Over the course of 2010-2012, the computer architecture research community, with the support of the Computer Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC), carried out a series of visioning exercises to articulate how architectural innovation will continue to impact computing systems and society at large, identify new challenges and opportunities for architecture research, and provide guidance to funding agencies on critical priorities within our discipline and how architecture innovation can further other agency objectives. These visioning activities lead to several highly influential reports, including the National Academy report The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level? (2011) and the CCC community whitepaper 21st Century Computer Architecture (2012). These community-driven efforts contributed to the establishment of funding programs and new major research efforts.

A key theme of these reports was the observation that Dennard Scaling is no longer viable. As a result, architectural innovation, rather than semiconductor technology improvement, will be the key driver of continued advancement in the capability of computer systems. Several years have past since the conclusion of these visioning activities. As we embark upon the post-Dennard era and look towards a post-CMOS life, new themes and priorities are ascendant in the architecture research community. As our field rapidly evolves, we believe it is time to initiate a new community effort to (1) identify the architectural challenges and opportunities of the next fifteen years and (2) reiterate and emphasize the criticality of architecture research to the future of computing to the agencies and companies that support computing research.

The goal of this first Architecture 2030 Workshop was to kick off a new round of visioning activities in a public forum, on where our constituents believe the field is headed, what challenges and opportunities exist, and how we can continue to communicate our impact beyond our discipline. The workshop was mostly discussion based, with breakout sessions and report-outs. The workshop was Sunday, June 19th, 2016.