Silicon, Systems, and Supercomputers: The Past, Present, and Future of Compute Infrastructure

Silicon, Systems, and Supercomputers: The Past, Present, and Future of Compute Infrastructure comes to the Center for Government and Civic Service at ACC Rio Grande on Tuesday, September 1. It's part of the Austin Forum on Technology & Society's in-person series, and the whole thing runs from 6:15 PM to 7:45 PM.

The talk is built around how massive computational infrastructure powers the breakthroughs we're seeing in artificial intelligence, climate modeling, molecular simulation, energy production, and pharmaceutical design. The speakers trace the evolution of hardware from legacy chip paradigms to today's exascale hyperscale clusters, covering silicon's trajectory under Moore's Law and the rise of specialized accelerators like GPUs, TPUs, and domain-specific ASICs. From there, they zoom out to show how those chips integrate into boards, servers, racks, and full-scale HPC supercomputers.

They also look ahead to architectures that move beyond traditional silicon, including 3D stacked chiplets, optical and photonic computing, neuromorphic processing, and quantum integration. Along the way, the talk addresses the actual workloads shaping the hardware—from frontier AI training to real-time defense and financial modeling—and the physical realities of gigawatt-scale infrastructure, like thermal management, energy grid demands, and global supply chains.

The session is a multi-perspective presentation followed by an audience Q&A, and it doesn't end when the talking stops. Afterward, the group moves to Remedy, on 3rd and Nueces, for networking with a complimentary drink. Admission is free, but you'll need to register in advance. The talk is at the Center for Government & Civic Service, ACC Rio Grande, Building 3000, 1218 West Avenue, from 6:15 PM to 7:45 PM.