How AI Will Reshape Computer Systems by 2035

How AI Will Reshape Computer Systems by 2035: A Jeffersonian Dinner in San Francisco about Our 10,000x Future April 27, 2026/in Community Event, Community Updates, CRA-I Announcements, CRA-I Event, CRA-I General Information, Salon GatheringCRA-I Salon Gathering, Co-hosted by Dave Patterson (UC Berkeley/Google) and Jeff Dean (Google AI) Contributions to this post were provided by Jeff Dean, Mark D. Hill, and Dave Patterson. CRA-Industry (CRA-I) recently continued its series of intimate Industry Salon Gatherings, bringing together leaders to discuss the long-term trajectory of our field. Our latest session, organized by Mark D. Hill (University of Wisconsin-Madison & CRA) and CRA-I, took place on April 16, 2026 at the historic University Club of San Francisco and was sponsored by Laude Institute, which had just announced an ambitious and exciting slate of new research “AI moonshot” awards. The evening featured a high-level conversation among 20 participants, co-hosted by Dave Patterson (UC Berkeley/Google) and Jeff Dean (Google AI). The Salon tackled a fundamental question: “What will computer systems look like in 2035, and how will they be designed?” The participants were researchers and leaders from West Coast academic institutions and technology companies, big and small. As the table below shows, the group was diverse in multiple dimensions, including career stage, with expertise centering on computer architecture but extending to software systems, AI models, and design methodology and tools. Following the “Jeffersonian” dinner format, the evening was designed to forge deep connections and brainstorm visionary ideas. To ensure a frank and pre-competitive dialogue, the event operated under the Chatham House Rule, allowing for candid exchange while protecting the anonymity of the participants’ specific contributions. The three-hour (!) conversation explored the intersection of architecture, software, AI, and future design methodologies. Here we highlight some key observations and conjectures made by Salon participants: We are in the midst of an AI revolution that appears to be even more impactful than the introduction of microprocessors, PCs, Internet, or smartphones. To drive future change, we must focus on metrics such as improving “intelligence” per Watt for efficiency and more AI tokens processed at fixed user-perceived latency for more “intelligence.” One lively topic was centered on the future of interfaces and abstractions that have been essential for humans to build complex systems. We explored two related questions: whether abstractions will continue to matter in the AI era, and, if they do, whether those abstractions must remain human-interpretable, allowing human/AI teams to advance the field together. The general view was that abstractions will continue to play an important role, not only for humans, but also helping AI systems to reason and coordinate. However, for communication and reasoning among agents, these abstractions need not be interpretable to humans, and may evolve beyond human comprehension. At the same time, there remains a need for human-interpretable abstractions to enable oversight, intervention and guidance by humans. We conjecture that in five years 10,000x more AI inference will be done worldwide, with these gains hypothetically coming from multiplicative progress of 50x in AI algorithms, 50x in system/hardware optimization/specialization, and 4x from further data center growth. We expect 50x AI algorithm…

This excerpt is published under fair use for community discussion. Read the full article at CRA-I.