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Daniel Reed

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BLOG@CACM Sep 25 2009

Smart Grids: Getting Personal

How many electronic devices do you own? It is tempting to answer, “Just a handful,” but the truth is much more nuanced. Here’s a simple experiment that will (quite literally) illuminate the truth. Some evening, after darkness has fallen, turn off all the lights in your house, walk from room to room and count the number of lighted power indicators, blinking LEDs and glowing screens. I suspect you will be surprised.
Computing Applications
BLOG@CACM Sep 4 2009

The World Is Small

Not that many years ago international travel meant one was largely inaccessible to colleagues at home. Today, when my plane lands, I will turn on my smart phone, connect to the local GSM network and download queued messages.  Now if I could just catch up on my email deluge.
Computing Applications
BLOG@CACM Aug 13 2009

Impact, Not Indicators or Artifacts

It is worth remembering that our field grew from the confluence of mathematics, physics, electrical engineering, psychology, information theory and management and a host of other disciplines. The founders were radicals and iconoclasts, eschewing the extant culture of their disciplines because this new notion of computing was so pregnant with possibilities that could transform society and the nature of discovery.
Computing Profession
BLOG@CACM Jul 31 2009

Bridging Cultures For Collaboration

All too often, our technical curricula fail to focus on the human aspect of cross-domain collaboration. Technical skills are necessary, but not sufficient. One must also understand and meld the disparate motivations of the collaborative team in a positive and productive way to achieve success.
Computing Applications
BLOG@CACM Jul 20 2009

Lessons From Apollo

 As we consider how to explain the necessity of long-term investment in science and technology research and development, as we teach a new generation of students, and as we seek to broaden the base of participation in computing, it behooves us to remember the small child in each of us, the one who watched in open mouthed wonder, who felt the chill run down their spine and sensed the passion of others who were committed to discovery. 
Computing Profession
BLOG@CACM Jun 20 2009

The Fallacy of Rankings

The list of the world's fastest computers will soon be announced. As always, we can expect the latest announcement to garner interest among the technological community, receive coverage in the popular press, and secure bragging rights for the organizations, vendors and countries involved. Though rankings (total orders) are intuitive and easily explained – a valuable attribute in today’s attention constrained society – they rarely capture the true complexity of multidimensional comparison. 
Architecture and Hardware
BLOG@CACM Jun 9 2009

HPC: Making a Small Fortune

There is an old joke in the high-performance computing community that begins with a question, “How do you make a small fortune in high-performance computing?” There are several variations on the joke, but they all end with the same punch line, “Start with a large fortune and ship at least one generation of product. You will be left with a small fortune.” Forty years of experience, with companies large and small, has confirmed the sad truth of this statement. 
Architecture and Hardware

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