The Computer Architecture Calendar
An annual ritual of hype, validation, and existential dread
Disclaimer: Opinions shared in this, and all my posts are mine, and mine alone. They do not reflect the views of my employer(s) and are not investment advice.
Another disclaimer: The characters and events in this post are fictitious (but the conferences are real). Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental (though statistically inevitable in my audience). For the record, I have not faithfully followed all of these conferences in the past. This post exists mainly because I’d like to start doing so this year and thought I might as well share ten conferences I think are useful. Unfortunately, I couldn’t resist making the whole thing a little funny, so here we go…
The protagonist of this story is someone I’m sure you have crossed paths with. They forget birthdays, miss tax deadlines, and couldn’t name a single band on tour - but they know exactly when and where every major computer architecture conference is held.
Their calendar isn’t divided into months. It’s divided into trade shows.
This is how a year in that person’s life looks.
CES: Between hope and hype
Our protagonist loves speculation. Branch prediction, speculative execution, prefetching: all the performance gains they deliver are built on confidently guessing what will happen next. So there is no better way to start the year than CES in January. While CES isn’t always about chips, the recent AI accelerator mania has turned it into the perfect launchpad for the year. Bold claims, ambitious roadmaps, and just enough technical detail provide our protagonist with exactly the right mix of signals and buzzwords to carry them through the months ahead.
Why it matters
CES tells you what’s being productized and will therefore shape algorithms and architectures of the future.
How to follow it efficiently
Watch the keynotes. Skim the announcements. Pay attention to products that actually exist, not just the slides describing them.
One thing to watch in 2026
Has anyone built a useful, physical product where AI is solving a genuine problem.
ISSCC: Let’s get real
By February, our protagonist’s speculation bubble goes through a silicon trial by fire. ISSCC is where we stop guessing and start measuring. Statements and projections from CES slides are replaced by die photos, power numbers, and phrases that begin with “fabricated in…”. Each one either validates past optimism or quietly resets expectations.
Why it matters
ISSCC is a good way to understand how performance and power scale between architectural simulations and real silicon.
How to follow it efficiently
Skim broadly to identify the most relevant designs. Then read one or two papers deeply to understand the true state of the art. Watch out for assumptions.
One thing to watch in 2026
How is Moore’s Law really progressing? Are improvements coming from architecture, process nodes, or both?
GTC: Crowning the Starboy
March belongs to the Taylor Swift concert of today’s tech world. Our protagonist once followed GTC for innovations in parallel computing architectures. Now, it’s a coronation ceremony for Nvidia’s platform and its developers. Everyone listens to Jensen Huang carefully, because this is where the industry’s vocabulary for the next twelve months is minted.
Why it matters
GTC now defines the AI narrative and vocabulary that everyone else ends up adopting.
How to follow it efficiently
Watch the keynote. Then pick a handful of genuinely technical sessions. Ignore the excessive press coverage and stock-price astrology.
One thing to watch in 2026
What does Nvidia’s platform roadmap look like for inference—especially in a post Groq license world?
Computex: Board yet?
Computex reminds our protagonist that chips do not exist in isolation. This is where architecture turns into motherboards, racks, cooling solutions, and deeply uncomfortable power budgets. It’s less about novelty and more about integration. More recently, it has also become the place where vendors launch their latest SoCs for, you guessed it, AI.
Why it matters
Computex shows what it actually takes to turn a good architecture into a usable product. It’s important to be aware of what’s happening outside the cores.
How to follow it efficiently
Get a high-level view of system architectures for the latest SoCs. Pay attention to reference designs and power, thermal, and memory numbers when they’re provided.
One thing to watch in 2026
Whether the industry finally agrees on what an “AI PC” is, and if any new players enter that space.
ISCA: Sheer elegance
ISCA is where our protagonist feels intellectually nourished. The best ideas in computer architecture are here in their purest form. Some are brilliant. Some are fictional. A few will quietly influence designs a decade later. No product timelines, no market requirements. Just elegant computer architecture.
Why it matters
ISCA sharpens your architectural intuition by offering new ways to think about familiar problems.
How to follow it efficiently
Skim all abstracts. Then invest real time in a few papers that genuinely intrigue you. Ask whether ideas from one domain could transfer to another.
One thing to watch in 2026
How are CPU architectures evolving in the era of accelerated computing?
DAC: Ship faster
All the old-school, hype-free academic computer architecture study leads our protagonist to wonder if AI is just a bubble. DAC arrives at exactly the right time, reassuring them with claims that AI-powered tools can reduce the time to ship a new chip from years to seconds. It also serves as a reminder of the less glamorous innards of chip design, like verification and physical design.
Why it matters
An architecture is only as good as its ability to be built, and more importantly, built on time. DAC shows how semiconductor tooling is evolving to close the gap between ideas and tape-out.
How to follow it efficiently
Skim panels to understand what’s new in tooling. Before getting excited, always check whether these tools actually work on industry-scale designs.
One thing to watch in 2026
If, and how AI-assisted design flows are being deployed in the industry.
Hot Chips: Industry, minus the hype
As summer draws to a close, our protagonist finds themselves desperately searching for the truth. This leads them to Hot Chips, where architects speak slowly, precisely, and with slides that took their companies months to approve. Tradeoffs are admitted. Constraints are acknowledged. Reality is explained. Our protagonist trusts this conference more than almost any other.
Why it matters
Hot Chips is an industry conference that is unusually light on marketing. The goal is to simply explain what was shipped and why.
How to follow it efficiently
This is worth spending time on. Watch the talks. Read the slides carefully. Take notes.
One thing to watch in 2026
How many meaningfully different AI architectures do we really have?
SEMICON Taiwan: Supply chain magic
By September, the story shifts to the heartland of semiconductor manufacturing. Here, our protagonist listens to conversations about yield, packaging, and process limits. The names of many exhibitors sound unfamiliar, but a closer look reveals them to be critical players in the semiconductor supply chain. It’s a reminder that architecture is important, but only a small part of a vastly more complex world.
Why it matters
Manufacturing constraints increasingly shape architectural decisions. They can’t be ignored.
How to follow it efficiently
Use this as a chance to understand the supply chain better. Process roadmap and packaging sessions are the most valuable.
One thing to watch in 2026
What’s new in the world of advanced packaging and 3D ICs that are actually ready for volume production.
MICRO: Grounding ideas to reality
If ISCA feeds our protagonist’s love for elegant ideas, MICRO satisfies their need to see those ideas survive contact with reality. This is where high-level architectural concepts are dragged into the microarchitecture and explained cycle by cycle. MICRO isn’t for the casual computer architecture enthusiast. The diagrams are denser, the assumptions sharper, and the discussions expect real chip-design experience.
Why it matters
MICRO bridges the gap between architectural ideas and real implementations, exposing the costs, tradeoffs, and complexity that abstractions tend to hide.
How to follow it efficiently
Focus on papers that include detailed evaluations and realistic assumptions. Pay attention to how architectural ideas translate into microarchitectural blocks.
One thing to watch in 2026
Are there credible examples of AI influencing microarchitectural decisions better than a human designer can?
IEDM: A glimpse of the future
The busy computer architecture calendar comes to a close at IEDM. Our protagonist listens to talks about devices, confidently thinking they won’t matter for years. Soon, a quiet fear sets in that, when these devices finally do matter, they might change everything. The thought sends a chill down their spine, and pushes them to search for notes from the one device physics class they took in undergrad.
Why it matters
IEDM defines what architectures may even be possible a decade from now. Following it is a form of long-term career insurance.
How to follow it efficiently
Don’t get stuck on the physics. Assume the devices work, then ask how they would reshape memory hierarchies, compute models, and system architectures.
One thing to watch
Which emerging technologies, like quantum, neuromorphic, and novel memories, are close to being deployed in real chip
By the end of the year, our protagonist is carrying a heavy mental load: half-remembered acronyms, conflicting roadmaps, benchmark caveats, packaging buzzwords, and just enough existential dread to stay alert. They’ve learned when to believe, when to squint, and when to politely wait for silicon. And just as they start to feel like they’ve finally made sense of it all, the year resets. New nodes. New models. New claims. Same conferences. So, they clear their calendar, open a fresh notebook, and show up again, because as stressful and confusing as it sounds, somehow, it’s still fun.
Want to follow this year’s conferences with me?
I’ve created a shareable Google Calendar with all of these conference dates pre-filled, for anyone who wants their existential dread to be neatly scheduled. Subscribers will receive a link to this calendar - consider this a gentle nudge to subscribe if you haven’t already.
If there are other conferences that every computer architect should mentally budget for, let me know in the comments. The calendar, like the study of computer architecture, is never truly complete.
Thanks for the summary on what to look for! Are the links to talks/papers posted on the respective conference websites?