Infrastructure for Artificial Intelligence, Quantum and High Performance Computing

High Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML), and Quantum Computing (QC) and communications offer immense opportunities for innovation and impact on society. Researchers in these areas depend on access to computing infrastructure, but these resources are in short supply and are typically siloed in support of their research communities, making it more difficult to pursue convergent and interdisciplinary research. Such research increasingly depends on complex workflows that require different resources for each stage. This paper argues that a more-holistic approach to computing infrastructure, one that recognizes both the convergence of some capabilities and the complementary capabilities from new computing approaches, be it commercial cloud to Quantum Computing, is needed to support computer science research.

Artificial Intelligence at the Edge

The Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing applications aim to support a variety of societal needs, including the global pandemic situation that the entire world is currently experiencing and responses to natural disasters. The need for real-time interactive applications such as immersive video conferencing, augmented/virtual reality, and autonomous vehicles, in education, healthcare, disaster recovery and other domains, has never been higher. At the same time, there have been recent technological breakthroughs in highly relevant fields such as artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML), advanced communication systems (5G and beyond), privacy-preserving computations, and hardware accelerators. 5G mobile communication networks increase communication capacity, reduce transmission latency and error, and save energy -- capabilities that are essential for new applications. The envisioned future 6G technology will integrate many more technologies, including for example visible light communication, to support groundbreaking applications, such as holographic communications and high precision manufacturing. Many of these applications require computations and analytics close to application end-points: that is, at the edge of the network, rather than in a centralized cloud. AI techniques applied at the edge have tremendous potential both to power new applications and to need more efficient operation of edge infrastructure. However, it is critical to understand where to deploy AI systems within complex ecosystems consisting of advanced applications and the specific real-time requirements towards AI systems.