The GI/ITG International Conference on Architecture of Computing Systems (ARCS) conferences series has over 38 years of tradition reporting leading edge research in computer architectures and operating systems. This year, the conference has a special focus on “Open-Source Architectures: From RISC-V to AI Accelerators”. Furthermore, ARCS hosts a PhD Forum and invites applications from PhD students at any stage of their doctoral studies on hardware architectures, programming models, runtime environments, and related research topics.

The intent of the ARCS PhD Forum is to bring together PhD students who will not have defended their thesis before March 2026. The main goal of this forum is to foster excellence by providing young researchers with feedback and advice that are particularly relevant to their doctoral studies and career development. The forum will give participants the opportunity to present their ongoing research in a friendly environment.

The schedule includes:

• Prepare a paper of up to 10 pages plus references
• Participate in the review process
• Present your work (pitch talk and poster presentation)
• Identify contact points between your work and others
• Build your social research network
• Meet experts in your research domain
• Enjoy the opportunity to improve your PhD work, overcome stipulations and learn from the experts

Beside the conference main theme, the ARCS’26 conference welcomes all contributions on hardware architectures, as well as their programming models, software stacks (operating systems, compilers...), their insertion into computing systems, the challenges to port optimized code, as well as Organic Computing and related initiatives. An extensive list of topics can be found here.

PhD students are invited to participate by submitting a paper of up to 10 pages plus references via EasyChair (select the PhD Forum track).

Papers must be written in English. Papers should be formatted according to Springer LNCS style and submitted in PDF format. The accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of ARCS 2026 (listed in Scopus and DBLP).

The papers should clearly motivate the PhD projects. Additionally, the key research questions driving the doctoral project should be outlined and the general approach or methodology used to address them should be described. Therefore, providing sufficient foundational information is essential to help readers understand the context. Finally, the papers should also discuss the current state of the doctoral research, such as progress made, any preliminary findings, or ongoing challenges.

Thorsten Jungeblut, Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany

Marc Hesse, Bielefeld University, Germany

Ghassan Al-Falouji, University of Kiel, Germany