Le programme d'enseignement en réseaux devra être guidé par les tendances que l'on peut observer dans le développement des technologies de communication. Ces tendances nous montrent que l'enseignement en réseaux doit se focaliser de préférence sur les aspects logiciels : les protocoles, les services et les applications, et inclure une part importante de méthodes d'analyse et de conception. Un autre aspect concerne le contenu multimédia qui devient de plus en plus riche et impose de nouvelles contraintes sur la communication.

In this context, electrical engineering encompasses integrated circuit and device design, microelectro-mechanics, electromagnetics, and so on. Computer engineering includes the design of computer systems hardware (such as processors, network switches, and peripherals) and related software (such as compilers, operating systems, and networking software). Somewhere in the midst of ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering) are topics like signal processing, communications, control, application-spe-cific hardware design, and the broad terrain of het-erogeneous systems (including hardware, software, and physical channels). In the future there will be (or should be) considerable overlap between these curricula, and also an overlap with computer science.

Our students will face incessant change, and thus one of the most important skills we can impart is the ability to learn.

Digital systems will increasingly be programmatically similar to some areas of computer science. And computer science as a discipline has been moving in the direction of digital systems. Some of the most exciting developments in networking, like IP and tag switching, are actually a merger of the traditional ECE and CS viewpoints, exploiting the strengths of each. Likewise, mobile computing done correctly becomes intertwined with signal processing and network pro-tocols. Multimedia applications in a networked computing environment encounter many issues of source coding and signal processing that are a traditional ECE focus.

We believe that a modern curriculum in electrical and computer engineering cannot be logically separated from a computer science curriculum. The levels of abstraction used to design and model electronic systems increasingly coincide with those used in computer science, and any artificial separation will inevitably lead to significant redundancy in the two curricula.

Many major applications will tightly intermingle traditional computing (algorithmic and document) and communications (collaboration and coordination) traditions.

New Berkeley EECS programs-all students take a core course in each area:

• Software
• Architecture/digital design
• Networks/systems
• Electronics

Computing-communications convergence involves processing, storage, and communication.

Industries and/or technologies that were largely independent become competitive, or complementary, or both. This is accompanied by reorganization of industry to adapt to changing realities.

Convergence between Computing, Content, and Communications. Communication is more critical than computing.

Information Technology will be one of the key factors driving progress in the 21st century. It will transform the way we live, learn, work, and play. Advances in computing and communications technology will create a new infrastructure for business, scientific research, and social interaction. This expanding infrastructure will provide us with new tools for communicating throughout the world and for acquiring knowledge and insight from information.

The Nation needs significant new research on computing and communication systems.

Four areas of the overall research agenda particularly need attention and must be a major part of a strategic initiative in long-term research and development:

• Software
• Scalable Information Infrastructure
• High-End Computing
• Socioeconomic Impact

Advances in the power of the general-purpose processor are easy to see and well understood; workstation speed has more than doubled every 2 years, and memory sizes have grown at equivalent rates. But increased processing power can also often be used to greater advantage to increase flexibility and generality, attributes that are key to much of the ongoing transformation of communications technology and thus the communications industry itself. Three specific trends relating to increased flexibility and generality are relevant to the steering committee's assessment:

• the increasing use of software rather than hardware for implementation of functions,
• the increasing modularity of design, and
• the increasing ability to process and transform the data being transported within the communications system.

There has been a general downturn in the communications and IT industry. Many dot.com companies have gone out of business, and the process has not yet come to an end. As sales and profits have been lower than expected, even the large telecommunication companies have had to re-structure their operations.

At the same time, mobile communication is seeing the advent of the third generation of mobile cellular systems, UMTS. With UMTS it will be possible to use high bit-rate data communication on the move and ubiquitously.

UMTS will enable mobile Internet access with its information and e-commerce transaction services. It is expected that mobile access to the Internet will outnumber fixed access within two to five years.

However, the transition from a voice-orientated system to a data-orientated system is not going as smoothly as anticipated by the industry. In Europe the market for GSM type communication is stagnant, and new applications that could attract significantly more traffic, while one is waiting for UMTS, are hard to find. Consumer behaviour is likely to be affected for a long time after the events of September 11, 2001, positively and negatively.

In front of such a backdrop one has to see the efforts of the industry to start defining the Wireless World, the systems that will be introduced into the market after 2011.