Good news: The computer architecture community is growing! Submissions to major conferences have increased substantially in recent years, including just under 500 submissions to MICRO 2024. This growth reflects the vibrancy in our field, continued expansion of what is computer architecture, and increasing participation from research groups outside the United States.
Less good news: Growth in paper submissions requires a corresponding growth in reviewing bandwidth. Reviewing 500 submissions requires on the order of 2500 reviews.
Good news: Our community no longer assigns 20+ reviews to each PC member. (“Back in my day …”) The workload per PC member is much lighter, leading to more manageable time commitments and less of a rush to provide high-quality reviews. Furthermore, the introduction of ERCs (or light PC members) offers opportunities for people to serve while reviewing fewer submissions, if that is all they can commit to doing.
Less good news: Whereas program committees not that long ago comprised 30-50 people, ISCA 2024 had approximately 150 PC members and 150 ERC members. It is a significant challenge to find that many people who can commit to reviewing submissions, actively participating in online discussions, and attending virtual PC meetings.
We have a wonderful problem to have to solve, and it requires your help.
- If you are asked to serve on a PC, please accept if you can commit to serving responsibly and meeting deadlines. Your service is vital to our community’s ability to thrive and grow. (And please bear in mind that when you submit a paper, five people are serving to review it.)
- If you have never served before and you would like to do so (trust us, you’d like to!), please volunteer by filling out this form that asks for your contact information, affiliation history, website/DBLP/Google-Scholar links, broad research interests, and a set of detailed research keywords. Adding new community members to our PCs is also beneficial in and of itself, beyond simply providing additional reviewing bandwidth. PC members typically have a PhD or equivalent level of experience.
- Even if you have served in the past, please fill out the linked form. The task of program chairs also continues to scale up. Having your latest research interests and contact information makes it easier for program chairs to identify the right people for upcoming PCs and ERCs, and for reviewers to get papers that are good fits for their expertise. The form also allows participants to update their information as their research interests or contact information changes.
The SIGARCH executive board administers the above form and will pass on the generated spreadsheet to program chairs of SIGARCH/TCCA sponsored conferences and editors of SIGARCH/TCCA sponsored journals to help with committee formation and review assignments. Please be aware that by filling out this form, you are granting consent for the above use of your information. This information will not be shared beyond program chairs and relevant journal editors as listed above.
The Computer Architecture community greatly appreciates your contribution to this database and to reviewing!
About the Authors:
Dan Sorin is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. He serves as Program Chair for ISCA 2025.
Vijay Nagarajan is a Professor at the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah. He serves as Program Vice-Chair for ISCA 2025.
Sandhya Dwarkadas is the Walter N. Munster Professor and Chair of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. She served as Program Co-Chair for ISCA 2024.
Rajeev Balasubramonian is a Professor at the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah. He served as Program Co-Chair for ISCA 2024.
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.
