Communications of the ACM
Latest Practice
From Communications of the ACM
GFS: Evolution on Fast-Forward
Kirk McKusick and Sean Quinlan discuss the origin and evolution of the Google File System.
From Communications of the ACM
Software Model Checking Takes Off
A translator framework enables the use of model checking in complex avionics systems and other industrial settings.
From Communications of the ACM
Managing Contention For Shared Resources on Multicore Processors
Contention for caches, memory controllers, and interconnects can be eased by contention-aware scheduling algorithms.
From Communications of the ACM
Power-Efficient Software
Power-manageable hardware can help save energy, but what can software developers do to address the problem?
From Communications of the ACM
Triple-Parity RAID and Beyond
As hard-drive capacities continue to outpace their throughput, the time has come for a new level of RAID.
From Communications of the ACM
Other People's Data
Companies have access to more types of external data than ever before. How can they integrate it most effectively?
From Communications of the ACM
Data in Flight
How streaming SQL technology can help solve the Web 2.0 data crunch.
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?
From Communications of the ACM
What DNS Is Not
DNS is many things to many people — perhaps too many things to too many people.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
From Communications of the ACM
Unifying Biological Image Formats with HDF5
The biosciences need an image format capable of high performance and long-term maintenance. Is HDF5 the answer?
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.
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?
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.
From Communications of the ACM
Reveling in Constraints
The Google Web Toolkit is an end-run around Web development obstacles.
From Communications of the ACM