Silicon technology continues to provide an exponential increase in the availability of raw transistors.  Effectively translating this resource into application performance, however, is proving increasingly difficult. Challenges such as wire-delay, design complexity, and manufacturing defects frustrate conventional approaches. WaveScalar, a new approach to building microprocessors, confronts these problems with a radical mix of architectural concepts. In this talk, Mark Oskin presents a broad overview of the WaveScalar research being conducted at the University of Washington. From the Series:CSE Colloquia - 2005