In the UK, the House of Commons Select Committee on Science, Innovation and Technology is currently holding an inquiry into “Low-Energy Computing”. The remit of the inquiry can be found below.
AI model sizes and data volumes are growing significantly. At the same time, areas like quantum computing and protein synthesis also require increasing amounts of computational power.
This trend is exerting increasing demands on energy supplies, and it has been suggested that new innovations in silicon photonics and neuromorphic computing could offer a solution.
The Science, Innovation and Technology committee is examining how realistic a possibility this is, when breakthroughs might be expected to take place and what the government is doing to support research and innovation activity in this area.
This inquiry has been launched following pitches made to the committee as part of its Under the Microscope initiative.
I am reproducing my submission to this inquiry below, in case it is of value to others. The text can also be found – alongside all other submissions made – at the official parliamentary website.
Thinking 