Communications of the ACM
Latest Research
From Communications of the ACM
An Introduction to Data Representation Synthesis
We consider the problem of specifying combinations of data structures with complex sharing in a manner that is declarative and results in provably correct code.
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: The Realities of Home Broadband
Buying residential broadband services seems relatively simple: pick among a small number of plans, and then compare similar plans by price. Unfortunately, reality...
From Communications of the ACM
Measuring Home Broadband Performance
We present the results from the first study of Internet access link performance measured directly from home routers. Our findings provide a snapshot of access network...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: SQL on an Encrypted Database
There is some risk in trusting the cloud providers with sensitive data. Why not encrypt the data stored in cloud services?
From Communications of the ACM
CryptDB: Processing Queries on an Encrypted Database
An ideal solution to satisfying the dual goals of protecting data confidentiality and running computations is to enable a server to compute over encrypted data,...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: For Better or Worse, Benchmarks Shape a Field
Like other IT fields, computer architects initially reported incomparable results. We quickly saw the folly of this approach. We then went through a sequence...
From Communications of the ACM
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Power, Performance, and Upheaval
The past 10 years have delivered two significant revolutions. Microprocessor design has been transformed — leading to multicore processors. And an entirely new...
From Communications of the ACM
Exact Matrix Completion via Convex Optimization
Suppose that one observes an incomplete subset of entries selected from a low-rank matrix. When is it possible to complete the matrix and recover the entries that...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Reconstructing the Unknown, Balancing Structure and Uncertainty
The problem of estimating or reconstructing an unknown structured object from incomplete, partial, noisy measurements is a fundamental one in scientific and technological...
From Communications of the ACM
Searching the Village: Models and Methods For Social Search
With Aardvark, a social search engine, users ask a question, either by IM, e-mail, Web input, text message, or voice. Aardvark then routes the question to the person...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Who Knows?: Searching For Expertise on the Social Web
It is difficult to remember what people had to do to find the answer to a question before the Web. One option might be to call a friend who might know the answer...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: The Benefits of Capability-Based Protection
Affordable personal computing hardware and the usable GUI-based PC operating systems made the vision of "a computer on every desktop and in every home" a reality...
From Communications of the ACM
A Taste of Capsicum: Practical Capabilities For Unix
Capsicum is a lightweight operating system capability and sandbox framework planned for inclusion in FreeBSD 9. Capsicum extends, rather than replaces, UNIX APIs...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Content-Centric Networking
Much has changed in the 50 years since the invention of packet switching and the early network designs and deployments that...
From Communications of the ACM
Networking Named Content
Current network use is dominated by content distribution and retrieval yet current networking protocols are designed for conversations between hosts. We present...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Power Efficiency as the #1 Design Constraint
Moore's Law, and associated observations by Bob Dennard, describe key technical...
From Communications of the ACM
Understanding Sources of Ineffciency in General-Purpose Chips
To better understand what improvement in processor efficiency is possible, we quantify the performance and energy overheads of a 720p HD H.264 encoder running on...
From Communications of the ACM
Technical Perspective: Making Browser Extensions Secure
Vulnerabilities in browsers and their extensions have become the primary venue through which cyber criminals compromise the security...
From Communications of the ACM
Vetting Browser Extensions For Security Vulnerabilities with VEX
The browser has become the de facto platform for everyday computation and a popular target for attackers of computer systems. Among the many potential attacks that...
From Communications of the ACM