Nonsilicon, Non-von Neumann Computing—Part I [Scanning the Issue]

The future of computing is at crossroads. The technological advances that have sustained the exponential growth of computing performance over the last several decades are slowing and the roadmap for future advances is uncertain. The phenomenal expansion of computing power has made computers ubiquitous, spawned a $300 billion semiconductor industry, enabled unprecedented global economic growth, and transformed many aspects of society at large. Emerging technologies are placing an ever-growing and changing demand on computing, especially the profusion of data from the Internet of Things, large-scale scientific experiments (high-energy physics, astronomy, and genomics), autonomous vehicles, social media (including video), national security systems, and the finance sector. Transmitting, storing, processing, and analyzing this data explosion with the requisite speed and performance—and enabling significant processing and analysis to occur locally or at network nodes (i.e., edge computing)—may require a radical departure from the traditional computing paradigm of von Neumann computing architectures running on CMOS-based digital logic. New paradigms will likely require a range of new devices, software, design and simulation tools, and benchmarking, and may ultimately require rethinking the tasks that computing machines undertake. Recently, government, industry, and academia collectively have recognized that the future of computing requires a new, multidisciplinary research and development agenda.