Avogadro-Scale Computing

April 17, 2008

The Bartos Theater
Building E15
MIT

A variety of computing systems are promising (or threatening) to scale to a limit of thermodynamic complexity, in which the number of information-bearing degrees of freedom becomes comparable to the number of physical ones. At this point it is no longer possible to separate their physical and computational descriptions; this workshop will explore emerging insights into devices, architectures, algorithms, and applications appropriate to such enormously complex computers.

Attendance is open, but requires registration with susan.bottari@cba.mit.edu


8:00-9:00 Breakfast

9:00-10:30

Programming Bits and Atoms
Neil Gershenfeld (MIT)

Conformal Computing
Mark Pavicic (Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, NDSU)

Asynchronous and Analog Logic Automata
David Dalrymple (MIT)

Mathematical Programming
Luis Lafuente Molinero (MIT)

Folding Programs
Erik Demaine (MIT)

10:30-11:00 Break

11:00-12:30

Error Correction in Brownian Computing
Charles Bennett (IBM)

The Ultimate Costs of Conformal Computing
Tom Toffoli (BU)

The Physics of Theoretical Computer Science
Ed Fredkin (CMU)

The Computational Universe
Seth Lloyd (MIT)

12:30-1:30 Lunch

1:30-3:00

Fab-in-a-Box: Direct-Write Nanocircuits
Joe Jacobson, Jaebum Joo (MIT)

Scale-Free Architectures: Programming the Cloud-in-a-Can

The Internet as a Computing Surface
Scott Kirkpatrick (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

The Challenges of Exaflops: Architecture and Programming Models for Extreme Scale Scientific Computing
Rick Stevens (Argonne)

How to Reach Zettaflops
Erik DeBenedictis (Sandia)

3:00-3:30 Break

3:30-5:00

Greedy Algorithms in the Libraries of Biology
George Church (Harvard)

Reliable Behavior or Not? What is Happening Inside Tiny Organisms?
Drew Endy (MIT)

Reverse-Engineering the Brain
Felix Schuermann (EPFL, Lausanne)

How to Build a Brain
Marvin Minsky (MIT)

5:00-7:00 Reception