The Magazine of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu July 2017 - 18

FEATURE
directions are not clear. Furthermore, this requires a
review of the entire computing stack, including both
hardware and software, from the nanoscale transistors
to the megascale supercomputers. Rather than
embedding such a project within a single company or
a single government program, this requires input from
leaders in a wide range of specialties, across industry,
academia, and government. Only the IEEE has the full
range of expertise to address this, through IEEE Future
Directions, which has created ten new inter-society
initiatives to address major trends in future technology.
One of these is the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative
(RCI), which now has 10 participating IEEE societies and
councils as well as the IEEE Standards Association (see
Fig. 2). RCI was co-founded and originally co-chaired
by Tom Conte, former president of IEEE Computer
Society, and Elie Track, former president of IEEE Council
on Superconductivity. The logo of RCI is an exploding
infinity (see Fig. 3a), suggesting the lack of future limits.
An overview video on RCI is available online, as well as
an introductory video from the presentation on this topic
made to the 2016 HKN Student Leadership Conference.
While we cannot predict the future, we can create a
roadmap to guide the development of future computing.

A key part of the RCI effort is the International Roadmap
for Devices and Systems (IRDS), a new organization of
volunteers from industry, academia, and governments,
which operates under the IEEE Standards Association, as
part of the Industry Connections Program (see logo in
Fig. 3b). The IRDS follows in the tradition of the earlier
International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors
(ITRS), which guided the semiconductor industry
through the Moore's Law era. IRDS is somewhat broader
than ITRS, and includes systems, applications, and
alternative technologies, as well as the traditional focus
on transistor scaling.
RCI has been sponsoring workshops and conferences
for several years. The videos from the 2016 inaugural
IEEE International Conference on Rebooting Computing
(ICRC) last fall in San Diego are available from IEEE.
tv. In November 2017, RCI is sponsoring "Rebooting
Computing Week" in Washington DC, consisting of an
IRDS Workshop, ICRC-2017, and a new Industry Summit
on Future Computing.
There have been several feature magazine issues related
to Rebooting Computing. These include the December
2015 issue of Computer Magazine [3] (also available

Fig. 2. 10 constituent IEEE Societies and the IEEE Standards Association in the Rebooting Computing Initiative.

Fig. 3. Logos of IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative and IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems (IRDS)
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Magazine of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu July 2017