the university of virginia (charlottesville) has been selected to establish a $27.5 million center for research in intelligent storage and processing in memory (crisp) by the joint university microelectronics program (jump), which is run by north carolina-based semiconductor research corporation, a consortium of engineers and scientists from technology companies, agencies, and universities.

chip architecture is the discussion taking place at crisp. (wikimedia commons)

according to the uva website, the new center will bring together researchers from eight universities to break the separation between data storage and data processors that has been present since current computer architecture was adopted in 1945.

the article explained, “over the years, processor speeds have improved much faster than memory and storage speeds, and also much faster than the speed at which wires can carry data back and forth. these trends lead to what computer scientists call the ‘memory wall,’ in which data access becomes a major performance bottleneck.”

crisp will include researchers from uva, university of california at santa barbara, carnegie mellon university, purdue university, the university of michigan and the university of notre dame.

“each research center will examine a different challenge in advancing microelectronics, a field that is crucial to the u.s. economy and its national defense capabilities,” the article continued. “the centers will collaborate to develop solutions that work together effectively. each center will have liaisons from the program’s member companies, collaborating on the research and supporting technology transfer.”

one of the challenges that researchers will explore is chip architecture and the processing capabilities will be built into memory storage or paired with memory chips in 3-d stacks. uva professor mircea stan will lead research on how to optimize the thermal and power management of these stacks.

in addition, hardware and software concerns will be studied to determine a new architecture for computing in the future.

the article concluded, “all this work will be developed in the context of several case studies to help guide the hardware and software research to practical solutions and real-world impact. these include searching for new cancer markers; mining the human gut microbiome for new insights on interactions among genetics, environment, lifestyle and wellness; and data mining for improving home health care.”