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
10 Robots Inspired by Animals and Insects
All the research in the world can't beat millions of years of evolution.
From ACM News
The Problem With Landing Humans on Mars (and How to Fix It)
When NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory—scheduled to lift-off from Cape Canaveral later this week—touches down on the Red Planet in August of 2012, the one-ton probe...
From ACM News
Russian Probe Misses Mars Trip
Russia's stranded Phobos-Grunt spacecraft reportedly has lost its main opportunity to go to Mars, land on one of its moons and return to Earth with a sample....
From Communications of the ACM
Dennis Ritchie, 1941-2011
Colleagues recall the creator of C and codeveloper Unix, an unassuming but brilliant man who enjoyed playing practical jokes on his coworkers.
From Communications of the ACM
Brave NUI World
Natural user interface developments, such as Microsoft's Kinect, may indicate the beginning of the end for the mouse.
From Communications of the ACM
The Rise of Molecular Machines
The field of molecular computing is achieving new levels of control over biochemical processes and fostering sophisticated connections between computer science...
From ACM TechNews
Rankings Released For Supercomputers Doing 'big Data'
This year's Graph500 competition, which measures supercomputers that handle big data scaling problems, featured 50 systems, up from nine last year. The U.S. National...
From ACM Opinion
Google and Microsoft Talk Artificial Intelligence
Google and Microsoft don't share a stage often, being increasingly fierce competitors in areas such as Web search, mobile, and cloud computing. But the rivals...
From ACM News
Intel Shows Off Its Knights Corner One Teraflops Chip
Intel has developed an accelerator chip capable of running at speeds of one teraflops, equal to one trillion calculations per second.
From ACM TechNews
Exascale Computing Seen in This Decade
A major focus at the SC11 supercomputing conference was plans to develop an exascale computing system, which would be about 1,000 times more powerful than any...
From ACM TechNews
Linux Loses its Luster as a Darling Among Developers
Linux as an application development platform has fallen to third place in popularity behind Mac OS and Windows, according to an Evans Data Corp. survey.
From ACM TechNews
Japan's K Computer Retains TOP500 Crown
Japan's K Computer retained its title as the world's most powerful supercomputer, ranking first in the most recent edition of the TOP500 List with a speed of 10...
From ACM News
Barcelona Center Makes Super Bet on Cellphone Chips
Supercomputers, once built from handcrafted circuitry, were transformed when companies started assembling them from inexpensive PC-style microprocessors. Researchers...
From ACM News
China Looms Large in Race of the Supercomputers
Ten years ago, a ranking of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers included precisely three entries from China. The most powerful of these—a system used to...
From ACM TechNews
China to Build More Supercomputers With Homegrown Chips
China will rely less on chips made by foreign companies for its supercomputers over the next five years, says the National Supercomputer Center's Pan Jingshan.
From ACM News
The Revolution in Photography
When a set of online teasers for a new camera called the Lytro appeared earlier this year, you could have been forgiven for seeing the invention as just another...
From ACM News
DARPA Looks to Protect Drones from Hack Attacks
Cybersecurity, as interpreted by the Pentagon’s premiere researcher, isn’t just about protecting data networks. It’s about making the military’s killer drones...
From ACM News
Russians Fight to Save Mars Probe After Mishap
Russian space engineers scrambled Wednesday to salvage an ambitious science mission to Mars after the unmanned spacecraft became stranded in Earth orbit. If they...
From ACM Opinion
Irobot Ceo: Enough with the Gimmick 'bots
It's no surprise that uber-geek and iRobot CEO Colin Angle is a Star Wars fan.
From ACM News