Trafo #132 - Fachschaft Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik - TUM

Professoreninterviews
22
Science the main challenge is to understand the limits
of computation, for example how efficiently you
can solve a certain problem. This is the essential
question of computational complexity. Imagine you
have a given problem and you would like to develop
a very efficient algorithm for this problem. Now it’s
not clear whether you are not intelligent enough to
develop this algorithm or whether it is just not possible
to develop this algorithm. People are now trying
to prove theoretically how fast you can solve certain
problems. But there are still a lot of unanswered
questions, for example, can all problems be solved in
polynomial time? Answers to these questions will also
have a significant impact on Electrical Engineering;
for example when you do your floor planning and
then routing in a chip, the relevant algorithms might
now take two days to run. This is a major problem,
because you will only know two days later if you did
a good job with the floor planning. If we have very
efficient algorithms, a designer’s life would be much
easier and design productivity would be a lot higher.
The same thing is true for many other problems in
Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering. I’m
Fachschaft Elektrotechnik und
Informationstechnik e.V.
Trafo Ausgabe 132
also very interested in low-power design, to see what
kind of algorithms could be developed in order to
economize energy, depending on the current situation.
Here, one might ask the question: What is the
minimum energy needed for a given computation or
can you at least theoretically perform a computation
with zero energy? I’m very interested in what kind of
progress will be possible in these areas.
What piece of advice would you give the students to
take along in one sentence?
I have been to many different places and I have met
many different students. One advice I should give
to students here is that they should think beyond
Germany. There are students in the US, in Japan, in
China – there are researchers all around the world. I
think currently we have to be aware of the fact that
research and education are global activities: Even sitting
in Munich you have to compete with someone
sitting in Japan. So I think it is very important not to
restrict your thoughts to just your environment, but
to think beyond your city and your country.