Meeting Summary: Approximately 5% of current US energy consumption is used just to run computers. Similarly, its energy bill accounts for a large fraction of the lifetime budget of a modern high-performance computing center. Improving the energy efficiency of current and near-future computers is thus crucial to reducing energy usage and associated environmental and economic costs. It is also crucial for the development of next-generation exascale computers and beyond, where one of the major obstacles is how to build the computers so that they do not melt (as computers at such scale would if built using current computational devices).
In addition, recent developments in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics have greatly expanded our understanding of the surprisingly rich and varied thermodynamic attributes of computation. Therefore the time is ripe for a new synthesis between physics, theory of computing, and computer engineering to make great strides in energy-efficient computing.
To begin to develop this synthesis, we propose to bring together researchers from multiple fields at the Santa Fe Institute for two-and-a-half days to foster development of a new synthesis of thermodynamics and computation. Participants are anticipated from the fields of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, theoretical computer science, and those in computer engineering focused on energy-efficient computing.
Agenda
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
11:00 Hotel Santa Fe Shuttle departs hotel to Santa Fe Institute
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Intro to the workshop (by the organizers)
2:00 Christian van den Broeck (University of Hasselt)
Tutorial: Non-equilibrium Statistical Physics
3:00 Tea
3:15 John Doyle (California Institute of Technology)
4:00 David Doty (University of California, Davis)
5:00 Hotel Santa Fe Shuttle departs Santa Fe Institute back to hotel
6:30 Dinner for both workshops at hotel Kiva A & B
Thursday, August 17, 2017
8:00 Hotel Santa Fe Shuttle departs hotel to Santa Fe Institute
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Virginia Vassilevska Williams (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
10:00 Coffee break
10:30 David Wolpert (Santa Fe Institute)
11:30 Discussion
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Peter Duben (European Weather Centre, ECMWF)
1:30 Krishna Palem (Rice University)
2:30 Martin Rinard (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
3:00 Tea
3:15 Break-out session
3:45 Report back from break-outs + discuss
5:00 Hotel Santa Fe Shuttle departs Santa Fe Institute back to hotel
Friday, August 18, 2017
8:00 Hotel Santa Fe Shuttle departs hotel to Santa Fe Institute
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Michael Frank (Sandia National Lab)
10:00 Jayson Lynch (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
10:45 Coffee break
11:00 Bruno Loff (University of Porto)
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Artemy Kolchinsky (Santa Fe Institute)
1:45 Jim Crutchfield (University of California, Davis)
2:30 Massimiliano Esposito (University of Luxembourg)
3:15 Tea
3:30 Karpur Shukla (Carnegie Mellon University)
Closing discussion
5:00 Hotel Santa Fe Shuttle departs Santa Fe Institute back to hotel