Vishkin Urges 'Radical Redesign' for Future Computers

Prof. Uzi Vishkin

Professor Uzi Vishkin was featured in a January article by IDG news service, which has been picked up by many other publications. Prof. Vishkin's is highlighted for his recent article in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) flagship Communications magazine, in which Vishkin shared his views regarding the need to rethink basic computer architecture for the age of parallel computing and multi-processors.

"The recent dramatic shift from single-processor computer systems to many-processor parallel ones requires reinventing much of computer science to build and program the new systems," said Vishkin.

Vishkin offers a new architecture abstraction, called ICE (Immediate Concurrent Execution), which he developed with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

This alternative abstraction allows an indefinite number of instructions to be executed at any given time, which would simplify matters for programmers. Using ICE, "You could dream up any number of instructions as long as the input for one is not the output for the another," he said.

Vishkin now holds six patents on the new technology.

Published February 15, 2011