This year’s 23rd Ilmenau Physics Summer is themed around artificial intelligence. The week-long program includes lectures, independent work, and experiments for high school students across Germany who are enthusiastic about physics. As an affiliated institute of the Technical University of Ilmenau, the CiS Research Institute has been supporting these STEM activities for years.
On Monday, 8th September 2025, Prof. Thomas Ortlepp, managing director of our institute, captivated the audience with his lecture “ChatGPT – what’s behind it?” In an entertaining way and using numerous practical examples, he explained the rapid development of computer technology from the first calculating machine in 1832 to the first microprocessor in 1971 to the latest supercomputer Jupiter, the fastest supercomputer in Europe, which was officially inaugurated just a few days ago.
Artificial intelligence places entirely new demands on computer architecture. In his presentation, Prof. Thomas Ortlepp showed what changes are needed in hardware to efficiently implement the challenges of complex neural networks modeled on the human brain. The classic computer architecture developed by John von Neumann is not suitable for this purpose. The enormous computing power required must be implemented using a novel combination of hardware and software. This is achieved using tensor processing units (TPUs), which can execute an enormous number of multiplications and additions in parallel with a single machine instruction, while accessing extremely fast distributed memory.
The summer school is mainly financed by donations in order to keep fees low and enable numerous young people to participate. Together with many other institutions, the CiS Research Institute and CiS e.V. support this initiative and would like to thank all the organizers for their commitment.
