GFS: Evolution on Fast-Forward
Kirk McKusick and Sean Quinlan discuss the origin and evolution of the Google File System.
Practice
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Toward Energy-Efficient Computing
What will it take to make server-side computing more energy efficient?
Power-manageable hardware can help save energy, but what can software developers do to address the problem?
Managing Contention For Shared Resources on Multicore Processors
Contention for caches, memory controllers, and interconnects can be eased by contention-aware scheduling algorithms.
Software Model Checking Takes Off
A translator framework enables the use of model checking in complex avionics systems and other industrial settings.
As hard-drive capacities continue to outpace their throughput, the time has come for a new level of RAID.
Companies have access to more types of external data than ever before. How can they integrate it most effectively?
Maximizing Power Efficiency with Asymmetric Multicore Systems
How do we develop software to make the most of the promise that asymmetric multicore systems use a lot less energy?
A Threat Analysis of RFID Passports
An RFID-passport attack is more plausible than skimming RFID information. Do RFID passports make us vulnerable to identity theft?
You Don’t Know Jack About Software Maintenance
Long considered an afterthought, software maintenance is easiest and most effective when built into a system from the ground up.
Communications Surveillance: Privacy and Security at Risk
As the sophistication of wiretapping technology grows, so too do the risks it poses to our privacy and security.
Four Billion Little Brothers?: Privacy, Mobile Phones, and Ubiquitous Data Collection
Participatory sensing technologies could improve our lives and our communities, but at what cost to our privacy?
Unifying Biological Image Formats with HDF5
The biosciences need an image format capable of high performance and long-term maintenance. Is HDF5 the answer?
A Conversation with David E. Shaw
Stanford professor Pat Hanrahan sits down with the noted hedge fund founder, computational biochemist, and (above all) computer scientist.
Probing Biomolecular Machines with Graphics Processors
GPU acceleration and other computer performance increases will offer critical benefits to biomedical science.
Monitoring and Control of Large Systems With MonALISA
MonALISA developers describe how it works, the key design principles behind it, and the biggest technical challenges in building it.
Making Sense of Revision-Control Systems
All revision-control systems come with complicated sets of trade-offs. How do you find the best match between tool and team?
Scale up your datasets enough and your apps come undone. What are the typical problems and where do the bottlenecks surface?
Browser Security: Lessons from Google Chrome
To shield the browser from attacks, Google Chrome developers eyed three key problems.
CTO Roundtable: Cloud Computing
The age of cloud computing has begun. How can companies take advantage of the new opportunities it provides?
Shape the Future of Computing
ACM encourages its members to take a direct hand in shaping the future of the association. There are more ways than ever to get involved.
Get InvolvedCommunications of the ACM (CACM) is now a fully Open Access publication.
By opening CACM to the world, we hope to increase engagement among the broader computer science community and encourage non-members to discover the rich resources ACM has to offer.
Learn More