Celebrating Computer Architecture

At a special event in June we highlighted the work in Computer Architecture taking place in Cambridge - and discussed ways to build our future capacity in this field by creating a new Computer Architecture Research Centre for PhD students.

Computer architecture is a critical area of computing: it underpins today's technologies and drives the next generation of computing systems.

We're proud of our research and innovation in this field and excited about the advances yet to come in this rapidly changing area. At this event, we celebrated the past and present of computer architecture at Cambridge and discussed our plans to develop the research leaders of the future.

You can see videos of the presentations given on the day by following the links below: 

• An introduction to, and history of, Computer Architecture in the Department - Professor Alastair Beresford  

• Opportunity and Innovation in Computer Architecture - Professor Robert Mullins  

• CHERI: hardware/software co-design to fundamentally improve security - Professor Simon Moore  

• Design Space Exploration with focus on predictors - Karl Mose (PhD student) 

• Unifying Compilers and EDA Technologies - Bea Healy (PhD student) 

• In-core, hint-based, speculative multithreading - Marton Erdos (PhD student) 

• Heterogeneous Fault Detection for Data Centers - Minli Liao (Postodoctoral researcher)

• An introduction to our planned new Computer Architecture Research Centre for PhD students - Professor Timothy Jones

As the first computer science department in the country (established over 80 years ago) our research helped lay the foundations of modern computing, building the first programmable computer to come into service and leading the early development of programming languages and operating systems. Today, we continue to innovate and advance the field in areas from AI to quantum computing to computer architecture.

A track record of innovation in computer architecture
Our collaboration with world-leading local microprocessor company Arm on the pioneering CHERI (Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions) cybersecurity technology currently leads the UK Government’s £200+ million Digital Security by Design programme.

And among the 330 companies set up by our staff and alumni are open-source hardware company lowRISC, along with dividiti, Ellexus, Embecosm, Tenison Technology EDA and KRAI. All of these are directly related to the Department’s Computer Architecture group.

Our new Research Centre will draw on the breadth of supervisor experience from across the Department, allowing students freedom to explore the areas they're most passionate about, while addressing industry-relevant research.

Prof Timothy Jones

At Cambridge, we attract the brightest students from across the world and we’re embedded within the Cambridge Cluster of over 5000 knowledge-intensive companies. This combination of academic expertise and industrial links means we’re very well equipped to train the next generation of engineers and seed the entrepreneurs of the future.

Our plan is to create a dedicated Computer Architecture Research Centre here in the Department for 20 PhD students. Read more details here: