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Subfield · Computer Science

Hardware and Architecture research

Hardware and Architecture is a subfield of Computer Science. Science Explorer counts 211k research works in it since 1950. 9.9% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

In short: physical components of a computer.

Research works
211k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
21k
per year above
Top-10% rate
9.9%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Topics
8
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+11%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
China
29% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Hardware and Architecture

What is Hardware and Architecture research about, and what is growing?

By the world's output in 2021-25, its most used keywords are Parallel Computing, Performance Optimization, Embedded Systems, High-Level Synthesis, Reconfigurable Computing, Hardware Trojans. Gaining share since 2011-15: Hardware Trojans, Physical Unclonable Functions. Losing share: Remote Display, Thin-Client Computing, Power Consumption, Server Selection Algorithms.

▲ gaining share of this field◆ holding its share▼ losing share

Size is the world's fractional works in 2021-25 in the topics tagged with each word; colour compares the word's share of this field with 2011-15. Each links to the topic it comes from most.

All 17 words, with their numbers
  1. Parallel Computing10k◆ 0.88×1 topic
  2. Performance Optimization10k◆ 0.88×1 topic
  3. Embedded Systems8,166▼ 0.82×2 topics
  4. High-Level Synthesis5,295▼ 0.83×1 topic
  5. Reconfigurable Computing5,295▼ 0.83×1 topic
  6. Hardware Trojans4,734▲ 3.5×1 topic
  7. Physical Unclonable Functions4,734▲ 3.5×1 topic
  8. Embedded Cores4,044◆ 1.04×1 topic
  9. Test Data Compression4,044◆ 1.04×1 topic
  10. Hard Real-Time Systems2,871▼ 0.81×1 topic
  11. Scheduling Algorithms2,871▼ 0.81×1 topic
  12. Deep Packet Inspection1,824◆ 1.04×1 topic
  13. Packet Classification1,824◆ 1.04×1 topic
  14. Remote Display636▼ 0.60×1 topic
  15. Thin-Client Computing636▼ 0.60×1 topic
  16. Power Consumption241▼ 0.73×1 topic
  17. Server Selection Algorithms241▼ 0.73×1 topic

Which countries lead Hardware and Architecture research?

On research quality in 2022-now, the United States, China and the United Kingdom rank highest in Hardware and Architecture. By volume, China and the United States publish the most (6.1k and 5.6k works in 2022-now).

By research quality, 2022-now

  1. 1 United States #1 all time 1.28× citation excellence · 1.27× journals · 100% breadth 12.0% top 10% · 4.8k works
  2. 2 China #2 all time 1.05× citation excellence · 1.24× journals · 100% breadth 11.4% top 10% · 5.2k works
  3. 3 United Kingdom #4 all time 1.32× citation excellence · 1.44× journals · 100% breadth 13.0% top 10% · 665 works
  4. 4 Germany #3 all time 0.91× citation excellence · 1.23× journals · 100% breadth 8.5% top 10% · 1.5k works
  5. 5 South Korea #6 all time 1.13× citation excellence · 1.46× journals · 100% breadth 13.3% top 10% · 755 works
  6. 6 Switzerland #5 all time 1.35× citation excellence · 1.82× journals · 100% breadth 14.2% top 10% · 237 works
  7. 7 Italy #12 all time 1.43× citation excellence · 0.72× journals · 100% breadth 13.7% top 10% · 670 works
  8. 8 Canada #11 all time 1.09× citation excellence · 1.16× journals · 100% breadth 11.4% top 10% · 471 works
  9. 9 Netherlands #8 all time 1.17× citation excellence · 1.42× journals · 100% breadth 10.6% top 10% · 254 works
  10. 10 Spain #9 all time 1.02× citation excellence · 0.95× journals · 100% breadth 9.5% top 10% · 452 works

The track on each row is that row's top-10% rate. The ranking itself is the quality score, which compares the rate with what each place's own topics predict, adds its share of papers in the Nature Index journals, and counts output and breadth too.

Of 17 countries ranked in Hardware and Architecture. Ranked on the quality score for 2022-now; the bracket is the all-time rank.

All countries ranked in Hardware and Architecture

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 China 6.1k works
  2. 2 United States 5.6k works
  3. 3 India 3.1k works
  4. 4 Germany 1.7k works
  5. 5 South Korea 900 works
  6. 6 France 889 works
  7. 7 Japan 882 works
  8. 8 United Kingdom 771 works
  9. 9 Italy 752 works
  10. 10 Canada 527 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

China: 28.8%United States: 26.5%India: 14.5%Germany: 8.0%6 others listed: 22.2%29%largest
China6,140 · 28.8%United States5,645 · 26.5%India3,091 · 14.5%Germany1,712 · 8.0%6 others listed4,720 · 22.2%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Hardware and Architecture research?

Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) ranks first in Hardware and Architecture on research quality in 2022-now, followed by Tsinghua University and ETH Zurich.

By research quality, 2022-now

  1. 1 Chinese Academy of Sciences China · Beijing · #25 all time 11.6% top 10% · 343 works
  2. 2 Tsinghua University China · Beijing · #18 all time 18.2% top 10% · 180 works
  3. 3 ETH Zurich Switzerland · Zurich · #2 all time 18.7% top 10% · 80 works
  4. 4 Peking University China · Beijing · #34 all time 19.1% top 10% · 122 works
  5. 5 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign United States · Urbana · #9 all time 24.1% top 10% · 70 works
  6. 6 National University of Singapore Singapore · Singapore · #23 all time 22.2% top 10% · 63 works
  7. 7 Georgia Institute of Technology United States · Atlanta · #14 all time 17.2% top 10% · 105 works
  8. 8 University of Florida United States · Gainesville · #54 all time 10.3% top 10% · 144 works
  9. 9 Shanghai Jiao Tong University China · Shanghai · #62 all time 15.2% top 10% · 136 works
  10. 10 Carnegie Mellon University United States · Pittsburgh · #5 all time 12.3% top 10% · 75 works

The track on each row is that row's top-10% rate. The ranking itself is the quality score, which compares the rate with what each place's own topics predict, adds its share of papers in the Nature Index journals, and counts output and breadth too.

Of 41 institutions above the floor of 40 fractional works in Hardware and Architecture.

Top 100 Hardware and Architecture institutions

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 Chinese Academy of SciencesChina 406 works
  2. 2 Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueFrance 282 works
  3. 3 National University of Defense TechnologyChina 219 works
  4. 4 Tsinghua UniversityChina 216 works
  5. 5 Intel (United States)United States 205 works
  6. 6 Helmholtz Association of German Research CentresGermany 169 works
  7. 7 Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityChina 162 works
  8. 8 University of FloridaUnited States 155 works
  9. 9 Amrita Vishwa VidyapeethamIndia 146 works
  10. 10 Peking UniversityChina 145 works

Who are the leading researchers in Hardware and Architecture?

Counting only their work in Hardware and Architecture, Onur Mutlu, Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Scott A. Mahlke have the most papers in the world top 10% for their subfield and year beyond the 10% expected.

  1. 1 Onur Mutlu United States · #5,670 worldwide overall 98.1 of 172 papers here in the top 10%
  2. 2 Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli United States · #91,751 worldwide overall 65.0 of 267 papers here in the top 10%
  3. 3 Scott A. Mahlke United States · #32,171 worldwide overall 51.0 of 133 papers here in the top 10%
  4. 4 Jason Cong United States · #60,917 worldwide overall 52.4 of 140 papers here in the top 10%
  5. 5 Edward A. Lee United States · #90,938 worldwide overall 51.1 of 154 papers here in the top 10%
  6. 6 Jack J. Dongarra United States · #655,355 worldwide overall 86.9 of 336 papers here in the top 10%
  7. 7 Srinivas Devadas United States · #26,183 worldwide overall 44.5 of 121 papers here in the top 10%
  8. 8 Christos Kozyrakis United States · #3,882 worldwide overall 37.5 of 72 papers here in the top 10%
  9. 9 Saman P. Amarasinghe United States · #27,923 worldwide overall 38.3 of 88 papers here in the top 10%
  10. 10 Andrew B. Kahng United States · #322,057 worldwide overall 48.2 of 164 papers here in the top 10%

Ranked on their work in Hardware and Architecture alone: how many more of their papers here reached the world top 10% for their subfield and year than the 10% expected, among 342,808 ranked researchers with a paper here. Each paper counts once, so many strong papers outrank one famous one, and a long record of ordinary papers does not climb. Identities come from OpenAlex author disambiguation, which occasionally merges or splits people.

Top 100 Hardware and Architecture researchers

What are the most cited papers in Hardware and Architecture?

The most cited paper in Hardware and Architecture is "Fast Parallel Algorithms for Short-Range Molecular Dynamics" (Steven J. Plimpton, 1995), with 45,350 citations. Next come "fastp: an ultra-fast all-in-one FASTQ preprocessor" (31,650) and "MapReduce" (18,671).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 Fast Parallel Algorithms for Short-Range Molecular Dynamics Steven J. Plimpton · Journal of Computational Physics Mar 1995 45,350
2 fastp: an ultra-fast all-in-one FASTQ preprocessor Shifu Chen, Yanqing Zhou, Yaru Chen et al. · Bioinformatics Open access 7 Jul 2018 31,650
3 MapReduce Jay B. Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat · Communications of the ACM Open access 2008 18,671
4 LINCS: A linear constraint solver for molecular simulations Berk Hess, Henk Bekker, Herman J. C. Berendsen et al. · Journal of Computational Chemistry Sep 1997 17,504
5 Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone Noel Gorelick, M. Hancher, Mike Dixon et al. · Remote Sensing of Environment Open access 6 Jul 2017 15,009
All 96 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Hardware and Architecture research done?

The largest centres of Hardware and Architecture research in 2022-now are Beijing (China), Shanghai (China), Seoul (South Korea) and Nanjing (China). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in Santa Clara, Markham and Middletown.

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 BeijingChina 1.6k works
  2. 2 ShanghaiChina 558 works
  3. 3 SeoulSouth Korea 537 works
  4. 4 NanjingChina 360 works
  5. 5 TokyoJapan 345 works
  6. 6 BengaluruIndia 339 works
  7. 7 ChangshaChina 336 works
  8. 8 Xi'anChina 324 works
  9. 9 ChennaiIndia 242 works
  10. 10 GuangzhouChina 233 works

Where it is the local speciality

  1. Santa ClaraUS · 208.3 works30×
  2. MarkhamCA · 27.8 works27×
  3. MiddletownUS · 23.3 works23×
  4. ArmonkUS · 25.6 works21×
← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Hardware and Architecture than the world average.

See Hardware and Architecture on the map

Hardware and Architecture research by country

The best places for Hardware and Architecture research inside each country, with that country's researchers and world standing.

Where is the best place to study Hardware and Architecture?

Among universities, judged by research, ETH Zurich, Stanford University and Tsinghua University score highest, combining standing in the field's ranking, citation excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%10%20%mean 18.45%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Stanford UniversityUniversity of Califo…ETH ZurichTsinghua University
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Standingthis field's institution ranking, three quarters all time and a quarter 2022-now
50%
Citation excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
20%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
5%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
15%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
5%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
5%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreRank in field (all time)Top 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1ETH ZurichSwitzerland 79.9#3 (#2)17.9%5.5×90 +4.7%
2Stanford UniversityUnited States 70.5- (#1)21.2%1.6×55 -2.1%
3Tsinghua UniversityChina 65.6#2 (#18)17.0%3.9×216 +61.6%
4University of California, BerkeleyUnited States 63.5- (#3)21.2%2.7×60 +3.5%
5Carnegie Mellon UniversityUnited States 62.2#10 (#5)12.2%8.1×81 -51.7%
6University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignUnited States 61.2#5 (#9)22.6%3.9×80 -24.5%
7Georgia Institute of TechnologyUnited States 58.9#7 (#14)16.2%8.4×124 -7.3%
8Peking UniversityChina 56.8#4 (#34)17.6%3.0×145 +171.2%
9Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States 56.6- (#6)18.5%3.2×53 -5.2%
10National University of SingaporeSingapore 56.5#6 (#23)20.1%2.6×75 +7.6%

Universities only. The score blends standing (50%), citation excellence (20%), size (15%), specialisation (5%), growth (5%), international reach (5%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise. Standing is the score in this field's institution ranking, three quarters over all time and a quarter 2022-now; excellence averages the two windows too. Four years alone undercount fields such as AI, where many conference and arXiv papers from 2022 on carry no affiliation in the data.

Every institution in Hardware and Architecture, country by country

Is Hardware and Architecture research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 11% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2002. The fastest-growing topics are Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security, VLSI and Analog Circuit Testing and Network Packet Processing and Optimization.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Hardware and Architecture as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.12% in 2024.

still counting0.50%1.0%Hardware and Architecture0.13% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Hardware and Architecture over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Hardware and Architecture9.8% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

  1. Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security+38%
  2. VLSI and Analog Circuit Testing+23%
  3. Network Packet Processing and Optimization+22%
  4. Embedded Systems Design Techniques+17%
  5. Energy Efficiency in Computing+8%
  6. Cloud Computing and Remote Desktop Technologies+3%
  7. Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques-2%
  8. Real-Time Systems Scheduling-4%
← shrinkingno changegrowing →

Growth in output from 2018-21 to 2022-25. Every topic is a page of its own.

What does Hardware and Architecture include?

Parallel Computing and O…79kParallel Computing and Optimization Techniques: 79k fractional worksEmbedded Systems Design …47kEmbedded Systems Design Techniques: 47k fractional worksVLSI and Analog Circuit …32kVLSI and Analog Circuit Testing: 32k fractional worksReal-Time Systems Schedu…24kReal-Time Systems Scheduling: 24k fractional worksPhysical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and Hardware Security: 12k fractional worksNetwork Packet Processing and Optimization: 11k fractional worksCloud Computing and Remote Desktop Technologies: 5,053 fractional worksEnergy Efficiency in Computing: 1,539 fractional works

Area is fractional works in that topic. Every name below is a page of its own.

Share who leads Hardware and Architecture

Who leads Hardware and Architecture, on Science Explorer

A card with the countries and institutions that lead Hardware and Architecture, for a post or a slide.

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1200 × 630 PNG, sized for social posts, drawn from the latest snapshot.

The leading institutions' badges6Each links to that institution's page and updates with every snapshot

Questions people ask

Who leads hardware and computer architecture research?

Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) ranks first in Hardware and Architecture on research quality in 2022-now, followed by Tsinghua University and ETH Zurich. On research quality in 2022-now, the United States, China and the United Kingdom rank highest in Hardware and Architecture. By volume, China and the United States publish the most (6.1k and 5.6k works in 2022-now).

All 1,273 questions in the Question Catalogue

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