Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building pward
Intel announced that by building a key portion of a microprocessor's transistor above the chip's surface, it has found a way to make smaller, faster, lower-power...
From ACM News
How Credit Card Data Is Stolen and Sold
Last week, after the Sony PlayStation Network was attacked by a group of unknown hackers, Sony's 77 million customers, along with security specialists and government...
From ACM News
Digging Deeper, Seeing Farther: Supercomputers Alter Science
Inside a darkened theater a viewer floats in a redwood forest displayed with Imax-like clarity on a cavernous overhead screen.
From ACM News
Cameras Read License Plates, Helping City's Police
When Luis Zeledon was captured by detectives, it was probably safe to say that he had not intended to be found. He was hiding in someone else’s apartment in Queens...
From ACM News
Swiping Is the Easy Part
The cellphone has been more than a cellphone for years, but soon it could take on an entirely new role—standing in for all of the credit and debit cards crammed...
From ACM News
Keeping Tabs on the Infrastructure, Wirelessly
Engineers routinely inspect bridges and other structures for cracks and corrosion. But because they can’t always be there in person, one highly intelligent bridge...
From ACM News
Quake Moved Japan Closer to U.S. and Altered Earth's Spin
The magnitude-8.9 earthquake that struck northern Japan on Friday not only violently shook the ground and generated a devastating tsunami, it also moved the coastline...
From ACM News
Researchers Show How a Car's Electronics Can Be Taken Over Remotely
With a modest amount of expertise, computer hackers could gain remote access to someone's car—just as they do to people's personal computers—and take over the...
From ACM News
Software Progress Beats Moore
One of the old jokes in computing is that what the hardware giveth, the software taketh away.
From ACM News
The New Police Siren: You
Joe Bader tried setting the two tones of his invention four notes apart on the musical scale, but the result sounded like music, not a siren. Same thing when...
From ACM News
Remapping Computer Circuitry to Avert Impending Bottlenecks
Hewlett-Packard researchers have proposed a fundamental rethinking of the modern computer for the coming era of nanoelectronics—a marriage of memory and computing...
From ACM News
Mature Mobile Industry Moves to Keep Customers It Has
In the pioneer days of the mobile phone industry, wireless carriers raced to put phones in the hands of the unconnected masses. With cellphones now ubiquitous...
From ACM News
Nasa
The last time NASA visited the Tempel 1 comet, it was with fireworks, on July 4, 2005. On that day, the Deep Impact spacecraft slammed an 820-pound projectile...
From ACM News
Intel Spreads Its niversity Research Bets
Computing in general is increasingly applying the old engineering dictum, divide and conquer. Look at the engines behind cloud computing—vast, distributed armies...
From ACM News
In Pursuit of Qubits, Uniting Subatomic Particles By the Billions
In a step toward a generation of ultrafast computers, physicists have used bursts of radio waves to briefly create 10 billion quantum-entangled pairs of subatomic...
From ACM News
Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay
The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories...
From ACM TechNews
Graphics Ability Is the New Goal For Chip Makers
Computer chip makers will highlight the improved visual performance of their technology at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
From ACM News
Graphics Ability Is the New Goal For Chip Makers
In the good old days, it was all about speed.
From ACM News
Computers That See You and Keep Watch Over You
Hundreds of correctional officers from prisons across America descended last spring on a shuttered penitentiary in West Virginia for annual training exercises...
From ACM News