The HiPEAC Vision 2019

The current surge of attention around artificial intelligence will hopefully lead to seeking solutions that help increase efficiency, quality and designer productivity for both hardware and software, despite the massively increasing complexity of modern ICT systems. This very much correlates with the “keep it simple for humans, and let the computer do the hard work” element of the 2009 HiPEAC Vision. Intelligent or more “cognitive” solutions need to be developed at the edge (in what will give rise to connected cognitive cyber-physical systems) for safety, privacy and efficiency reasons. Efficiency, particularly energy efficiency, is still a key challenge that will lead to increasing heterogeneity in hardware, with the “classical” silicon processor acting more as an orchestrator of various accelerators, using various technologies (GPU, neuromorphic, quantum computing, and so on). However, there is still no credible “successor” of silicon on the horizon. Software, applications and infrastructures will increasingly be aggregates of heterogeneous artefacts, including legacy ones, with a variety of deployment requirements. Software will be distributed, becoming a “continuum of computing” across platforms and devices. Programming has to be reinvented for this, with languages and tools to orchestrate collaborative distributed and decentralized components, as well as components augmented with interface contracts covering both functional and non-functional properties. To successfully be accepted, our ICT systems should inspire trust in their users, so they should ensure security, privacy and safety, hardening against cyber-attacks. Therefore, the HiPEAC 2019 recommendations for Europe are: • Accelerate, accelerate, specialize and automate • Develop alternative architectures • Build computers we can trust • Get looking for CMOS alternatives • Treat the computing infrastructure as a continuum • Shift value towards the edge • Lead on the use of collective data • Become a leader in energy-efficient sustainable electronics • Invest in the future workforce • Develop a robust digital ethics framework.