The Biggest Need: a New Model of Computation

The development of HPC systems capable of exascale performance will demand innovations in hardware architecture and system software as well as programming models and methods. The combination of a vast increase in scale of such systems combined with the emergence of heterogeneous multicore structures is forcing future systems to be organized and operate on principles very different from the conventional practices of the last two decades. The biggest need for achieving exascale computing is the development of a new model of computation that will provide the new paradigm exploiting the opportunities and addressing the challenges of the emerging technologies and advanced architectures that together will comprise future exascale systems. This brief paper discusses the need for a new model of computation and the properties such a model should embody.