Communications of the ACM
Will AI Replace Computer Programmers?
Advances in artificial intelligence tools that can code could improve productivity, but portend disruption.
From ACM NewsAn edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
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Nanotubes Give Batteries a Jolt
Lithium-ion batteries with nanotube electrodes could go longer between charges.
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How the Apple Ii Taught Programmers to Economize
Imagine trying to program a virtual machine--a software instance that mimics all the characteristics of a physical computer--on a device with 2 kilobytes of RAM...
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Mobile Chips Threaten High-Performance Manufacturers
At the end of 2009, Intel was shipping about 80 percent of all x86 processors--the type of chip that powers, for example, Windows-based personal computers. AMD...
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Ranking the Most Powerful Supercomputers
The U.S. still leads in high-performance computing capacity, but China is undergoing explosive growth.
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Lining Up 'nanodot' Memory
North Carolina State University researchers have developed a method for growing magnetic nanoparticles that could lead to much more dense computer memory devices...
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Redesigning the Web For Touch Screens
Last week, in an essay criticizing Adobe's Flash platform, Apple CEO Steve Jobs drew attention to, among other things, its lack of support for touch--something...
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A Flexible Color Display
Hewlett-Packard Labs researchers are testing a flexible, full-color display that saves power by reflecting ambient light instead of using a backlight.
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Speedier Bug Catching
Engineers have developed new transistors that can locate hardware bugs in a fraction of the time it takes to perform normal debugging.
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Intel Prototypes Low-Power Circuits
The smaller a silicon transistor becomes, the more electrons it leaks. That can mean unreliable, battery-draining chips. Researchers at Intel have come up with...
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Magnetic Solder to Wire 3-D Chips
A new type of solder can be melted and shaped in three dimensions under the force of a weak magnetic field. Using a magnet to pull the solder up through narrow...
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Faster Optical Switching Through Chemistry
New molecules produced at Georgia Tech could enable engineers to build all-optical data routers, ultimately leading to transmission speeds as high as two terabits...
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A Faster Wireless Web
Transfers of large amounts of data across the Internet to wireless devices suffer from a key problem: The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) used to send and receive...
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Wi-Fi at the Speed of Light
A wireless network that uses reflected infrared light instead of radio waves has transmitted data through the air at a speed of one gigabit per second—six to 14...
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A 50-Watt Cellular Network
An Indian telecom company is deploying simple cell phone base stations that need as little as 50 watts of solar-provided power. It will soon announce plans to sell...
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Searching For Disease Clues in Genetic Diversity
Over the last few years, scientists have discovered hundreds of genetic variants linked to disease. But the vast majority of that research has focused on people...
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What's Inside the Ipad's Chip?
Despite widespread speculation, nothing beyond what Steve Jobs announced last week is known about the A4 chip at the heart of the Apple iPad. Jobs described the...
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New Life For Magnetic Tape
Music lovers may have long forsaken them, but magnetic tapes still reign supreme when it comes to storing vast amounts of digital data. And new research from IBM...
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China Details Homemade Supercomputer Plan
Researchers at the Chinese Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) have built a supercomputer using only home-grown microprocessors. The supercomputer, known as...
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Bringing Color to E-Readers
One of the hot topics at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas is color e-readers, with several companies showcasing new products. While E-Ink has...
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