Emerging Application Domains and the Computing Fabric

Abstract

Computing devices are clearly proliferating in a variety of domains ranging from controlling household appliances, to the cockpits of aircraft. Thus, there is an ever increasing demand for cheap and compact computers intended to perform a few functions, extremely well. Historically, customization has been the answer to this need. However, customization unfortunately implies very high costs—the exacerbated costs limit the scope of proliferation of course. To redress this and thus enable the extraordinary growth-potential of these emerging domains— loosely referred to as embedded systems here—current research in computing is revisiting established and stable technologies ranging from (high-level) programming languages at the software end of the spectrum, to gate-level design and synthesis at the hardware end. A theme that seems to be emerging, is to provide the future application developer with the advantages of customization, at costs approaching currently mass-produced commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software and hardware. Thus, hardware is increasingly being viewed as a flexible fabric, amenable to low-cost customization based on the application developer’s needs and preferences. A goal of this talk is to outline the “point-technologies” that are being innovated to help realize this vision.