $1 per chip seeming to be the threshold when such technologies may really become attractive. Ian finished his talk by displaying scanning electron micrographs of a simple photonic switching device, able to manipulate parallel light beams in nanoseconds. These will probably be the forerunner of more complex photonic devices which will switch high speed optical data streams around the complex computer architectures of the future.

Andrew was left to take up the challenge of how to use the above connected processing power. He spoke of how computer developments had changed from the mainframe batch processing architectures of the 1970's, to today's technologies where we will soon be able to carry a life-time of data and entertainment around with us. Recognizing the need for parallel processor architectures, operating system vendors are having to dust off historic attempts at developing new languages to run on such systems and this time really do have to come up with new languages and methodologies for the new parallel architectures. This will include multi-threading programmes and much higher level languages that separate the application programmers from the lower level technology in order to make software more robust. Andrew showed how as programmes have become ever more complex, development time has become subsumed by integration and error checking activity, and spoke of how formal methods and auto verification technologies are beginning to assist developers to deliver more robust code.

Andrew Herbert is Managing Director of Microsoft Research Ltd in Cambridge. Originally a PhD student and lecturer in the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, he found his way to Microsoft via running his own research consulting company (APM Ltd), which spun out an Internet start-up (Digitivity) that in turn was acquired by Citrix Systems where he was Director of Advanced Technology. Andrew’s personal interests are in computer operating systems, computer networking and distributed computing. Outside of work he is an enthusiastic week-end pilot.

Microsoft Research Cambridge was founded in 1997 as Microsoft’s first overseas corporate research laboratory and now houses 90 post doctoral researchers with associated support staff, visiting scientists and student interns. The laboratory boasts three Fellows of the Royal Society, Three Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, two fellows of the ACM and two of the BCS. The laboratory conducts research into machine learning and perception; programming principles and tools, computer-mediated living and operating systems and networks. In addition through its External Research Office the laboratory supports work at the boundaries of computing and other fields, particular in computational science, intelligent environments and novel computing paradigms.

Ian White gained his BA and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge, England in 1980 and 1984. He then received academic appointments at Cambridge, became Professor of Physics at Bath and Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Bristol. He returned to the University of Cambridge in October 2001, and is currently Chair of the Council of the School of Technology and Head of the Photonics Research activity in the Engineering Department. His current research interests are in the area of high speed communication systems, local area networks using optical links, ultra fast photonics and photonic components. Ian is currently an editor of Optical and Quantum Electronics and an honorary editor of Electronics Letters. He has published in excess of 400 publications and 20 patents.

The Department of Engineering is the largest department in the University of Cambridge and is one of Europe 's largest integrated engineering departments. The Electrical Division of the department includes the Photonics Research Group comprising Photonics and Sensors, Photonic Communication Systems and Molecular Materials for Photonics and Electronics.

Keith Clarke graduated from Southampton University in 1989 and then spent 3 years designing ASICs for the aerospace industry. Keith has been working at ARM since 1993, initially on ASICs and then was part of the team that developed the ARM7TDMI processor. After working in both the System on Chip and Processor Groups, Keith rose to VP Engineering and in mid 2005 moved to VP Technical Marketing. He is a Chartered Member of the IEE.

ARM develops class leading silicon and software IP and Tools for the world's leading Semi-conductor and Original Equipment Manufacturers. In 2004, ARM's partners shipped over 1 billion ARM microprocessor powered chips used in a multitude of products, including Mobile Phones, Digital Cameras, Automotive Systems, Printers and many more. ARM's 2004 turnover was £152M and has made a profit every year since 1993, 2 years after its creation.