Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The approaching end of traditional CMOS technology scaling that up until now followed Moore's law is coming to an end in the next decade. However, the DOE has come to depend on the rapid, predictable, and cheap scaling of computing performance to meet mission needs for scientific theory, large scale experiments, and national security. Moving forward, performance scaling of digital computing will need to originate from energy and cost reductions that are a result of novel architectures, devices, manufacturing technologies, and programming models. The deeper issue presented by these changes is the threat to DOE’s mission and to the future economic growth of the U.S. computing industry and to society as a whole. With the impending end of Moore’s law, it is imperative for the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) to develop a balanced research agenda to assess the viability of novel semiconductor technologies and navigate the ensuing challenges. This report identifies four areas and research directions for ASCR and how each can be used to preserve performance scaling of digital computing beyond exascale and after Moore's law ends.