Substantial improvements in computing energy efficiency, by up to ten orders of magnitude, will be required to solve major computing problems — such as planetary-scale weather modelling, real-time, brain-scale modelling and human evolutionary simulation — by the end of this century.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Energy efficient training of private recommendation systems using multi-armed bandit models and analog in-memory computing
npj Unconventional Computing Open Access 01 September 2025
-
Two-dimensional materials based two-transistor-two-resistor synaptic kernel for efficient neuromorphic computing
Nature Communications Open Access 09 May 2025
-
Flexible self-rectifying synapse array for energy-efficient edge multiplication in electrocardiogram diagnosis
Nature Communications Open Access 09 May 2025
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$32.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$119.00 per year
only $9.92 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to the full article PDF.
USD 39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References
Silver, D. et al. Nature 529, 484–489 (2016).
Jumper, J. et al. Nature 596, 583–589 (2021).
Schwartz, R., Dodge, J., Smith, N. A. & Etzioni, O. Commun. ACM 63, 54–63 (2020).
Sevilla, J. et al. Compute trends across three eras of machine learning. In 2022 Int. Joint Conf. Neural Networks (IJCNN) 1–8 (IEEE, 2022); https://doi.org/10.1109/IJCNN55064.2022.9891914
Patterson, D. et al. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.10350 (2021).
Wiggers, K. OpenAI’s massive GPT-3 model is impressive, but size isn’t everything. VentureBeat https://go.nature.com/3NjpWWc (1 June 2020).
Strubell, E., Ganesh, A. & McCallum, A. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.02243 (2019).
Knight, W. OpenAI’s CEO says the age of giant AI models is already over. Wired https://go.nature.com/3CjLFao (17 April 2023).
DeBenedictis, E. P. Reversible logic for supercomputing. CF ‘05: Proc. 2nd Conf. Computing Front. 391–402 https://doi.org/10.1145/1062261.1062325 (ACM, 2005).
Kendall, J. D. & Kumar, S. Appl. Phys. Rev. 7, 011305 (2020).
Smith, C. M. How humans will evolve on multigenerational space exploration missions. Scientific American https://go.nature.com/3NgYatw (1 January 2013).
Yampolskiy, R. V. Evol. Bioinformat. 14, 1–11 (2018).
Bostrom, N. Philos. Q. 53, 243–255 (2003).
Sherry, Y. & Thompson, N. Proc. IEEE 109, 1768–1777 (2021).
Kumar, S. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.05956 (2015).
Yi, S.-i., Kendall, J. D., Williams, R. S. & Kumar, S. Nat. Electron. 6, 45–51 (2023).
Ercsey-Ravasz, M. & Toroczkai, Z. Nat. Phys. 7, 966–970 (2011).
Preskill, J. Quantum 2, 79 (2018).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Electronics thanks Yiyu Shi and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Sections 1–8, Supplementary Table 1, and Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Conklin, A.A., Kumar, S. Solving the big computing problems in the twenty-first century. Nat Electron 6, 464–466 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-00985-1
Published:
Version of record:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-00985-1
This article is cited by
-
Two-dimensional materials based two-transistor-two-resistor synaptic kernel for efficient neuromorphic computing
Nature Communications (2025)
-
Energy efficient training of private recommendation systems using multi-armed bandit models and analog in-memory computing
npj Unconventional Computing (2025)
-
Flexible self-rectifying synapse array for energy-efficient edge multiplication in electrocardiogram diagnosis
Nature Communications (2025)
-
Review on warpage mechanisms and control of packaging substrates for large-scale chiplet integration
Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics (2025)
-
Mott neurons with dual thermal dynamics for spatiotemporal computing
Nature Materials (2024)