Research-hungry, knowledge-thirsty citizens of Planet Earth swarmed Austin this November for a Texas-sized MICRO that sold out, surpassing all expectations. Hallways were packed and lines were long as General Chairs Paul Gratz, Jose Joao, and Jason Clemons showed us all that bigger is better. Just look at these record-breaking stats.
Key scaling-related statistics for MICRO 2023 (Toronto, CA) compared with MICRO 2024 (Austin, US).
From attendance to sponsorship to the sheer breadth of topics, MICRO set a new standard for success at scale. I speak for the broader community when I say we are thankful to all involved in making MICRO happen: those who tirelessly wrangled ever-growing demands behind the scenes to deliver the best possible experience. No pressure on Seoul for next year 😉
Program Chairs (left: Alaa and Daniel) and General Chairs (podium: Jose; right: Jason and Paul) at the Opening Ceremony.
Now, for the blow-by-blow account of my experience at MICRO this year.
Workshops and Tutorials
The workshops were many and varied thanks to Thierry Tambe’s and Gururaj Saileshwar’s coordination. Day 1 featured ten technical workshops and tutorials, the JOBS workshop, the first half of the co-located IGSC conference, and an NSF workshop AI4HW & HW4AI on interest in generative AI. Day 2 featured another nine technical workshops in addition to uArch and CWIDCA, the second half of IGSC, and a joint MICRO-SOSP NSF workshop on quantum computing platforms enabled by SOSP’24 taking place just down the road from MICRO.
Day 1 workshop session overflowing with eager attendees (photo is from the PiM Tutorial).
Keynote Talks
Moinuddin Qureshi and Gilles Pokam gave bold, resounding keynote speeches that tied their areas of expertise with calls to action to the MICRO community. Moin kicked off the main program on Monday by challenging us to address worsening reliability challenges at both extremes of the system design cycle: during the infancy of immature technologies (e.g., quantum) to nurture them into viability; and during the latest stages of mature and highly-optimized technologies (e.g., DRAM) to sustain their continued relevance. On Tuesday morning, Gilles advocated for leveraging modern data science techniques to improve how we study and address processor architecture challenges, making better use of the telemetry tools prevalent among modern chips.
Main Program
Daniel Jimenez and Alaa Alameldeen developed a rich program featuring two and a half days of technical content split into three parallel sessions alongside a running poster session strategically located in the premium networking space right outside of the presentation rooms. As such, the program gave attendees the flexibility to engage in technical content however they wanted.
Sessions were well-attended across the board, and despite hushed whispers that everyone is working on LLMs, I was pleased to find that no specific theme dominated the main sessions. The program felt refreshingly balanced between machine learning, memory, accelerators, security, and processing-in-memory, with additional sessions for the remaining topics. If anything, the two CPU microarchitecture sessions were crowd favorites!
MICRO’24 mixed lecture-style seating and collaborative roundtables across rooms.
The coffee breaks (i.e., the most popular sessions) and their Big Tech sponsors deserve a special mention because the combination of high attendance and constrained space made for a highly effective networking environment. I simply couldn’t turn around without running into someone new to speak with! The same held true of the program’s social events, which included the traditional reception, meals, and an excursion to Stubb’s BBQ downtown for food and live music.
MICRO’24’s cozy “Networking Chamber” for coffee, posters, and of course, heated research debates.
Awards Luncheon
The awards lunch was spectacular (which definitely had nothing to do with the unlimited whipped cream). Lunch was kicked off with a whopping thirteen inductees to the MICRO Hall of Fame, which only underscores the growth and activity in the MICRO community. Individual awards followed: two Outstanding Dissertation Awards were given to Poulami Das and Saeed Rashidi, with an honorable mention to Nicolai Oswald; the ACM SIGMICRO Early Career Award went to Suvinay Subramanian; the ACM SIGMICRO Distinguished Service Award went to Dimitris Gizopoulos, highlighting his perseverance in making the best of MICRO throughout the COVID-19 period and beyond; and the IEEE CS B. Ramakrishna Rau Award went to Todd Austin for his “seminal contributions to microarchitecture, performance analysis, and innovations in secure architectures,” following which he gave an inspiring speech about his “rule-breaking approach” to research.
Todd Austin inspiring future generations of architects to think BIG!
Paper awards included The Test of Time award, which went to “Utility-Based Cache Partitioning” by Moinuddin Qureshi and Yale Patt in MICRO 2006, and the Best Paper Award chosen out of five candidates, given to “An Integrated and Synergistic Acceleration for Instant 3D Reconstruction and Real-Time Rendering” by Sixu Li et al. The two Best Paper runners-up were “Hardware-Assisted Virtualization of Neural Processing Units for Cloud Platforms” by Yuqi Xue et al. and “A Mess of Memory System Benchmarking, Simulation and Application Profiling” by Pouya Esmaili-Dokht et al.
Ph.D. Forum and SRC Competition
Student posters and presentations at the Ph.D. Forum and SRC Competition were top-notch this year. The Ph.D. Forum saw nine presenters, primarily comprising senior students on the academic and/or industrial job market(s). The SRC competition had undergraduate and graduate categories, with undergraduate 1st-3rd place winners Leo Tenenbaum, Konstantinos Morres, and Rudraneel Sinha and graduate 1st-3rd place winners Sanjali Yadav, Akshat Ramachandran, and Zishen Wan.
Excursion
MICRO gave us a taste of Texas hospitality with an evening excursion to Stubbs BBQ downtown. With 519 participants (76% of all attendees!), this was a one-of-a-kind social outing and networking opportunity smoothed over by live music, buffet-style food, and local libations. I particularly enjoyed the beautiful evening weather and casual ambiance among my colleagues and peers before walking back to the conference venue at night.
Establishing new collaborations and reinforcing old ones over food and drinks at Stubbs BBQ.
Inclusivity at MICRO
MICRO had a strong focus on mentorship and inclusivity this year in no small part to Elba Garza’s service as Inclusion Chair. The Diversity Dinner, Quiet Room, presence and presentations from CARES and CASA, and the uArch, CWIDCA, JOBS, MaSA, and WICArch meetups all helped cultivate a healthy atmosphere for attendees.
Updates on CASA’s CALM program, to whose value I personally attest.
Business Meeting
With scale comes inevitable business. Presentations from the OC, PC, and sponsors delved behind the scenes into what it took to make this MICRO happen. SIGMICRO, TCuARCH, CARES, and CASA presented their updates with exciting upcoming plans, including mentorship programs, new potential awards, and plans for improved paper review processes and quality across the community. PC chairs Daniel and Alaa gave a detailed overview of their experience this year, highlighting the time constraints they faced and their successes in having most papers decided online (e.g., 78.8% of all accepted papers) without the need to convene the entire PC.
MICRO’25 has its work cut out with increasing trends in just about every metric: attendance, submissions, reviewers, costs of living, etc., and many of the discussions focused on how to wrangle that scale. Ideas included roping in a conference management service, relying more heavily on IEEE’s unexpected breadth of organizational resources, minimizing attendance costs, and implementing area chairs to streamline the review process. The meeting concluded on a high note with a budgetary surplus in place for next year’s organizing committee to start off strong for MICRO’25 @ Seoul.
Closing Remarks
Visiting my alma mater for MICRO was a fantastic experience, in no small part due to the enormous turnout from academics and professionals alike. The growth of our community is supported only by our willingness to come together, and I firmly believe that each of our members’ success is a win for all of us. I am heartened to see this growth, and I look forward to seeing where we go in the years to come. From Seoul to Athens and beyond!
Acknowledgments
Image credits go to the author, Rahul Bera, and Jason Clemons. A special thanks to Paul Gratz, Jason Clemons, Giray Yağlıkçı, and Geraldo Oliveira for helping fill in the gaps and to Dmitry Ponomarev for his editorial service.
About the Author
Minesh is wading deeper into the depths of academia, where ideas thrive and nothing is certain but the relentless focus on long-term impact. His research is in memory architecture, exploring and addressing scaling concerns around performance, reliability, and energy efficiency. Before joining Rutgers, Minesh did his D.Sc. at ETH Zürich and undergrad at UT Austin. When not dressed up for work, Minesh enjoys spending time with friends, long walks along the beach, etc., etc.
Disclaimer: These posts are written by individual contributors to share their thoughts on the Computer Architecture Today blog for the benefit of the community. Any views or opinions represented in this blog are personal, belong solely to the blog author and do not represent those of ACM SIGARCH or its parent organization, ACM.
