In a November 4 post, we asked your help in identifying game-changing advances from computing research conducted in the past 20 years.  We primed the pump with four examples: The Internet and the World Wide Web as we know them today Search technology – Where once we filed, today we search Cluster computing The transformation of science via computation In this post, we summarize just a sample of your additions (we have grabbed text from your posted comments, without a lot of editing, so this will be loose – “it’s the thoughts that count”) and invite your further comments – cleaning up these additions, or providing others.  Please let us hear […]

In previous posts on this blog, Berkeley’s David Patterson, Intel’s Andrew Chien, and Microsoft’s Dan Reed presented their views on why research advances are needed to overcome the problems posed by multicore processors. In this piece — the fourth (and possibly final) entry in the series -– Marc Snir from UIUC argues that there are major challenges facing us but yet, the sky is not falling. — The CCC blog has published a couple of articles on the multi-core challenge, all emphasizing the difficulty of making parallel programming prevalent and, hence, the difficulty of leveraging multi-core systems in mass markets. The challenge is, indeed, significant and requires important investments in […]

One of the great things about computing research is that, despite our incredible track record of game-changing advances, we’re always looking for ways to make the field even more vibrant.  In this vein, on Monday I attended “Computer Science Outside The Box,” a workshop of 44 leaders from academia and industry (mostly department heads) convened by NSF CISE, CCC, and CRA. The workshop vastly exceeded my expectations – 8 hours of brainstorming about strategies and best practices, in four areas: ·     “Go Outside Your Box” – what strategies can we adopt to increase collaboration across subfields and with other fields? ·     “The World Needs Us” – how to contribute to the solution of […]

We’d like your help with a brainstorming exercise: Identify about a dozen game-changing advances from computing research conducted in the past 20 years. Here’s what we mean: The advance needs to be “game changing,” in the sense of dramatically altering how we think about computing and its applications. The importance of the advance needs to be obvious and easily appreciated by a wide audience. There needs to be a clear tie to computing research (or to infrastructure initiatives that build upon research and were sponsored by computing research organizations). We’re particularly interested in highlighting the impact of federally-funded university-based research. We’re focusing on work carried out in the past 20 […]