07 Mar Focus on new faculty: George Tzimpragos is rebooting computer architecture
George Tzimpragos
Over the past 80 years, computers have progressed from room-sized collections of vacuum tubes and mechanical relays to the tiny digital devices we now carry in our pockets. Along with the hardware changes, computer architecture—the organization and design of computer systems and the way components work together—has also evolved, but not always in the most straightforward direction.
Many approaches underpinning the way modern computers operate are based on past constraints, like the types of materials and components available, computing power and operating software. Now, as quantum computing, superconducting materials, and other big changes arrive, it’s worth evaluating whether different architectures might make better sense.
“My research seeks to challenge long-standing assumptions in computer architecture,” says George Tzimpragos, who joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as the James E. Smith Assistant Professor in January 2025. His favorite types of inquiries question the status quo; for example, “Are binary codes and Boolean logic always the most efficient approach to computation?” or “Are conventional memory structures optimal across all technologies?”