Innovations in instruction set architecture (ISA), processor microarchitecture and supportive advances in circuit design, compilers, semiconductor technology, pre-silicon specification, modeling and validation have all been essential elements of the computer systems revolution that has transformed human society so dramatically over the last six decades or more. In the late CMOS era, with power and reliability walls already causing major paradigm shifts, the need for new innovations in cross-layer, hardware-software design and modeling are being called for to help keep the IT industry moving and growing at historical rates.

In trying to forge a path of innovation, it is sometimes worth examining the past to look for major paradigm shifts in (micro)-architecture, circuits, modeling and software that helped us keep going in the face of past technology-driven disruption points. With this in mind, we present a new workshop pioneering processor paradigms (P³). With the help of true pioneers as well as budding new researchers, P³ will take a retrospective look at how past technological hurdles were circumvented through major innovations. The goal is to learn from the past in devising new solution strategies for the future.

The P³ workshop will offer a number of invited talks from true pioneers as well as reviewed selections from the new generation of researchers and teachers who are eager to take a retrospective look into surveying past pioneering work that can teach us a lesson about solution strategies of the future.