A new report, titled, “Rebooting the IT Revolution: A Call to Action,” produced by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), calls for, “a targeted and coordinated government initiative similar to that which sparked the semiconductor revolution fifty years ago.” Calling this initiative the “National Computing and Insight Technologies Ecosystem initiative,” or N-CITE, the report identifies critical areas where research, particular federally supported research, is needed in order to position the country to enjoy the full benefit of advances in Big Data and the burgeoning “Internet of Things.”

The report is mainly the product of a workshop titled Rebooting the IT Revolution, held in Washington DC on March 30–31 of this year, which brought together experts from industry, government, and academia to explore “leap-ahead IT technologies.” That workshop identified many “critical areas” where research is needed; from energy-efficient sensing and computing, to intelligent storage, to an Internet of Things test platform, there are a total of eight areas. Read the full list in the executive summary of the report on page 2.

The report also makes the point that the country cannot rely on the private sector alone to fund these innovations. Mentioning many important government research initiatives, that are heavily driven by computing and IT research, such as the National Strategic Computing Initiative and the BRAIN initiative, the report states, “near term, product-driven investment by the private sector alone is not sufficient to create the significant advances in IT infrastructure and insight technologies needed for these innovations. Private sector research and development must build upon and connect to government-funded programs.”

The conclusion to this report makes a clear call to action: “The United States needs to adopt and fund an innovation agenda—built upon fundamental research— that creates a new engine to drive the next generations of human experience, economic and societal progress, security and sustainability.”