Academic researchers often find themselves in a conundrum between doing high-risk, forward-looking research and trying to have more immediate impact on real-world problems. In fact, many in industry (perhaps myself included) are guilty of telling researchers to go look ahead and tell us what the future holds and what industry should do, and then when the researchers come back with stunning visions of the future, we respond with comments like “that’s not practical” or “that’s not how we do things today”. In this talk, I will draw on some of my experiences as both a university professor as well as a researcher in industry, and discuss some computing revolutions and how academic research plays a central and critical role. As an example, I will use the on-going revolution in die-stacking technologies to describe my view of how forward-looking visions combined with evolutionary steps have gotten us to where we are today, why we haven’t gotten here sooner, and why some may want further delays. I will also highlight some other revolutions that are either underway or lurking in the future. From all this, despite the near-term value of incremental near-term innovations to industry, I make the case for academic researchers to continue thinking big and to push the frontiers of computing technologies.

Gabriel H. Loh is a Fellow Design Engineer in AMD Research, the research and advanced development lab for Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Gabe received his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from Yale University in 2002 and 1999, respectively, and his B.Eng. in electrical engineering from the Cooper Union in 1998. Gabe was also a tenured associate professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research, and a senior researcher at Intel Corporation. He is an IEEE senior member and an ACM distinguished scientist, (co-)inventor on over fifty US patent applications, and a recipient of the US National Science Foundation Young Faculty CAREER Award. His interests include computer architecture, processor microarchitecture, memory systems, emerging technologies, 3D die stacking, food, ice hockey, snowboarding, and running.