The workshop / tutorial portion of ISCA 2026 begins!
View the the workshops / tutorials program. Please visit the respective webpage of a workshop/tutorial for its detailed schedule.
The workshop / tutorial portion of ISCA 2026 continues!
View the the workshops / tutorials program. Please visit the respective webpage of a workshop/tutorial for its detailed schedule.
For decades, the computing industry advanced along relatively predictable trajectories: Moore's Law, Dennard scaling, increasing abstraction, and the steady expansion of general-purpose computing. But many of the assumptions that shaped computer architecture over the last thirty years are now being challenged simultaneously. This keynote will reflect on several of the key trajectories that brought the industry to this moment, examine the forces driving today's transition, and explore what may define the next era of computing. It will also consider how changing economic realities, ecosystem dynamics, and leadership transitions are influencing innovation across the industry. At a time when long-standing assumptions are being reconsidered across the computing stack, the role of the computer architecture community has never been more important. The next era of computing will be shaped not only by new technologies, but by the architectural choices, research directions, and leadership decisions being made today.
Debbie Marr is the CEO and Co-Founder of AheadComputing. AheadComputing, founded in July 2024, aims to create breakthrough 64-bit RISC-V application processors. Prior to AheadComputing, Debbie was an Intel Fellow at Intel where she spent 30+ years leading CPU research and development for CPUs from the 386SL to Intel's current leading-edge products. Debbie was the server architect of Intel® Pentium™ Pro, Intel's first Xeon Processor. She brought Intel Hyperthreading Technology from concept to product on the Pentium 4 Processor. She was the chief architect of the 4th Generation Intel Core™ (Haswell) and led advanced research and development for Intel's Core/Xeon CPUs. Debbie also spent 7 years in Intel Labs as the Director of Accelerator Architecture Lab where she led research in machine learning and acceleration techniques for CPU, GPU, FPGA, and AI Accelerators. Debbie published over 30 papers, and over 40 patents in many aspects of CPU, AI accelerators, and FPGA architecture/microarchitecture. Debbie has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from University of Michigan, an MS in electrical engineering and computer science from Cornell University, and a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Quantum computing technologies have advanced dramatically in the past decade. With fault-tolerant machines on the horizon and near-term machines showing improved applications through integration with classical high-performance computing, the future is clear: computing will be heterogeneous and accelerator-based. Much work remains to be done to achieve this vision. Architects are needed to bridge the gap between theory and physical technologies. A systems view will be essential in the design of applications, software, error-correction protocols, workflow management, and machine organization. In this dialog, we will discuss these design challenges and how techniques from the architecture community can help address them.
Fred Chong is the Seymour Goodman Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and the Chief Scientist for Quantum Software at Infleqtion. He was the Lead Principal Investigator for the EPiQC Project (Enabling Practical-scale Quantum Computing), an NSF Expedition in Computing from 2018-2024. Chong was a member of the National Quantum Advisory Committee (NQIAC) from 2020-2025, which provided advice to the President on the National Quantum Initiative Program. In 2020, he co-founded Super.tech, a quantum software company, which was acquired by Infleqtion (formerly ColdQuanta) in 2022.
Chong received his Ph.D. in EECS from MIT in 1996 and was a faculty member and Chancellor's fellow at UC Davis from 1997-2005. He was also a Professor of Computer Science, Director of Computer Engineering, and Director of the Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing at UCSB from 2005-2015. He is a fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, and 17 best paper awards. He is also a recipient of the Quantrell Award, the oldest undergraduate teaching award in the United States, as well as the University of Chicago's Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Award.
Dr. Jay M. Gambetta is Director of Research and IBM Fellow. In this role, he leads the company's global research initiatives, spearheading the company's strategy and vision to develop the future of computing, which includes artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and quantum computing.
Previously, Jay served as Vice President of IBM Quantum and was named an IBM Fellow in 2018 for his leadership in advancing superconducting quantum computing and establishing IBM's quantum strategy to bring quantum computing to the world. Jay has been at the forefront of quantum information science for over two decades, pioneering both the theoretical foundations and practical engineering of quantum systems.
Under his direction, IBM was first to demonstrate a cloud-based quantum computing platform, which has since grown into the world's most widely used quantum computing service. He also spearheaded the development of Qiskit, the preeminent open-source quantum software development kit, enabling a global community to build, optimize, and execute quantum circuits on multiple hardware platforms. Jay's vision has shaped IBM's quantum roadmap and fostered a thriving ecosystem with more than 600,000 registered users, over 3 trillion quantum circuits executed, and a network of 280+ academic, industry, and government partners.
With more than 130 scientific publications and 50,000+ citations, his research has advanced quantum error correction, superconducting qubits, quantum algorithms, and scalable quantum architecture. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Physical Society (APS). Jay received his Ph.D. in Physics from Griffith University in Australia.
Abstract
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Bio
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AI is pushing cloud infrastructure toward an energy wall, where demand for compute is growing faster than the industry can sustainably provision power, cooling, and datacenter capacity. At the same time, in the post-Moore era, gains in silicon density and energy efficiency have fallen far short of what is needed to keep pace with AI's compute demand. This keynote challenges the long-standing assumption that single-thread performance should dominate server design and operation. I argue that moving beyond the AI energy wall requires full-stack optimization across hardware, systems, workloads, and operating constraints—not simply scaling accelerators or building larger facilities. A new golden age of server design has finally arrived: one in which computer architects can redefine how useful computing is delivered under real constraints of power, silicon, cooling, and scale.
Babak Falsafi is a Professor of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL. His contributions to computer systems include the first NUMA multiprocessors built by Sun Microsystems (WildFire/WildCat), spatial memory streaming in ARM A-72 cores onwards, temporal memory streaming in IBM BlueGene P/Q and ARM Neoverse N2 cores, and performance evaluation methodologies adopted by AMD, HP and Google. His work on cloud-native CPU design laid the foundation for Cavium's first generation of ARM server CPUs, ThunderX. He is the founding president of the Swiss Datacenter Efficiency Association with an online platform and a label that helps operators quantify their electricity and water efficiency. He is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and a fellow of ACM and IEEE.