2022 NSF Workshop on
Redefining the Future of Computer Architecture
from First Principles

March 23-24, 2022, Virtual Workshop
Due to the travel constraints imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the workshop will be held online at the end of March 2022, and participation in the workshop will be by invitation only.

Workshop Introduction

The Workshop on Redefining the Future of Computer Architecture from First Principles (Arch-1) will provide a forum for leading experts in the relevant research thrusts of computer architecture, specifically architecture, compiler, operating systems, software stack, system integration, and applications to brainstorm the latest research progress and discuss their visions of redefining the future of computer architecture in the next 10-15 years.

Arch-1 is a workshop specially designed for Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) community. We hope this workshop can help the community to brainstorm and identify the grand challenges of modern computer architecture designs that are introduced by the advances of the computing paradigm, computing devices, and computing applications, and discuss the possible disruptive technologies that could reform the architecture at various abstraction levels or even break the boundaries between these levels that correspond to the conventional partition of the system stack.

The workshop will produce no proceedings, but it will produce some publicly accessible videos on the presentations and a final report to summarize the important outcomes from the workshop for the community to review and refer to.

Workshop Organization

Taking into consideration the current situation of COVID-19 pandemic, the Organizing Committees decided to host Arch-1 workshop online on Mar. 23 and 24. The workshop is mainly structured as Expert Panels, Group Discussions, and Poster Sessions to synthesize the overall theme and provide an opportunity for attendees to participate in the discussion and a study session that outlines the workshop report.

Two scholars in the field: Prof. Yiran Chen from Duke University and Prof. Brandon Lucia from Carnegie Mellon University, will serve as the organizers of the Arch-1. Specifically, the workshop will be divided into four thrust areas: Applications, Architectures, Software, and Systems led by four leading experts. The thrust leaders will invite speakers and panelists to present their views on the grand challenges in each thrust area and the various potential ways to tackle them. For each thrust, the workshop will organize dedicated discussion sessions for all the attendees to brainstorm the latest research progress and discuss their visions of the critical challenges that need to be addressed in the near future.

A DARPA/SRC-sponsored, CMU-developed web-based Virtual Reality (VR) environment: ARENA will be used to host the poster session. We encourage participants to select a student to create a poster about existing or future work to present in this poster session.

Call for Participation

The online workshop is not open to the public. Despite invited speakers and panelists, all other researchers in the field are encouraged to submit position papers through the online application system with a white paper. The organizers will select a few position papers and invite the authors to participate in the workshop, together with other invited participants. The approved applicants are expected to participate in the online workshop via Zoom. Besides participating as audiences in the expert panels, selected applicants will be invited to present a lightning talk during the round table session. The participants are also encouraged to select a student to submit a poster about existing or future work through the poster submission system to present in the poster session.

Through this workshop, the audiences are expected to learn about the latest research progress and to discuss their vision of the critical challenges that need to be addressed in the near future.


For more details regarding whitepaper/poster submission, selection criterion, and work reporting, please refer to the dedicated webpage.

Partnering Institution

National Science Foundation, VA, USA

Duke University, NC, USA

Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA