Future Information Technology
Information technology has penetrated society much faster than its performance has increased according to Moore’s law. This has led to a significant increase in the amount of energy consumed throughout the world by information technology systems. For example, computers as well as computing and data centres in industrialised countries, such as Germany, already account for approximately 10% of the electrical energy consumption—and a rising trend is expected. The rationale of the research programme is twofold: First, it explores the fundamentals of solid-state based new technologies and strategies for a future green ICT (Green-IT). The focus lies on the development of highly energy-efficient concepts and processes for the storage and processing of information including completely new computing paradigms such as quantum computing, in order to significantly reduce the electrical energy footprint of ICT. Second, with its strong basis in condensed matter and surface physics and a broad po