Title: 21st Century Computer Architecture: Efficient Computation with Heterogeneous Architectures Speaker: Prof. Dionisios Pnevmatikatos (ECE, TUC) Τίτλος: Η Αρχιτεκτονική Υπολογιστών στον 21ο αιώνα: Αποδοτικοί υπολογισμοί με ετερογενείς αρχιτεκτονικές Ομιλητής: Καθ. Διονύσης Πνευματικάτος (ΗΜΜΥ, ΠΚ) Abstract Microprocessors have been around for more than 40 years; it has been a tremendous ride in many respects: performance, complexity, size are a few. Innovation and technological advancements -despite restrictions- led to steady improvements, a progress that led to today's proliferation and abundance of processing devices. Having reached a plateau in operating frequency, the increasing device size further restricts the power budget for computation, making efficiency a prime requirement fo any type of processing. In this talk I will give a short overview of processor history, and indicate how and to what extend heterogeneity has been already exploited hidden from the user/programmer. Then I will focus on heterogeneous processing architectures and customized computing. A typical example of this approach are desktop-type CPU+GPU systems, but this is just the beginning. Another driving force are cell-phone processors, which are highly integrated and heterogeneous systems. Cell-phone processor volume is exploding to over one billion devices annually and they may well shape future processor development. I will also discuss other promising types of heterogeneity, as well as the barriers to the adoption of heterogeneity and how can we overcome them.

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