Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2015
From insideHPC
Code Modernization: Two Perspectives, One Goal
"Modern systems will continue to grow in scale, and applications must evolve to fully exploit the performance of these systems. While today’s HPC developers are aware of code modernization, many are not yet taking full advantage…
From insideHPC
UberCloud Partners with EGI to Bridge Research and Innovation
Today the UberCloud announced a collaboration with EGI based on a shared vision to embrace distributed computing, storage and data related technologies. As a federation of more than 350 resource centers across 50 countries, EGI…
From insideHPC
Video: Spectra Logic Changes Storage Economics with ArcticBlue at SC15
Matt Starr from Spectra Logic describes the company's new ArcticBlue nearline disk storage system. "If you think about a tape subsystem, it's probably the best cost footprint, density footprint that you can get. ArticBlue brings…
From insideHPC
Univa Supports Dynamic Clusters on Microsoft Azure
"With Azure, Microsoft makes it easy for Univa customers to run true performance applications on demand in a cloud environment," said Bill Bryce, Univa Vice President of Products. "With the power of Microsoft Azure, Univa Grid…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cisco and Ericsson Hook Up for IoT
This looks of interest, experts in the network space. Cisco and Ericsson Hook Up for IoT Networks Cisco and Ericsson on ... announced a partnership to build out a next-generation network for smart things and the carriers and…
From insideHPC
Video: General Atomics Delivers Data-Aware Cloud Storage Gateway with ArcaStream
"Ngenea’s blazingly-fast on-premises storage stores frequently accessed active data on the industry’s leading high performance file system, IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS). Less frequently accessed data, including backup, archival …
From The Eponymous Pickle
What is Employee Engagement?
In the HBR. Definitions, expectations of results? " ... This holistic approach to understanding engagement will yield more-detailed insights into what makes people stick around and do their best work. Instead of viewing engagement…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stockholm as a Startup Unicorn Factory
In K@W: The examples are interesting, some surprising to me." ... What do Silicon Valley and Stockholm have in common? Spawning billion-dollar tech companies. After Silicon Valley, the Swedish capital produces the highest number…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Become a Watson Analytics Expert
Gives you a good introduction about how this all works. Non technical. By Francis Hall:" ... Watson Analytics is a tool that’s been designed for business users. It’s not technical; you don’t need any prior knowledge of data…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Thymio–An interesting Looking Robot for Teaching
New things for teaching seem to appear every week. Sometimes they are around for a while before I find out about them. Apparently the world of computer science education does not revolve around me. :-) In any case I recentlyThymio…
From Schneier on Security
BlackBerry Leaves Pakistan Rather Than Provide a Government Backdoor
BlackBerry has chosen to shut down operations in Pakistan rather than provide the government with backdoor access to encrypted communications. Pakistan is a relatively small market, but still....
From Putting People First
Becoming patient-centric: the case for a humanistic approach to patient insight-mining
While patient-centricity is at the top of the agenda of most Life Science organizations, there is an urgent need for commercial teams to evolve their market research practices to cultivate a richer understanding of patients. …
From Putting People First
Becoming patient-centric: the case for a humanistic approach to patient insight-mining
While patient-centricity is at the top of the agenda of most Life Science organizations, there is an urgent need for commercial teams to evolve their market research practices to cultivate a richer understanding of patients. …
From Schneier on Security
The Moral Dimension of Cryptography
Phil Rogaway has written an excellent paper titled "The Moral Character of Cryptography Work." In it, he exhorts cryptographers to consider the morality of their research, and to build systems that enhance privacy rather than…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Science from Scratch
Very nice intro to Data Science, Only moderately technical. Covers a number of the most important concepts very well. Also instructional Python examples.Data Science from Scratch: First Principles with Python 1st Editionby…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Fulfillment Robotics
On Amazon Fulfillment robotics. Note in particular the augmentation and cooperation with. This makes robots better unit resources.In Wired: " ... Amazon’s robots were invented by a company called Kiva Systems, which Amazon…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
A review of Google’s Exploring Computational Thinking resources
By Joe Kmoch In Spring 2015, Google began work on revamping their CT website. Their materials are available at a website called Exploring Computational Thinking: https://www.google.com/edu/resources/programs/exploring-computational…
From insideHPC
Video: High Performance Clustering for Trillion Particle Simulations
"Modern Cosmology and Plasma Physics codes are capable of simulating trillions of particles on petascale systems. Each time step generated from such simulations is on the order of 10s of TBs. Summarizing and analyzing raw particle…
From insideHPC
Avere Enables Cloudbursting Across Different Providers at SC15
"Avere Systems is now offering you ultimate cloud flexibility. We've now announced full support across three different cloud service providers: Google, Amazon, and Azure. And now we offer customers to be able to move their compute…
From Putting People First
Why Detroit needs user-centered design
The transition to AVs is very much a human evolution grounded in designing a complex and nuanced relationship between the machine and us—regardless of how good the machine may be. For automakers, writes Artefact’s John Rousseau…
From Putting People First
Why Detroit needs user-centered design
The transition to AVs is very much a human evolution grounded in designing a complex and nuanced relationship between the machine and us—regardless of how good the machine may be. For automakers, writes Artefact’s John Rousseau…
From insideHPC
QCD Optimization
Quantum chromodynamics is the theory of the strong nuclear force. The applications using theis theory are used heavily in the study of nuclear interactions. A significant percent of the total time on US Department of Energy systems…
From Putting People First
[Book] Swedish design, an ethnography
Swedish Design, An Ethnography By Keith M. Murphy Cornell University Press April 2015, 264 pages Swedish designers are noted for producing distinctive and elegant forms; their furniture and household goods have an especially …
From Putting People First
[Book] Swedish design, an ethnography
Swedish Design, An Ethnography By Keith M. Murphy Cornell University Press April 2015, 264 pages Swedish designers are noted for producing distinctive and elegant forms; their furniture and household goods have an especially …
From insideHPC
1degreenorth to Prototype HPDA Infrastructure in Singapore
At SC15, 1degreenorth announced plans to build an on-demand High Performance Computing Big DataAnalytics (“HPC-BDA”) infrastructure the National Supercomputing Center (NSCC) Singapore. The prototype will be used for experimentation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Progress and Challenges in Interactive Cognitive Systems
CSIG presentation today:" ... Pat Langley, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Auckland and as Director of the Institute for the Study of Learning and Expertise. Pat presented “Progress and Challenges in Interactive…
From Putting People First
The generation that doesn’t remember life before smartphones
Jacqueline Detwiler explores for Esquire what it means to be an American teenager in 2015. Zac probably started developing memories around 1999, the year Napster upended the music industry by turning songs into sharable files…
From Putting People First
The generation that doesn’t remember life before smartphones
Jacqueline Detwiler explores for Esquire what it means to be an American teenager in 2015. Zac probably started developing memories around 1999, the year Napster upended the music industry by turning songs into sharable files…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How AI is Growing Up
True, but the cost of constructing tailored systems is still high, starting to see automated systems by industry that will change the way we work. Part of this is driven by more sensors, and thus more data in many contexts…
From insideHPC
Intel® Scalable System Framework and Dell’s strategic focus on HPC
In this video, Jim Ganthier from Dell and Charlie Wuischpard from Intel describe how their two companies are working together to drive innovation in HPC. "A lot of the excitement and the buzz that you're seeing here around the…