Communications of the ACM
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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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Sometimes the Quickest Path Is Not a Sraight Line
Sometimes the fastest pathway from point A to point B is not a straight line: for example, if you're underwater and contending with strong and shifting currents...
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Testing Unbuilt Chips
MIT researchers have developed Hornet, a software simulator they say models the performance of multicore chips much more accurately than its predecessors.
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Hail to the Geeks
Basketball dominates the American sports landscape in March. So perhaps it’s fitting that the sixth annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, held last week...
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Tiny 3D Chips
Microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, are small devices with huge potential. Typically made of components less than 100 microns in size—the diameter of a human...
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Microchips' Optical Future
To keep energy consumption under control, future chips may need to move data using light instead of electricity—and the technical expertise to build them may reside...
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The Blind Codemaker
Researchers at MIT, Tel Aviv University, and Google have developed a coding scheme that guarantees the fastest possible delivery of data over fluctuating wireless...
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The Mathematics of Taste
The design of aromas—the flavors of packaged food and drink and the scents of cleaning products, toiletries and other household items—is a multibillion-dollar business...
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Sharpening the Lines
Researchers at MIT and the University of Utah have developed a technique that they say surpasses the fundamental limits of microchip design and could lead to more...
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Streamlining Chip Design
MIT researchers have developed a system that enables hardware designers to specify, in a single programming language, all of the functions they want a device to...
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Robots in Reality
Consider the following scenario: A scout surveys a high-rise building that's been crippled by an earthquake, trapping workers inside. After looking for a point...
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Important Step Toward Computing with Light
There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips—devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their...
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Searching For Balloons in a Social Network
In the process of winning DARPA's Red Balloon Challenge, the MIT researchers collected and analyzed a large amount of data on the size and scope of Internet connections...
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A New Planning Tool Helps Direct Traffic on Aircraft Carriers
On the deck of an aircraft carrier, where up to 60 aircraft are crammed into 4.5 acres (1.8 hectares), real estate is at a premium. While aircraft directors wave...
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Improving Recommendation Systems
MIT professor Devavrat Shah thinks that the most common approach to recommendation systems is fundamentally flawed; he says recommendation systems should ask users...
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Long Live the Qubit!
A quantum computer is a device—still largely theoretical—that could perform some types of calculations much more rapidly than classical computers. While a bit...
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Toward Faster Transistors
In the 1980s and '90s, competition in the computer industry was all about "clock speed"—how many megahertz, and ultimately gigahertz, a chip could boast. But...
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Better Glasses-Free 3-D
MIT researchers have developed HR3D, a new method for glasses-free 3D displays. The researchers say their method could double the battery life of devices such...
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The Next Operating System
Operating systems for multicore chips will need more information about their own performance—and more resources for addressing whatever problems arise.
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