Communications of the ACM articles from September 1996

Communications of the ACM archives from September 1996

The scientific workstation of the future may be a pile of PCs.
September 1, 1996... A rapid convergence of computer technologies from two historically disparate markets may dramatically alter the way scientific single-user systems are implemented in the near future. Once relegated to the menial tasks of games, word...

Dragging a kicking-and-screaming government into the 21st century.(Clinton administration's Internet policy)
September 1, 1996... The ribbon on the 104th Congress had barely been cut and newly anointed Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was already sounding a clarion call for a "wired" Congress. In those heady opening days of the Republican Revolution, Gingrich...

ACM97 speakers corner.(Robert M. Metcalfe, chair of ACM97: The Next 50 Years of Computing)(Interview)
September 1, 1996... Why are you organizing ACM97? I consider myself the editor-in-chief of ACM97. We're editing a conference for presentation to our attendees. One of the most elegant things I get to do in my life is work on this project, dealing with its people...

Technology transfer: so much research, so few good products.(SunSoft's collaborative computing group stresses the importance of developing effective relationships)
September 1, 1996... In 1994, our advanced development group, SunSoft's Collaborative Computing (COCO) group, was finishing its second set of proof-of -concept prototypes. Two years earlier, our first prototype, a desktop videoconferencing and shared whiteboard...

Technology transfer through prototypes.
September 1, 1996... A very viable way of transferring technology is to show someone how that technology works in a context the person can understand. Therefore, using prototypes to transfer technology is an extremely effective way to demonstrate a new concept....

Transfer means more than just technology.(technology vis-a-vis business environment)
September 1, 1996... To be effective in transferring technology, research groups need to take a broader view of what it means to do research, to consider not only the technology aspects of their work but also the business environment into which the results of...

Technology transfer from university to industry.
September 1, 1996... I am writing this article from a different perspective than that of my colleagues, namely, viewing technology transfer from university to industry. While I am now the director of an industrial research lab, many of my views were formed during...

R<->D, not R&D.(research and development are two different processes)
September 1, 1996... Many people use the term "research and development," or R&D, as if it were one word, referring to one thing. It is not. It is two words, and refers to two very different activities: doing science and doing engineering, respectively. What...

Building relationships for technology transfer.
September 1, 1996... Create a vision of the possible results. This relates to the particular kind of transfer focus we find in our own situations. The emphasis is different for such factors as: * Collaborative development of prototypes, * Providing...

Latest developments in operating systems.
September 1, 1996... Two forces are driving the operating system evolution: new applications and new hardware. * Occasionally, this evolution is punctuated by a major change in the concept of an operating system as when time-sharing systems replaced batch...

Operating system support for high-speed communication.
September 1, 1996... Emerging network technologies such as fiber-optic transmission facilities and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) hold the promise of delivering data rates on the order of gigabits per second between individual workstations on local- and...

Implementing efficient fault containment for multiprocessors.(contains related article)
September 1, 1996... Shared-memory multiprocessors are becoming an increasingly widespread computing platform. They support efficient sharing of processors, memory, and I/O devices, enabling excellent utilization of hardware resources by both parallel and...

Operating system support for persistant and recoverable computations.
September 1, 1996... Operating systems manage a computer's resources, maintain its permanent data, and provide an efficient environment for the execution of user programs. Users expect an operating system to provide a certain level of resilience to failure and...

Toward real microkernels.(operating system design)(contains related article)
September 1, 1996... The microkernel story is full of good ideas and blind alleys. The story began with enthusiasm about the promised dramatic increase in flexibility, safety, and modularity. But over the years, enthusiasm changed to disappointment, because the...

Madefast: collaborative engineering over the Internet.(the ARPA Manufacturing Automation and Design Engineering program)
September 1, 1996... Political, economic, and technological forces are changing the landscape of engineering. As the world's economies become more interconnected and more competitive, there is an increasing need for organizations to form joint design and...

Can parallel algorithms enhance serial implementation?(parallelism in computer programs)
September 1, 1996... Our recent research suggests that parallelism in computer programs is a resource that can be used to improve performance on modern uniprocessor computers as well as on parallel computers. Furthermore, exploration of enhancements to...

Markets and privacy.(privacy regulation in national networks)
September 1, 1996... Who owns and controls personal information in national data networks? Why not let individulas own the information about themselves and decide how the information is used? A regulated National Information Market could allow personal information...

The corporate politics of CMM ratings.(software quality assessment)(Compatibility Maturity Model)
September 1, 1996... I heard it again last week. Another executive told us our software group was "barely a level 1" on the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Compatibility Maturity Model (CMM) for Software. I shook my head and reread the SEI Technical Report...

Behind the state of the art.(ignorance and misuse of product development techniques)
September 1, 1996... Many of us spend considerable portions of our professional careers not only trying to create hardware, software, or other systems that can be used immediately, but also in the development of standards and techniques that can apply to other...