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As the computing industry struggles to maintain its historically rapid pace of innovation, a new, $32 million center based at U-M aims to streamline and democratize the design and manufacturing of next-generation computing systems. The Center for Applications Driving Architectures, or ADA, will develop a transformative, “plug-and-play” ecosystem to encourage a flood of fresh ideas in computing frontiers such as autonomous control, robotics, and machine-learning.
“The electronic industry is facing many challenges going forward, and we stand a much better chance of solving these problems if we can make hardware design more accessible to a large pool of talent,” said Valeria Bertacco, professor of computer science and engineering and director of the ADA Center. “We want to make it possible for anyone with motivation and a good idea to build novel high-performance computing systems.”
The center is a five-year project that’s led by U-M and includes researchers from a total of seven universities, pending final contracts: Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Illinois and University of Washington. “This is a daring and progressive approach to system design that stands to revolutionize the computing industry,” said Dean of Engineering Alec Gallimore. “The work of this new center will empower generations of engineers and computer scientists to design and build the systems that can bring their ideas to life.”
