acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Latest Practice



Maximizing Power Efficiency with Asymmetric Multicore Systems
From Communications of the ACM

Maximizing Power Efficiency with Asymmetric Multicore Systems

How do we develop software to make the most of the promise that asymmetric multicore systems use a lot less energy?

What DNS Is Not
From Communications of the ACM

What DNS Is Not

DNS is many things to many people — perhaps too many things to too many people.

A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports
From Communications of the ACM

A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports

An RFID-passport attack is more plausible than skimming RFID information. Do RFID passports make us vulnerable to identity theft?

You Don't Know Jack About Software Maintenance
From Communications of the ACM

You Don't Know Jack About Software Maintenance

Long considered an afterthought, software maintenance is easiest and most effective when built into a system from the ground up.

Four Billion Little Brothers?
From Communications of the ACM

Four Billion Little Brothers?: Privacy, Mobile Phones, and Ubiquitous Data Collection

Participatory sensing technologies could improve our lives and our communities, but at what cost to our privacy?

Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk
From Communications of the ACM

Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk

As the sophistication of wiretapping technology grows, so too do the risks it poses to our privacy and security.

A Conversation with David E. Shaw
From Communications of the ACM

A Conversation with David E. Shaw

Stanford professor Pat Hanrahan sits down with the noted hedge fund founder, computational biochemist, and (above all) computer scientist.

Probing Biomolecular Machines with Graphics Processors
From Communications of the ACM

Probing Biomolecular Machines with Graphics Processors

GPU acceleration and other computer performance increases will offer critical benefits to biomedical science.

Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems
From Communications of the ACM

Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems

All revision-control systems come with complicated sets of trade-offs. How do you find the best match between tool and team?

Monitoring and Control of Large Systems With MonALISA
From Communications of the ACM

Monitoring and Control of Large Systems With MonALISA

MonALISA developers describe how it works, the key design principles behind it, and the biggest technical challenges in building it.

Reveling in Constraints
From Communications of the ACM

Reveling in Constraints

The Google Web Toolkit is an end-run around Web development obstacles.

CTO Roundtable
From Communications of the ACM

CTO Roundtable: Cloud Computing

The age of cloud computing has begun. How can companies take advantage of the new opportunities it provides?

Browser Security
From Communications of the ACM

Browser Security: Lessons from Google Chrome

To shield the browser from attacks, Google Chrome developers eyed three key problems.

Fighting Physics: A Tough Battle
From Communications of the ACM

Fighting Physics: A Tough Battle

The laws of physics and the Internet's routing infrastructure affect performance in a big way.

The Five-Minute Rule 20 Years Later
From Communications of the ACM

The Five-Minute Rule 20 Years Later

Revisiting Gray and Putzolu's famous rule in the age of Flash.

Whither Sockets?
From Communications of the ACM

Whither Sockets?

The pervasive and long-lasting sockets API has remained largely unchanged since 1982. How have developers worked around its inherent limitations and what is the...

Network Front-End Processors, Yet Again
From Communications of the ACM

Network Front-End Processors, Yet Again

The history of NFE processors sheds light on the trade-offs involved in designing network stack software.

Hard-Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
From Communications of the ACM

Hard-Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

New drive technologies and increased capacities create new categories of failure modes that will influence system designs.

Debugging AJAX in Production
From Communications of the ACM

Debugging AJAX in Production

Lacking proper browser support, what steps can we take to debug production AJAX code?

API Design Matters
From Communications of the ACM

API Design Matters

It is very easy to create a bad API and rather difficult to create a good one.  Recent APIs implemented in modern programming languages make the same mistakes as...
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account