Computer Architecture Group

Computer Architecture Group

The Computer Architecture Group performs research into tomorrow's computing hardware, considering overarching challenges of performance, security, reliability and efficiency.  We're a broad group encompassing traditional microarchitecture, compiler toolchains, machine-learning systems and quantum computer architecture.

Research Goals

Improvements in fabrication technology will ultimately provide the ability to construct computing devices from atomic scale components. These advances may be exploited to provide many orders of magnitude more processing power or equally impressive reductions in power consumption. The Computer Architecture Group's goal is to investigate how best to exploit these advances in order to realise a broad range of efficient, scalable and robust computing platforms. The design and implementation of computing hardware has been a major theme of the Computer Laboratory since its inception.

We believe that shifting technology characteristics, highly parallel processor architectures and the rise of machine learning make this a particular exciting and challenging time for research in this area. The ability to continue to improve the underlying fabrication technology is by no means certain, and the ability to fully exploit any advances is a grand challenge for computer science. Meeting this challenge will require a step change in our approach to processor architecture together with significant advances in compiler, programming language, algorithm and operating-systems design.

Membership

You can see group members on the people page and Department members can join the group by editing their profile.  We have frequent talks advertised on talks.cam and regularly host visitors to the group, from people visiting for a single day to those here for several months.

We regularly supervise Part II, Part III and MPhil projects within the group — please see the projects page for this year's project suggestions.