IEEE Computer Society President's Message Design Fragility Hybrid

Innovative Technology for Computer Professionals

January 2004

IEEE Computer Society President’s Message

Design Fragility

Hybrid CPU/FPGA Chips http://www.computer.org

Innovative Technology for Computer Professionals

January 2004,Volume 37,Number 1 PERSPECTIVES 30 A Tale of Three Disciplines ... and a Revolution Jesse H. Poore Some disciplines, like circuit and genetic engineering, seem to evolve from theory to practice relatively responsibly. Software engineering, on the other hand, while not yet at the guillotine, has suffered a decided lack of direction. It may be time to storm the gates. 37 The End of Science Revisited John Horgan Because science has advanced so rapidly over the past century or so, we assume that it can and will continue to do so, possibly forever. But science itself tells us that there are limits to our knowledge. COVER FEATURES 47 2003 Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors Don Edenfeld, Andrew B. Kahng, Mike Rodgers, and Yervant Zorian This update to the 2001 ITRS Roadmap shows the industry shifting its focus toward systems on chip, wireless computing, and mobile applications. 59 NASA’S Mission Reliable Patrick Regan and Scott Hamilton Like industrial development organizations, the US space agency struggles with the challenge of creating reliable software. NASA’s deep space community is attacking its software crisis via two complementary approaches—one stressing the power of engineering discipline, the other the potential of automated code generation and Cover design and artwork by Dirk Hagner verification. 69 IT Employment Prospects in 2004: A Mixed Bag ABOUT THIS ISSUE Fred Niederman n this January Outlook issue, Signs of general economic recovery and renewed IT sector growth we continue our tradition of are dampened for IT workers globally by improved productivity and I publishing articles that locally by a global labor market. address advances with near-term possibilities. 78 DakNet: Rethinking Connectivity in Developing Topics covered include the ITRS assessment of Nations the challenges awaiting the semiconductor Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Richard Fletcher, and Amir Hasson industry; NASA’s software reliability efforts at DakNet provides extraordinarily low-cost digital communication, JPL and the Ames Research Center and its letting remote villages leapfrog past the expense of traditional systems and software architecture for next- connectivity solutions and begin development of a full-coverage generation unmanned spacecraft; an innovative broadband wireless infrastructure. initiative for providing inexpensive wireless connectivity for rural populations in developing 85 Combining Optical Holograms with Interactive nations; an assessment of global IT employment Computer Graphics prospects in 2004; and a novel system for Oliver Bimber combining optical holograms with interactive Merging optical holograms with 3D graphical elements can provide computer graphics. This issue also includes two an acceptable tradeoff between quality and interactivity: The essays on the future of software engineering and holographic data provides high-quality but static content, while the end of science. additional graphical information can be generated, inserted, modified, and animated at interactive rates. IEEE Computer Society: http://computer.org Computer: http://computer.org/computer [email protected] IEEE Computer Society Publications Office: +1 714 821 8380 OPINION 13 At Random Design Fragility Bob Colwell NEWS 18 Industry Trends Vendors Go to Extreme Lengths for New Chips Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols 22 Technology News Is Peer-to-Peer Secure Enough for Corporate Use? George Lawton 26 News Briefs E-Mail Security Gets Personal Ceiling for Controversial US H-1B Visas Drops Interactive Panoramic Images MEMBERSHIP NEWS 8 EIC’s Message 10 President’s Message 92 Call and Calendar 95 Computer Society Connection COLUMNS 116 Web Technologies Databases Deepen theWeb Thanaa M. Ghanem and Walid G. Aref 118 Embedded Computing Programming Models for Hybrid CPU/FPGA Chips David Andrews, Douglas Niehaus, and Peter Ashenden 121 IT Systems Perspectives Distributed Learning Environments Maryam Alavi 124 Standards Best Business Practices for Standards Groups NEXT Michael LoBue MONTH: 128 The Profession Ad Hoc From Organization Man to Free Agent Networking Mohan Babu DEPARTMENTS 4 Article Summaries 6 Letters 17 32 & 16 Years Ago 44 IEEE Computer Society Membership Application 100 Career Opportunities 113 Advertiser/Product Index 114 Products 115 Bookshelf

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Editor in Chief Computing Practices Special Issues 2004 IEEE Computer Society Doris L. Carver Rohit Kapur Bill Schilit President Louisiana State University [email protected] [email protected] Carl K. Chang [email protected] [email protected] Perspectives Web Editor Associate Editors Bob Colwell James H. Aylor in Chief [email protected] [email protected] Bill Schilit Intel Research Features Kathleen Swigger Kathleen Swigger University of North Texas [email protected]

Area Editors Column Editors Databases/Software At Random The Profession Edward A. Parrish Michael Blaha Bob Colwell Neville Holmes Worcester Polytechnic Institute OMT Associates Inc. Bookshelf University of Tasmania Ron Vetter University of North Carolina at Wilmington Multimedia Michael J. Lutz Security Alf Weaver Savitha Srinivasan Rochester Institute of Bill Arbaugh University of Virginia IBM Almaden Research Center Technology University of Maryland Networking and Communications Standards CS Publications Board Multimedia Upkar Varshney Gary Robinson Michael R. Williams (chair), Jean Bacon, Jonathan Liu Georgia State University EMC Corp. Laxmi Bhuyan, Mark Christensen, University of Florida Embedded Computing Web Technologies Thomas Keefe, Deepandra Moitra, Steven L. Tanimoto, Anand Tripathi Software Wayne Wolf Sumi Helal H. Dieter Rombach Princeton University University of Florida CS Magazine Operations AG Software Engineering Entertainment Computing Advisory Panel Committee Dan Cooke Michael R. Macedonia James H. Aylor Bill Schilit (chair), Jean Bacon, Pradip Bose, Texas Tech University Georgia Tech Research Institute University of Virginia Doris L. Carver, George Cybenko, John C. Dill, Frank E. Ferrante, Robert E. Filman, IT Systems Perspective Thomas Cain Richard G. Mathieu University of Pittsburgh Forouzan Golshani, David Alan Grier, St. Louis University Rajesh Gupta, Warren Harrison, Ralph Cavin Mahadev Satyanarayanan, Semiconductor Research Corp. Invisible Computing Nigel Shadbolt, Francis Sullivan Bill Schilit Ron Hoelzeman Intel University of Pittsburgh

Editorial Staff Administrative Staff Scott Hamilton Mary-Louise G. Piner Executive Director Sales Representative Senior Acquisitions Editor Staff Lead Editor David W. Hennage Sandy Brown [email protected] Bob Ward Publisher Advertising Coordinator Judith Prow Membership News Editor Angela Burgess Marian Anderson Managing Editor Bryan Sallis [email protected] Manuscript Assistant Assistant Publisher James Sanders Design Dick Price Senior Editor Larry Bauer Membership & Circulation Linda World Dirk Hagner Marketing Manager Senior Editor Georgann Carter Lee Garber Production Senior News Editor Larry Bauer Chris Nelson Associate Editor

Circulation: Computer (ISSN 0018-9162) is published monthly by the IEEE Computer Society. IEEE Headquarters, Three Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016- 5997; IEEE Computer Society Publications Office, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1314; voice +1 714 821 8380; fax +1 714 821 4010; IEEE Computer Society Headquarters,1730 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036-1903. IEEE Computer Society membership includes $14 for subscription of Computer magazine ($14 for students). Nonmember subscription rate available upon request. Single-copy prices: members $10.00; nonmembers $20.00. Postmaster: Send undelivered copies and address changes to Computer, IEEE Service Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08855. Periodicals Postage Paid at New York, New York, and at additional mailing offices. Canadian GST #125634188. Canada Post Publications Mail (Canadian Distribution) Agreement Number 0487910. Printed in USA. Editorial: Unless otherwise stated, bylined articles, as well as product and service descriptions, reflect the author’s or firm’s opinion. Inclusion in Computer does not necessarily constitute endorsement by the IEEE or the Computer Society. All submissions are subject to editing for style, clarity, and space.

2 Computer ARTICLE SUMMARIES

A Tale of Three Disciplines ... systems for wireless communication and jobs. For US workers, this change raises and a Revolution embedded applications. Battery-pow- two different but complementary ques- pp. 30-36 ered mobile devices are replacing wall- tions. First, what are the prospects for the Jesse H. Poore plugged servers. SoC and system- global IT workforce in the near and in-package designs are supplanting in- longer term? Second, how will IT jobs be espite years of hard work and ded- house, single-source chip designs. distributed among competing labor mar- icated champions, software engi- Software today can account for 80 per- kets around the world? D neering’s educational and indus- cent of an embedded system’s develop- trial constituents have not only failed to ment cost, test cost has increased expo- converge, the gap between them contin- nentially relative to manufacturing cost, DakNet: Rethinking Connectivity ues to grow. and verification engineers outnumber in Developing Nations Some disciplines, like circuit and design engineers on microprocessor pro- pp. 78-83 genetic engineering, seem to evolve from ject teams. Overcoming the many exist- Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Richard theory to practice relatively responsibly. ing design technology gaps will thus Fletcher, and Amir Hasson Software engineering, on the other hand, require a concerted effort by the entire while not yet at the guillotine, has suf- industry. hat is the basis for a progressive, fered a decided lack of direction. It may market-driven migration from be time to storm the gates. It is never too W e-governance to universal late for a revolution, and circuit and NASA’s Reliable Software Mission broadband connectivity that local users genetic engineering provide two worthy pp. 59-68 will pay for? role models. Patrick Regan and Scott Hamilton DakNet, an ad hoc network that uses wireless technology to provide asyn- oth predictable and unpredictable chronous digital connectivity, is evidence The End of Science Revisited hazards await the spacecraft, that the marriage of wireless and asyn- pp. 37-46 B robots, and scientific instruments chronous service may indeed be the John Horgan that humans dispatch to explore our beginning of a road to universal broad- solar system. The toughest hazard may band connectivity. DakNet has been suc- cientists need a certain degree of be the known presence of unknown bugs cessfully deployed in remote parts of faith to bolster their confidence in in even rigorously tested software. both India and Cambodia at a cost two S the arduous quest for truth; lack- By exploring new technologies and orders of magnitude less than that of tra- ing such faith, science would not have approaches to develop provably reliable ditional landline solutions. come so far so fast. But when researchers software within tough constraints, NASA reflexively deny any evidence and argu- has a chance to advance the state of the ments that challenge their faith, they vio- art, contributing to computer science as Combining Optical Holograms late the scientific spirit. well as software engineering. In addition, with Interactive Computer Although we have grown up in a any successful spin-off that improves reli- Graphics period of explosive scientific and techno- ability while cutting development time pp. 85-91 logical progress, reflected by such mea- and costs could, in principle, generate sav- Oliver Bimber sures as Moore’s law, science—especially ings for US industry equal to the nation’s pure science—might be entering an era of budget for space exploration. olograms can reconstruct complete diminishing returns. Science itself tells us optical wavefronts, capturing images that there are limits to our knowledge. H that have a three-dimensional ap- IT Employment Prospects in 2004: pearance and can be observed from dif- A Mixed Bag ferent perspectives. Museum exhibits 2003 Technology Roadmap for pp. 69-77 often use optical hologram technology Semiconductors Fred Niederman because it permits presentation of 3D pp. 47-56 objects with almost no loss in visual Don Edenfeld, Andrew B. Kahng, ince 1999—when US business quality. Optical holograms are static, Mike Rodgers, and Yervant Zorian magazine cover stories described IT however, and lack interactivity. Combin- S positions going unfilled and exten- ing 3D computer graphical elements with oday, microprocessor advances sive congressional lobbying to increase stereoscopic presentation techniques pro- abound: general-purpose digital quotas for overseas workers to fill vides an alternative that allows interac- T microprocessors for personal com- them—the US IT job market has changed tivity. puters have been joined by mixed-signal drastically, losing more than a million

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THE PROBLEM WITH AI Holmes refers to, there is no conflict between them. They are just different I read Neville Holmes’s column about ways to study memory. One is more artificial intelligence with great interest structure based, while the other ex- (“Artificial Intelligence: Arrogance or plains various memory features. Ignorance?” Nov. 2003, pp. 120, 118- Human intelligence, call it a problem- 119). solving capacity of any kind, uses both The family patriarch, a rocket scien- kinds of knowledge. Basically, human tist by profession, once said, “Before intelligence does not really know which one can have ‘artificial intelligence’, knowledge domain it is using. Gard- one needs ‘natural intelligence.’” As even if only to keep researchers on the ner’s multidimensional view of intelli- Mr. Holmes opined, the implication is same page. gence comes into play here. that the people attempting to imple- Gerad Welch What we can put into a computer ment AI would first have to understand Rochester, Minn. program directly, as software or as the fundamentals of human intelli- [email protected] data, is basically of a declarative nature. gence. It was also a jibe at those who A piece of software—whether AI or employ the noble moniker to describe Neville Holmes responds: conventional—can collect procedural trivial mechanisms. It is perhaps relevant to note that not so knowledge, but this occurs indirectly. The problem with today’s so-called AI long ago, a column called Open Chan- The software must be prepared for that is largely that, as Mr. Holmes describes, nel used to appear on the back page of purpose and must be trained to per- the processes cannot yet adapt algo- Computer. Heading it was a quotation form a specific task, such as face or rithms. While Cellary’s assertion regard- ascribed to Charles McCabe of the San speech recognition. ing the ability to use knowledge to make Francisco Chronicle: “Any clod can This procedural knowledge is also a decisions seems to be on the right track, have the facts, but having an opinion bit restricted by what can be captured I doubt that normal people would con- is an art.” as digital data—unlike human intelli- sider someone who spews facts, yet is gence, which uses all knowledge facil- unable to assimilate new data, as being DEFINING MEMORY ities available. This restriction limits intelligent. a program’s intelligence, as does not The key to having an intelligent In his discussion of AI, Neville Holmes knowing what data we use. process is that the entity has enough does not sufficiently take into account Jan Giezen sensory inputs and meaningful out- the results from current brain research. Delft, Netherlands puts—a feedback loop as per Norbert This research, which uses positron [email protected] Wiener—to validate internally formed emission tomography and magnetic theory on reality. Without the ability resonance imaging, reveals two distinct Neville Holmes responds: to train in a substantially closed- types of memory: declarative (memory) The points that Jan Giezen makes all loop fashion, new things cannot be and nondeclarative (procedural). boil down to a fundamental issue that learned. Essentially, declarative memory is I have raised before: Computing peo- The debasing of the AI concept by what we can express in words or bring ple have much too simple ideas about ascribing the term to applications to mind as a mental image; it is explicit the human brain (“Would a Digital unworthy of the name is why AI pio- or conscious memory. In contrast, Brain Have a Mind?” Computer, May neer Marvin Minsky declared, “AI has nondeclarative memory is the collec- 2002, pp. 112, 110-111). been brain-dead since the 1970s.” The tion of skills we acquire with practice To say that human memory is of software industry has relegated “AI or repetition—our habituation or only two kinds is a gross simplification. technology” to interactive help and conditioning. For example, artists, I haven’t read the book that Giezen video game opponents. Of course, sci- musicians, and athletes are masters of cites, but other books that I have read, entists often use terms that don’t have specific procedural knowledge. As such as Memory: Phenomena and the same meaning to the general public. Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel Principles by Norman E. Spear and Perhaps AI has become one of those explain in Memory: From Mind to David C. Riccio (Allyn and Bacon, words. Molecules (W.H. Freeman, 2000), 1994), emphasize the complexity of I like the term “algoristics” that Mr. much of what Holmes refers to is human memory, and indeed that of Holmes proposes to distinguish static procedural memory. other animals. Popular writings dis- expert systems from the type of intelli- Although these two divisions differ tinguish many other kinds of memory, gent systems we have yet to implement, from Howard Gardner’s independent episodic memory being one that and I hope that others will adopt it— dimensions of intelligence that Neville springs to mind.

6 Computer How to Reach

To equate human memory with Computer intelligence is wrong. Dumb people can have good memories, and smart people can have bad memories. This is Writers where Gardner’s work comes in. There We welcome submissions. For detailed information, visit www. are many quite different and relatively computer.org/computer/author.htm. independent intelligences. It seems to me that an intelligence in Gardner’s sense is a talent for exploiting percep- News Ideas tion and memory to produce high- quality behavior in a particular area. Contact Lee Garber at lgarber@ computer.org with ideas for news features or news briefs. DIVISIBLE LOAD-SCHEDULING DISCOVERY Products and Books Since the publication of my article, Send product announcements to [email protected]. Contact “Ten Reasons to Use Divisible Load Theory” (Computer, May 2003, pp. [email protected] with book announcements. 63-68), I have become aware of an article by R. Agrawal and H. V. Jagadish published in 1988 (“Partitioning Tech- Letters to the Editor niques for Large-Grained Parallelism,” Please provide an e-mail address with your letter. Send letters to IEEE Transactions on Computers, [email protected]. Dec. 1988, pp. 1627-1634) that, independently of the earliest work mentioned in my article (also published On the Web in 1988), discusses divisible load modeling. Explore www.computer.org/computer/ for free articles and general Although apparently unknown to information about Computer magazine. many divisible load-scheduling researchers until recently, this article has some noteworthy features and ﬁrsts. It Magazine Change of Address models the divisible load-scheduling Send change-of-address requests for magazine subscriptions to problem using Gantt-like charts and includes solution reporting time in [email protected]. Make sure to specify Computer. much the same way that others have done since then. This appears to be the first paper to discuss a linear pro- Missing or Damaged Copies gramming solution (unlike the alge- If you are missing an issue or received a damaged copy, contact braic solution discussed in our first [email protected]. paper), a proof on the optimal order for solution reporting, and an experimental evaluation of divisible load Reprint Permission scheduling. All in all, it is quite a forward-looking paper. To obtain permission to reprint an article, contact William Hagen, Thomas Robertazzi IEEE Copyrights and Trademarks Manager, at [email protected]. Stony Brook, N.Y. To buy a reprint, send a query to [email protected]. [email protected]

We welcome your letters. Send them to [email protected]. Letters are subject to editing for style, clarity, and length.

January 2004 7 EIC’S MESSAGE

Reviewing 2003 Looking back at 2003, our topic cov- Computer erage was diverse. A feature article in our January 2003 Outlook issue provided coverage of NASA’s research in advanced computing technologies to in 2004 help usher in a new area of autonomous space exploration. This issue also in- Doris L. Carver, Louisiana State University cluded an article describing NSF’s TeraGrid computing infrastructure to support collaborative computational science and access to distributed resources. Another feature article review- elcome to the January ed advances in integrated circuits and 2004 issue of Computer. MEMS that are enabling neurobiolo- My vision for Computer gists to link computer circuitry to neural W in 2004 is that it will cells in live animals and study the basis continue to serve as a of animal behavior and intelligence. leading information resource in the Other issues published during the lifelong learning process of our read- year highlighted topics such as com- ers. We remain committed to inform- mercial workloads, pervasive computing the computing community of the ing, agile software, piracy and privacy, latest advances in research, technol- Doris L. Carver, nanocomputing, handheld computing, ogy, and applications, as well as pro- Editor in Chief, Computer Web services, safety-critical systems, viding timely information about pro- and power-aware computing. fessional issues, career trends, news, practices, and perspectives on coming. We use the results of that session as Looking ahead to 2004 puting-related topics. the framework for developing our edi- In this January Outlook issue we torial calendar for the following year. continue our tradition of publishing COMPUTER’S COVERAGE Potential topics are assessed from articles that address advances with Increasing computational capabili- numerous perspectives, including time- near-term possibilities. ties and decreasing computation costs liness, breadth of coverage, and rele- Topics covered in this issue include combine to escalate the demand for vance to our readers. the International Technology Roadmap complex applications that have far- I would like to clarify the role that for Semiconductors’ assessment of the reaching impacts on society, including the editorial calendar plays in our edi- challenges awaiting the semiconductor new frontiers in medical diagnosis and torial process. In particular, I want to industry, especially as mixed-signal and treatment, weather forecasting, space inform potential authors that we wel- application-driven technologies come exploration, e-commerce, and educa- come submissions on any computing- to the fore. Another feature article tion. Advances in a diverse set of com- related topic. reviews NASA’s software reliability puting areas, such as ubiquitous Our editorial calendar does not efforts at JPL and the Ames Research computing, data integration, self-adap- imply that the topics listed there are the Center and its ambitious systems and tive systems, and multimodal sensors, only areas in which we wish to publish. software architecture for next-genera- are fundamental to realizing these new Special issues focus on a specific topic tion unmanned spacecraft. Other arti- frontiers. As the computing field con- while others are theme issues. Special cles describe an innovative initiative for tinues to thrive and change to meet issues are guest edited by experts in the providing inexpensive wireless connec- new challenges, Computer continues specific area, and theme issues include tivity for rural populations in develop- to evolve to provide coverage of these multiple articles on the theme topic but ing nations, provide an assessment of changes and challenges. are not the result of a specific call. global IT employment prospects in One of these challenges is providing In both special and theme issues, we 2004, and discuss a novel system for coverage of all aspects of computing also include articles on other topics. So combining optical holograms with that our readers find meaningful. We I invite and encourage potential interactive computer graphics. Two initiate the process for determining our authors to submit your manuscripts provoca- tive essays consider the future primary topics with a lengthy session on all computing-related topics to of software engineering and ponder at our summer editorial board meet- Computer. the end of science.

8 Computer Our 2004 planned coverage in- tributions as a member of the Advisory electronic process for manuscript cludes, but is not limited to, comput- Panel, and to Bill Mangione-Smith for submission and processing. ers and the aging; adaptive software his service as area editor for high- • Indicate your interest in serving as and hardware; Internet security; next- performance computing. Gary, Bill, a reviewer by sending an e-mail generation search; sensor networks; and Jerzy have provided valuable time, message that contains your vitae software architectures; and Internet insights, vision, and guidance to the to [email protected]. data centers. magazine. • Propose a special issue by con- Our column and department offer- tacting Bill Schilit, Special Issues ings will continue to include At We welcome your input Editor, at [email protected]. Random, The Profession, Communi- and diligently strive to use • Provide feedback, including sug- cations, Embedded Computing, Enter- it as part of our ongoing gestions for topics, by sending an tainment Computing, IT Systems e-mail message to dcarver@lsu. assessment process. Perspectives, Invisible Computing, edu. Security, Standards, Web Technologies, • Visit our Web site at www. News, Products, and Bookshelf. We computer.org/computer, where also introduce a new column, 32 & 16, We welcomed two new members to you will find a dynamic, value- that looks back on computing tech- the Board during 2003. Daniel E. added extension of the magazine. nology and the profession through the Cooke joined the Board as an area edi- lens of Computer. tor for software. Dan, a professor and I look forward to your participation If you have suggestions for other chairman of the Computer Science in 2004! topics, please e-mail them to me at Department of Texas Tech University, [email protected]. previously served as the Program APPRECIATION Manager for NASA’s National I wish to thank the members of the COMPUTER AS A Strategic Initiative for Intelligent editorial board and editorial staff for MEMBERSHIP MAGAZINE Systems. Savitha Srinivasan assumed their continued commitment and ded- Computer is the primary communi- the role of area editor for multimedia. ication to achieving Computer’s goals. cation path between the IEEE Com- Savitha is the manager of content pro- They play a crucial role in making puter Society and its members. Through tection at the IBM Almaden Research Computer happen. The volunteer and Computer, we regularly inform you Center, where she defines new research staff partnership that drives Computer about initiatives and events that are areas in content protection and is creates a dynamic, fulfilling environ- happening at the Society, such as actively involved with content protec- ment in which to serve as EIC. the Distance Learning Campus (www. tion standards activities. To our authors and reviewers, please computer.org/distancelearning/); the In 2004, Alfred Weaver is moving accept my deepest gratitude for your Certified Software Development Pro- from his role as area editor of net- contributions. Computer’s value and fessional program (www.computer.org/ working and e-commerce to serve on success lie with authors who submit certification/); the Computer Society the Advisory Panel. I thank Alf for his their work to us and to reviewers who International Design Competition dedication as an area editor and look help ensure that our standards are (www.computper.org/csidc); the distin- forward to working with him as a maintained. The result of our excellent guished recipients of the Computer member of the panel. My thanks to authors and reviewers is that our Society awards; new IEEE Fellows; and Dan, Savitha, and Alf for their will- acceptance rate for articles is approx- volunteer opportunities such as editor- ingness to contribute their expertise to imately 25 percent. in-chief positions for Society publica- Computer. Finally, thank you to our readers. tions. We plan to expand coverage of We welcome your input and diligently Society initiatives of interest to our AN INVITATION strive to use it as part of our ongoing readers in 2004. I invite you to contribute to assessment process. Computer through any of the follow- I hope you enjoy this January EDITORIAL BOARD ing methods: Outlook issue. CHANGES FOR 2004 I would like to express my gratitude • Submit your manuscript for con- to the editorial board members whose sideration for publication at cs- Doris L. Carver is the associate vice term of service ended in 2003. My sin- ieee-manuscriptcentral.com. This chancellor of Research and Graduate cere appreciation to Gary Robinson for site, which contains complete Studies and a professor of computer his service as editor of the Standards author information and submis- science at Louisiana State University. column, to Jerzy Rozenblit for his con- sion details, provides a totally Contact her at [email protected].

January 2004 9 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

peer-reviewed magazine on security and privacy (www.computer.org/ Evolving the World security). We also are the first IEEE society to provide our members with free access to an online library of reference books (www.computer.org/ with the World’s bookshelf). While the Society as a whole has accomplished its mission in the past, our latest planning effort convinced us Computer Society that it is time to move forward with an expanded vision and new strategic Carl K. Chang, IEEE Computer Society 2004 President activities. DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT: VISA During my presidential election n Computer’s first issue for 2004, campaign, I communicated with you I extend a warm welcome to the about my VISA concept: Vision, nearly 100,000 new and continu- Interoperability, Strategy, and Action. I ing IEEE Computer Society mem- I am happy to report that during my bers. We reaffirm our commitment year as president-elect, I began formu- to offering you those products and ser- lating VISA with strong support from vices that will most benefit you in your volunteer leaders and the your careers as computing and IT Society’s executive staff. As a result of professionals. this collective effort, we have articu- lated a new vision for the Society “to 2003 ACCOMPLISHMENTS Carl K. Chang be the leading provider of technical Under the leadership of Past President IEEE Computer Society President information, community services, and Stephen L. Diamond, our Society made personalized services for the world’s substantial progress in many areas last computing professionals.” year. Our 2003 accomplishments were We decided to adopt interoperabil- outlined in Computer’s December issue. statement “to be the leading provider ity—defined as organizing and collab- On behalf of the Society, I wish to thank of technical information and services orating to deliver an integrated set of Steve for his dedicated efforts to develop for the world’s computing profession- service packages across organizational new initiatives that focused on improv- als.” To accomplish our mission, we units—as the overarching theme for ing the Society’s operational effective- have led the IEEE in product and mem- our planning effort. We then investi- ness. He also guided the advancement ber service innovations. gated ways of building a sound infra- of our ongoing electronic projects, The Society was the first within the structure to foster interoperability including distance learning and the IEEE to initiate an online digital library among all segments of the Society. Total Information Provider project. (www.computer.org/publications/dlib); Much of our effort in defining new Another 2003 initiative was the offer distance learning courses as a strategies centered on the concept of development of the Society’s next strate- basic member benefit (www.computer. a community-driven, service-centric gic plan, SP-5. As president-elect, my org/distancelearning); and launch an infrastructure, with interoperability as responsibility was to lead the effort to e-version-only magazine, IEEE Distrib- the “enabling technology.” The Society rethink our future directions, and I uted Systems Online (http://dsonline. has built or experimented with several engaged all Society Executive Commit- computer.org). online technical communities, most tee members in a forum to create SP-5. We were the first among peer profes- notably DS Online and the IEEE SE This plan builds on a strong foundation sional associations to define the body Online, a new software engineering established by my predecessors. of knowledge of software engineering community to be launched early this (www.computer.org/swebok), to offer year. MOVING PAST THE GLORIOUS PAST a certification program for software Although not all communities are In recent years, the Society’s strategic professionals (www.computer.org/ created equal, they do have some planning has been guided by its vision certification), and to launch a technical common features. A community typi-

10 Computer cally represents a group of individuals dent between the terms of a highly Jim’s goal is to provide a consistent set with common interests who come experienced industrial executive and a of Society offerings serving software together in a common space—in this seasoned university scholar. engineers in their professional devel- case a Web-based environment—to First Vice President Lowell G. opment. In addition, Jim wants to cre- collaborate and to exchange informa- Johnson, an independent consultant, ate models of membership roles to tion. will chair the newly established better structure products to serve our The Society must devise better mech- Electronic Products and Services diverse membership. anisms to continue supporting techni- Board. This board will create new Christina M. Schober, a product cal activities that appear to become dimensions of products and services team leader/staff engineer at Honeywell more fragmented day by day. The com- that capitalize on emerging and mature Aerospace Electronic Systems, will be munity concept was identified as an electronic technologies. Opportunities vice president for conferences and tuto- effective and efficient method to achieve for us to innovate in this area are defi- rials. Chris will continue her efforts to this end. nitely abundant. restructure the conference business By the same token, since our model to create more incentives for resources are limited, the Society can conference organizers. no longer operate in a production- Our vision is for the Murali Varanasi, who is starting an centric mode, such as continuing to Society “to be the leading electrical engineering department at the launch periodicals. We must transform provider of technical University of North Texas and is a our organization into a service integra- information, community long-time volunteer for accreditation tor with less capital investment and services, and personalized and curriculum development, will serve a higher return. services for the world’s as vice president of educational activi- We have made advances toward this ties. In view of the soon-to-be-com- computing professionals.” goal. Recent examples include the pleted computing curriculum projects Distance Learning Campus, created in (http://www.computer.org/education/ association with KnowledgeNet, and cc2001/), including software engineer- the online bookshelf, powered by Second Vice President Richard A. ing and computer engineering, Murali Books 24x7. This new Society infra- Kemmerer, a professor and past chair intends to plan for more curriculum structure, which may take several years of the Department of Computer assessment and development. to fully implement, will lay the foun- Science at the University of California Michael R. Williams, professor dation for us to meet the challenges we at Santa Barbara, will chair the emeritus of computer science at the will face in the next decade. Chapter Activities Board. Under his University of Calgary and head cura- SP-5 will be presented for final leadership, in 2004 the Society will tor at the Computer History Museum approval at the February 2004 Board bring chapter members closer to each in Silicon Valley, will serve as vice pres- of Governors meeting, and, once other and narrow the gap between ident of the Publications Board. Mike approved, it will be ready for action. chapter leaders and the Society. will be instrumental in our ever- Oscar N. Garcia, a past president of increasing effort to build synergy in the 2004 APPOINTMENTS AND GOALS the Society, who is a professor and publications business with other IEEE I am privileged to introduce the founding dean of the college of engi- entities. 2004 Executive Committee, a group of neering at the University of North Yervant Zorian, vice president and dedicated and capable volunteer lead- Texas, will continue his faithful service chief scientist of Virage Logic and chief ers. These outstanding professionals as the secretary of the Board. technology advisor of LogicVision, will and scholars, well known in their indi- Rangachar Kasturi, the Hood continue his appointment as vice pres- vidual fields, share the Society’s vision Professor and chair of computer sci- ident of technical activities. Yervant and common goals to serve you and ence and engineering at the University will focus his energy to help discern the profession. of South Florida, has made significant and build technical communities while Joining me in 2004 are Past President achievements while serving as the vice strengthening the base of each existing Stephen L. Diamond, president and president for publications for the past technical committee and council. He CEO of Picosoft Inc., and President- three years. He will now head the also welcomes your input to help iden- Elect Gerald L. Engel, a professor of Finance Committee as the Society’s tify emerging technologies. computer science and engineering at treasurer. the University of Connecticut. Both will James W. Moore, a senior principal APPRECIATION AND EXPECTATION interact with me on a daily basis and engineer for the MITRE Corporation, I would like to especially thank Past advise me on many fronts. I feel will continue chairing the Standards President Willis K. King for his guid- extremely fortunate to serve as presi- Activities Board as a vice president. ance and encouragement during my

January 2004 11 President’s Message

on-the-job training as president-elect. served as the editor in chief of IEEE Willis shared with me many of his pro- Software. Since then, he has volun- found thoughts and wisdom, and he teered in many ad-hoc assignments was always willing to help me prepare that were critical to the Society’s oper- for my presidential term. ations. Most recently, Mark helped us Special thanks also are due to complete a new business model in the Guylaine M. Pollock, who just com- SP-5 draft plan. pleted her service as IEEE Division V Last but not least, I would like to Director. Key volunteers in the Society thank our staff. I have long been an know well that Guylaine used her advocate of volunteer/staff partner- insight and skill to build alliances in ship. My favorite example is how I the IEEE arena and to keep us engaged worked with Angela Burgess, now the in deliberations about many critical Society’s publisher. Angela and I issues. The Society benefited tremen- formed an editor-in-chief/managing dously from her efforts. editor partnership that transformed I would like to thank Deborah K. IEEE Software into a genuine tech- Scherrer, who directs NASA science nology-transfer forum. REACH and technology-based education and Bob Care, Violet Doan, Lynne public outreach programs at Stanford Harris, John Keaton, Anne Marie Kelly, University, for her leadership during Dick Price, and other staff have all her term as first vice president for edu- helped me in many different ways. HIGHER cational activities. Deborah conducted I look forward the opportunity to a review of EAB activities in an effort deepen such partnerships during the Advancing in the IEEE to focus on our educational program year. The leadership of David Hennage, Computer Society can priorities. the Society’s Executive Director, will be elevate your standing in I also recognize the contributions of instrumental to our success. the profession. Fiorenza C. Albert-Howard, an independent consultant, who just con- Application to Senior- cluded two terms as a member of the am looking forward to a productive grade membership Computer Society Board of Governors. 2004. We have a new vision. We recognizes I appreciate Fiorenza’s participation in I have assembled an outstanding team ✔ ten years or more many Society activities, including of volunteer leaders and staff. Most of professional audit, awards, chapters, conferences, importantly, we have more than 20,000 expertise and the Constitution and Bylaws Com- volunteers who carry out our mission mittee. throughout the year. I applaud those Nomination to Fellow- Doris L. Carver, associate vice chan- volunteers, for without them, our grade membership cellor of Research and Graduate Studies Society would not have advanced so recognizes and a professor of computer science at far. We need their continuing involve- ✔ exemplary Louisiana State University, will continue ment and support to grow our profes- I accomplishments to lead our flagship magazine, Com- sion and evolve the world. in computer puter, as editor in chief. James D. Isaak, engineering an assistant professor of information technology in the School of Business at Southern New Hampshire University, GIVE YOUR CAREER A BOOST and Gene Hoffnagle, research and tech- I nology strategist, IBM Centers for Advanced Studies, will represent the UPGRADE YOUR MEMBERSHIP Society at the IEEE as our IEEE division directors. In addition, I would like to thank a www.computer.org/ newly elected member of the Board of Carl K. Chang is chair of the Depart- Governors, Mark Christensen. Mark ment of Computer Science, Iowa State join/grades.htm joined the industrial advisory board University. Contact him at president@ that I assembled back in 1991 when I computer.org.

12 Computer A T R A N D O M

right places, a frame of the size and shape to support that musculature, and Design weight reduced to the bare minimum required by strength-of-materials considerations. Which means that the animal’s bones are only just strong enough Fragility to get the job done under nominal conditions, thus placing it at greater risk Bob Colwell for breakage under any others. A faster horse is a more fragile horse. Another example comes from my personal experience of having built a ne of the things that makes guitar that happened not to implode engineering so interest- upon initial stringing. Acoustic guitars ing—besides the fact that are small masterpieces of mechanical they’ll pay you to do it—is engineering. They have a resonant cav- the interplay between so ity—the curvy body of the instrument— Omany contravening influences: fea- for amplifying the acoustical output of tures, performance, technology, risk, vibrating strings. These strings are cou- schedule, design team capability, and pled to the front surface of the resonant economics. You can find a perfect bal- cavity via a bridge, a strip of dense ance among all of these, and still fail, Tying conceptually material over which the strings bend because you designed something the separate functions sharply into the body itself, where pegs buying public happens not to want. hold them in place. The other end of For instance, if your startup pro- together increases each string is connected to a tuning poses to design the world’s best type- mechanism that adjusts its tension, and writer, the venture capital community overall complexity hence its resonant frequency/pitch. probably won’t beat a path to your and thus has a real An acoustic guitar with steel strings door. It’s not 1998 anymore. But if you places approximately 100 pounds of don’t find a workable balance that’s at price. force on the bridge plate—the piece of least as good as the one your competi- wood that is glued to the soundboard tors arrived at, your project is in big and has a slot to hold the bridge. trouble. Project-wide blue-screen-of- Because the string “breaks over” the death. Abort, error, no retry. (Does it design at one extreme and a fast, com- bridge, this force translates into a worry anyone but me that we all rec- plex, always-on-the-edge-of-disaster torque that tries to lift the bottom edge ognize these terms so quickly? This design at the other. One of the quali- of the bridge plate and push the string must be a bad thing.) ties that change as you move along that end into the soundboard. It is possible to achieve fragility line is something I call fragility. For cultural reasons that cello play- without complexity. All you have to do ers and violinists don’t understand, gui- is shave the design margins to the very HORSES AND GUITARS tars are made with mirror finishes, and edge of disaster so that the product is Consider the thoroughbred race- guitarists are generally extremely sen- barely achieving its design target. The horse. Over hundreds of years, these sitive about scratching them because odd thing is that in many ways this is horses have been bred to do two the mirror finish mercilously exposes also the point of maximum operating things: run a race course as fast as pos- all such flaws. This same finish lets you efficiency and performance, two of the sible, and make more horses that are see the effects of the string tension on most commercially important aspects as fast or faster than themselves. The the guitar’s soundboard. Between the of any design. This translates into an parallel between this sport and the soundhole and the bridge, a depression inexorable force propelling a design microprocessor business is unsettling. occurs in the wood of the soundboard team toward higher output at the The only differences are that the win- as the torque pushes it down; behind expense of design margin, a recipe for ning engineers don’t get roses, and the the bridge, the soundboard wood complexity. losers don’t often get turned into glue bulges out slightly. I believe there is a continuum of fea- and gelatin. Luthiers face the basic challenge of sible design points between a demon- But what qualities make a fast making the soundboard thin enough strably safe, solid, and possibly stodgy horse? Extreme musculature in the to sound good, but thick enough that

January 2004 13 At Random

it can withstand the string torque for upon to inspect a floor that was sag- tronics were really susceptible to any at least several decades of constant ging beyond its design specs. Upon damage and that that equipment was pull. Their solution is to make the inspection, the design engineer discov- high enough to be safe. Since most of soundboard a thin plane of wood, sup- ered that the contractor had been using the countryside in which Mason had ported by a system of braces glued to the floor as a temporary storage loca- to operate was hilly and heavily the underside. In acoustic steel string tion for extremely heavy travertine forested, his main rotor blades often guitars, at least two of these braces slabs, a load of 15 kN/m2 on a floor accumulated both bullet holes and begin at the edge of the soundboard built to code requiring 2 kN/m2. As green, leafy vegetation. He had learned and cross in an X pattern, with the Salvadori points out, had the floor col- to judge from the air how thick the intersection artfully placed at the point lapsed, the design engineer wouldn’t branches were so he would know of highest soundboard deflection just have been to blame. But had the floor whether rotor or tree branch would in front of the bridge. The braces are collapsed when the contractor was yield first in the event of a close shaved down to the point where they moving the travertine across it, he encounter. have only enough mass and strength to might have been at least partially cul- Flying machines place a premium on provide the necessary support. pable, even though the code “did not weight, but Mason gives the distinct When finishing the instrument, com- demand such a high live load.” impression that the Huey was designed mercial steel string guitar makers gen- to the limits of reliable operation first, erally apply a thin polymer finish. resulting in an aircraft that could rou- However, very high-end classical gui- There are no simple tinely outperform its specs in the areas tars are finished with French polish, a answers to where to that really mattered. In a very real manual-labor-intensive process that target a design on the sense, helicopters are fragile machines, builds up a high gloss with an extremely fragility scale. but within that design space, the Huey thin layer of lacquer; the finish looks designers got something right. The DC- great and the guitar sounds great 3 and the A-10 Warthog are other air- because there’s less mass on the sound- craft that have achieved legendary board, but the finish can be scratched The question of whether engineers status among their users for overall off with just a fingernail. should design strictly according to toughness and trustworthiness in a In other words, while inexpensive required specs or attempt to exceed clinch. instruments are built like battleships, those specs based on their own judg- There’s no simple formula for the best-sounding ones are, in a word, ment and morals is a tricky one. As a achieving a high-performance, com- fragile. project manager, I would expect that petitive product that will pass the test most design engineers would struggle of time like these examples. For BUILDINGS to hit their stated targets, without instance, in Searching for Safety Structural engineers and building allowing much time for anything (Transaction Publishers, 1988), Aaron architects must grapple with similar beyond that. It would also worry me Wildavsky points out how difficult tradeoffs. In Why Buildings Fall Down greatly to hear that some project engi- it can be when a litigious public col- (Norton, 1987), Mario Salvadori gives neers were adding to the product’s fea- lides with basic physics and the laws examples at both ends of the structural ture set without having run those of probability. fragility continuum. He relates how a features through the project manage- dome roof collapsed in 1960 in ment and feature planning processes. A problem with crashworthiness Bucharest, Romania, under a surpris- Such activities could easily result in cases is that juries focus on only one ingly small load just two years after a higher project risk. part of the automobile, and under new pipe-based method of supporting only one set of circumstances. Since the dome was tried. Salvadori attrib- HELICOPTERS, PLANES, CARS cars can strike or be struck from any utes the failure to a “tendency to In Chickenhawk (Viking Press, angle, at varying speeds, it is ex- design very light dome structures 1984), a harrowing account of his tremely difficult to design a car that [which] stemmed from the designers’ career as a helicopter pilot in the affords optimal protection in all virtuosity and competitiveness, but, Vietnam War, Robert Mason relates types of accidents. In one case, an more important, from economic con- many examples of having pushed his expert witness testified that injury siderations deriving from the high cost Bell Huey helicopter far beyond its was enhanced because a seat was of materials.…” design limits. For example, he once anchored and failed to give way. In a At the other end of the fragility scale, “landed” in a small river so that the different case, experts argued that Salvadori relates an incident in which rushing waters would clean the cargo failure to anchor a seat had led to a building design engineer was called deck off, knowing that only the elec- greater injuries.

14 Computer Automobile air bags that save many improvement hides too much detail. If nature, surprises unerringly make a lives but cause death or serious injury we look behind that curtain, we see beeline for the bad news camp, from in a small percentage of crashes are that over the same time period, the which they proceed to make the pro- another example of this phenomenon. sheer number of software applications ject leader pull out more hair. Spend There are no simple answers to where has increased by the same exponential the higher transistor budget in keeping to target a design on the fragility scale, amount, and the average delivered per- the integer and floating-point sides sep- other than this one: Don’t sacrifice formance varies widely from one appli- arated, and many benefits will accrue. everything to performance. Make all cation to another. When I was first learning to fix tele- such tradeoffs purposefully. visions—yes, they were black and white Exponential complexity back then—it bothered me that the hor- COMPUTERS It’s not just a matter of language, or izontal sweep and the high voltage cir- The average performance of com- coding style, or compiler differences, cuits were closely intertwined. I know puter systems has skyrocketed over the although they’re all important factors. why that was done—it’s easier to gen- past three decades. We architects get The root cause is that overall computer erate high voltage from an alternating more of the credit for this than we actu- system complexity has increased expo- source because a simple step-up trans- ally deserve. After all, the migration nentially, and complex systems behave former followed by rectification suffices. from the single-issue scalar processors in complex ways. Some applications In terms of understanding televisions of the 1970s to the out-of-order like caches; some like the L2 cache but in the first place, it’s easy to see that extremely deeply pipelined multi- won’t fit in the L1; some map onto the something must sweep the beam from threaded firebreathing “funny cars” of branch prediction scheme perfectly, top to bottom, something else from left today was achieved by a combination and a few are pessimal for it. to right, with some means of attract- of microarchitecture improvements and ing the beam toward the front of the process technology advances. set from the hot cathode that emits the There’s always a cost electrons. But armed only with that Architecture versus technology in tying conceptually understanding, and facing a TV with According to Modern Processor separate functions no raster, you might be misled into Design by John Paul Shen and Mikko together. thinking the set had a high-voltage H. Lipasti (McGraw-Hill, 2003), problem when really it was the hori- microarchitecture advances have zontal oscillator that had died. led from 0.1-instructions-per-cycle All of this leads to ever-widening There’s always a cost in tying con- machines in 1970 to 2-IPC machines variability in the performance ceptually separate functions together. in 2003, a 20-fold improvement. In extremes of applications on each new, Such an expedient increases the overall that same period, clock rates increased more complex processor. In other complexity and thus has a real price. from 0.1MHz to today’s 3GHz, a words, we’re inexorably moving 30,000-fold improvement. So who gets toward the more fragile end of the BAD BREEDING the credit for faster chips—the archi- scale at the system level. Reducing this to pithy T-shirt apho- tects or the process technologists? There are ways to spend higher tran- risms, I propose the following formu- This isn’t quite fair, of course. Had sistor budgets to move to the left, lation: the architects not provided microar- towards safety, on the fragility scale. chitectures capable of being run at Some microprocessors have been • Complexity breeds fragility. those fast clock rates, numbers like designed without integer multipliers, for • Fragility breeds surprises. 3GHz would not have been attained. example, because IMUL hardware is • Surprises are bad. And designing for fast clocks causes a large and power-hungry. After all, the decided loss in efficiency as measured instruction set architecture already Strive at all times to maintain a sense by instructions/clock. Taking that into requires the chip to translate integer to of the overall complexity of a given account, I still score process technol- floating point and back again. design, and place great importance on ogy as being at least two orders of I’ve never liked this idea. It may be minimizing it. magnitude more important than archi- faster than not having an IMUL, but Early in my career, I was riding in a tecture in terms of delivered perfor- not by much. Worse, it surprises pro- car with the chief architect of a micro- mance over that time period. grammers and compiler writers. processor that was then in its late It doesn’t really matter. These speed Always remember: Surprises during design stages, and he was holding his improvements have made today’s design aren’t evenly distributed into head in both hands, very depressed. computers useful for a wide range of good news and bad news categories. When I asked him what was wrong, he activities. But citing a 30,000-fold By some as yet undiscovered law of said, “I feel I have lost all control on

January 2004 15 At Random

this project. All of the intellectual on a slippery road or that are making engineering designs must avoid boundaries we placed on the various odd noises are similarly signalling their fragility whenever possible. The real units have gradually been compro- drivers. In each case, the physics of the key is keeping the design objectives in mised. The designers are freely bor- situation provides an operational mar- sharp focus. rowing time and space from each gin that can be of great value. If physics dictates that fragile guitars other, or sharing functionality for the We in the computer industry have an sound best, then a luthier can direct her sake of die area. Nobody knows how extra challenge in trying to design less efforts to that balance point, and she the chip is going to work any more. I’m fragile, more forgiving systems. Un- can educate her customers about the drowning in a sea of complexity, and I fortunately, computer-controlled sys- best ways to handle that system weak- can’t see how to get back out of it.” tems don’t naturally fail gracefully. One ness. In the end, it’s that luthier’s cus- Only through a Herculean project moment, the computer is monitoring tomers who will decide whether a management campaign and many sili- many different sensors and using that better-sounding but less forgiving fin- con respins was that project salvaged. information to efficiently control actu- ish is the right choice. Insidiously, only the core architects and ators and motors; the next moment, the In our world, if you must design a the project leaders could see the real computer has failed completely and is fragile system, then do it purposely, culprit: the cost of complexity. accomplishing precisely nothing, leav- carefully, and with the same attention One reason that Chuck Yeager was ing the chemical plant, or airplane to detail that your luthier counterpart a great test pilot was his innate sense engine, or elevator to run uncontrolled would have applied. Remember that of how close to the edge his aircraft toward maximum entropy. unless you actively manage it through- was. He could feel it and hear it, and Graceless failure, often with no out a design project, system fragility has under emotional pressure that would warning, is the hallmark of a computer a way of sneaking up on you. Eschew crush most of us, he could relate that system that was designed around per- complexity. Surprises are bad. sense to his intellectual understanding formance targets without regard to of the aerodynamics of flight and take system fragility. Bob Colwell was Intel’s chief IA32 the right action. Boats that are low in architect through the Pentium II, III, the water and responding sluggishly to he best-sounding guitars are the and 4 microprocessors. He is now an the helm give the same situational most fragile, but it’s clear from independent consultant. Contact him sense to an alert skipper. Cars that are T the other examples cited that at [email protected].

2004: January July looking outlook issue next-generation search February August ahead ad hoc networking sensor networks March September to hardware speculation robotics April October future computers and the aging software architectures technologies May November adaptive software and information assurance hardware December June next-generation personal internet security computing To submit an article for publication in Computer, see our author guidelines www.computer.org/computer/author.htm 1972•1988• 197232 & 16•1988 YEARS AGO

BATTLING TRASH. “Faced with moving a quarter million Editor’s Note: The more we know about yesterday, the tons of trash a year off District streets, the Department of better we will be able to deal with today. Computer Environmental Services, Washington, D.C., has enlisted a offers this bimonthly column providing excerpts from land pollution index and an IBM computer to help the city’s past issues to serve as a memory jogger for older mem- war on grime. Both the index and computer are part of bers and as a perspective creator for newer members. phase II of Operation Clean Sweep, the city-wide program designed to give District residents clean streets and, at the JANUARY 1972 same time, a new sense of community pride and spirit. PUBLIC CONCERNS. “Addressing an audience of computer “Department inspectors will match every street against a specialists, industry executives, management personnel, edu- series of photographs that set cleanliness standards. If a cators, and user industry representatives, Dr. Bruce Gilchrist, street doesn’t measure up, it’s reported to the Department AFIPS Executive Director, stated, ‘While 71% of those sur- so immediate action can be taken. The Department is cur- veyed believe life is better today because of the use of com- rently using an IBM System/360 Model 50 to help keep puters, there is major concern in a number of areas. These track of the 83 trucks that travel the 165 routes and stop at include automation and unemployment, increased depen- 135,000 trash pick-up points each week. dence on computers, dehumanization, the gathering of “The computer is also saving manpower for the District information on people by large organizations, and the pos- by cutting the time it used to take to re-configure a route by sible misuse of computerized information files.’” hand from 15 days to only one.” COMPUTER ON A CHIP. “Intel has introduced an integrated CPU complete with a 4-bit parallel adder, sixteen 4-bit reg- JANUARY 1988 isters, an accumulator and a push-down stack on one chip. ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING. “The impact of electronics and It’s one of a family of four new ICs which comprise the modern computer technology on the creation and publi- MCS-4 microcomputer system—the first system to bring cation of written information has just begun to be felt. One the power and flexibility of a dedicated general-purpose can safely predict the non-death of paper; the paperless computer at low cost in as few as two dual in-line packages. society is just not going to happen. In fact, expect just the “MCS-4 systems provide complete computing and con- reverse. The information glut will continue to expand. The trol functions for test systems, data terminals, billing new electronic media won’t replace paper, but augment it machines, measuring systems, numeric control systems and by providing more efficient and effective access to infor- process control systems.” mation. And when that information is found, a paper copy will be made.” BAD ART. “A California graphics design company is spon- soring a ‘Bad Art’ contest to call attention to what the firm perceives as a lack of design standards in the electronic publishing industry. The ‘winning’ entries will be hung in the firm’s Hall of Shame. “Bruce Ryon, president of Design Access, said the contest was inspired by the recent flood of ‘graphically atro- cious’ ads created with EP systems. “‘The more hapless efforts... of aesthetically impaired desktop publishing ... should be preserved for posterity, like TV bloopers, man-bites-dog headlines, or those early films of airplanes that never got off the ground,’ Ryon said.” COMPUTER ON A CHIP. “Motorola has completed evaluation sampling of the 68030 32-bit microprocessor, called the ‘030.’ The company announced availability of 16- and 20-MHz chips at the same time that it announced development of a 25-MHz version. “According to the company, the 030 provides twice the performance of the 32-bit 68020 while remaining fully com- patible. It is reputedly the first microprocessor to have on- Used with permission from Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute chip data and instruction caches, parallel (Harvard-style) Intel’s MCS-4, described in 1972 as the first system to offer a 4-bit architecture, and dual modes of address.” parallel adder, sixteen 4-bit registers, an accumulator, and a Editor: Neville Holmes; [email protected]. push-down stack on one chip.

January 2004 17 INDUSTRY TRENDS

to pay for expensive designs. Their processors for PCs and servers gener- Vendors Go to ally handle applications, such as Microsoft Word, that perform many different types of tasks and thus execute many types of instructions on rel- Extreme Lengths atively small data sets. Baron explained, “Workloads for the chips made by major manufacturers tend to be instruction intensive. for New Chips Therefore, a key way to improve these chips is to increase the number of exe- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols cuted instructions per clock cycle. The best way to increase the number of executed instructions per clock cycle is by increasing a chip’s frequency.” s demand has grown for Parallelization approaches don’t wireless communications and work with the types of applications multimedia devices—includ- that run on traditional CPUs, Baron A ing cameras, MP3 audio said, because the programs usually players, IEEE 802.11 wireless handle highly interdependent data. LAN base stations, and cellular With interdependent data, a chip must phones—so has the demand for spe- resolve one group of information cialized embedded chips that can han- before starting on another. dle these products’ need for data- In addition to higher frequencies, intensive, fast, power-efficient, reliable Baron said, the major chip makers performance. improve their products via smaller fea- Neither communications nor the of school want to take experimental ture sizes, more transistors, and com- rendering of multimedia files tolerates designs and try them in the field.” Also, plex architectures and design. chips that cause transmission delays he said, many young engineers prefer This entails fitting and intercon- and interruptions. At the same time, making new designs at a startup to necting more components within the many of these processors must be writing device drivers for a major semi- same amount of space, which requires energy efficient because they operate conductor firm. large investments in computer-archi- within battery-powered platforms. And it’s not just wireless and multi- tecture research and more costly semi- This makes traditional CPUs unsuit- media technologies that are driving the conductor-manufacturing processes. able in many cases. extreme-chip market. Mike Calise, pres- To meet the demand for a different ident of extreme chip maker Clear- Extreme embedded chips type of processor, vendors are begin- Speed Technology, said, “We’re seeing Extreme chip vendors, Baron said, ning to offer unconventional extreme an unbelievable number of compute- are often younger companies with less chips, explained Max Baron, principal intensive operations in the biotechnol- money and fewer employees. They typ- analyst at In-Stat/MDR, a market ogy and scientific fields.” For this ically design chips that perform only a research firm. market, ClearSpeed makes a 32-bit few types of functions. They thus exe- coprocessor for PCI-architecture Pen- cute a small range of instructions on DOING MORE WITH LESS tium class workstations. The chip runs applications with a large amount of Driving the development of extreme at only 200 MHz but performs at 25.6 data that isn’t interdependent. chips is the huge growth in wireless Gflops per processor because it uses 64 For example, extreme chips in a communications and the resulting on-chip floating-point processors. device that handles multiple wireless demand for millions of mobile chips, LAN connections would process sev- said In-Stat senior analyst Tom Traditional CPUs eral similar data streams that could be Halfhill. According to Baron, there are two handled independently. However, Halfhill noted, big bucks broad types of chips. The first is made In this case, improving performance are not the only motivation. “It’s also by established companies such as entails increasing the amount of the engineering challenge,” he ex- Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Motorola, and data—not the number of instruc- plained. “Lots of engineers coming out Texas Instruments that have the money tions—processed per unit of time.

18 Computer The lack of data interdependency makes it easier to improve perfor- Instruction memory mance via parallelization, Baron explained. Increasing chip frequency could also increase performance, but it Instruction register would come at a higher price and at the Instruction decoder cost of greater power consumption and PC heat, all unacceptable for the devices that use extreme chips. Fully connected Therefore, extreme-chip vendors gen- network erally develop massively parallel processors that include multiple reduced-

Register Hazard Pipeline detection instruction-set computer (RISC) cores, files controller Sequencing logic called processor engines. Because they forwarding control Bypass networks and improve performance via paralleliza- Fully connected tion, these chips can typically operate at network lower frequencies than traditional CPUs. In essence, the key to extreme Function Function Data memory design is to miniaturize multiple simple unit unit processors and place them on a chip. Peter Claydon, chief architect of Source: Silicon Hive picoChips Designs, an extreme-processor design consultancy, said, “Our Figure 1. Silicon Hive’s ultra-long-instruction-word extreme chip eliminates traditional PC102 contains 344 processors on a processor elements such as bypass networking and forwarding control, pipeline control, single chip that runs at [only] 160 and hazard detection. The compiler handles these jobs instead. This reduces control over- MHz. These processors communicate head, moves complexity to the compiler, and adds flexibility otherwise limited by a hard- with each other over an onboard, inter- ware-fixed instruction set. nal bus. And multiple tasks can be run at once. For example, a single PC102 and when new functionality was approach in its customized chip designs [used in a cellular base station] can needed, they had to redesign the hard- for communications and digital-signal process the telecommunications data ware. “This was an expensive and processing. for hundreds of cellular users in paral- time-consuming process,” Halfhill According to the company’s chief lel.” noted. “Now, designers can make the architect, Dirk Helgemo, instruction processor configurable so it will be sets are designed into the chip, rather Creative approaches much easier to adapt to changing stan- than streamed onto it as is usually the Several techniques have enabled the dards such as the constantly evolving case. This lets MathStar chips use mul- design of useful extreme chips. 802.11 Wi-Fi security standards.” tiple external I/O to handle large Better design processes. Chip design However, configurability can come amounts of data and thus enables mas- was more difficult in the past, Halfhill at a price. sively parallel processing without mas- said, largely because designers had to Jeroen Leijten, chief architect of the sive internal data buses. manually map out chip designs. Today, Philips subsidiary Silicon Hive, said that MathStar’s Field Programmable there are two main easy-to-use hard- for its configurable, ultra-long-instruc- Object Array uses data paths that are ware-design languages that make the tion-word Avispa+ processor to run loosely coupled between multiple chip-design process easier and faster properly, “all data pipeline staging must processors to form a multiple-instruc- by letting developers design a chip be explicitly scheduled in the compiler.” tion-multiple-data machine on a chip, as a software model: the Very High- Thus, the vendor must program not enabling it to handle data-intensive Speed Integrated Circuits Hardware only the chip’s general operations but applications. Description Language and Verilog. also how the chip will deal with a spe- Once compiled, developers can manu- cific program. This yields a fast, highly Challenges to doing ally tweak chip designs generated via customizable processor, as Figure 1 more with less these languages to make them more shows, but generates more work and Extreme processors face several efficient. expense for the vendor. technical and marketplace challenges. Configurable processors. In the past, Creative parallel processing. Math- For example, extreme chips may not vendors put functionality in hardware, Star uses a creative parallel-processing appeal to some potential users who

January 2004 19 Industry Trends

don’t understand their unconventional processors,” Halfhill said, “but some many different types of demands. architectures or don’t want to deal applications may require multiple RISC Thus, he concluded, there won’t be the with new vendors. chips and DSPs to match the perfor- standardization in the extreme-chip Development tools. Most extreme mance of a single unconventional market that you see in the PC or server processors require special develop- processor.” However, using multiple chip market. ment tools. Baron explained, “You chips like this would cost too much, Meanwhile, stated Carnegie Mellon simply can’t use a QNX, Wind River, consume too much power, and take up University Assistant Professor Seth or Gnu C because their compilers too much space for many host devices. Copen Goldstein, demand for high- don’t [work with] the new architec- There are also application-specific performance, low-energy consumption, tures.” Many companies thus modify integrated circuits and systems on chip, and other capabilities that gave birth to Gnu C because it’s open source and which have high performance and are extreme chips will continue, ensuring already well understood, he noted. easier to program than extreme chips the technology’s ongoing popularity. Design issues. Extreme designs with but require a long time to develop and However, added Baron, extreme massively parallel processors still lack thus may be obsolete by the time they designs will continue to face competi- efficient compiling and efficient are finished. Field-programmable gate tion from traditional established chips. designs for communication between arrays are flexible but expensive. In the end, he said, the marketplace the on-board chips, according to Industry observers say there are will decide which designs will flourish Baron. Designers now must both cre- enough different uses and enough and which will fall by the wayside. ate the chip and try to work out the demand for these types of chips, as well best way for the processor engines to as for extreme chips, to provide a mar- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a free- network with each other, which entails ket for each. lance technology writer based in additional time and cost. Arden, North Carolina. Contact him Marketplace alternatives. Users at [email protected]. who want to gain some of extreme he embedded market, Halfhill chips’ benefits can turn to alternative noted, has a huge range of appli- types of hardware in some cases. T cations, as disparate as rocket Editor: Lee Garber, Computer, 10662 Los “High-performance RISC processors guidance systems, pagers, and antilock Vaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos, and DSPs [digital signal processors] are brakes. He said there will have to be CA 90720-1314; [email protected] easier to program than [extreme] multiple architectures to manage these SET wireless networks gigabit Ethernet INDUSTRY enhanced parallel ports STANDARDS FireWire 802.11 token rings IEEE Computer Society members work together to define standards like IEEE 802, 1003, 1394, 1284, and many more.

HELP SHAPE FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES • JOIN AN IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY STANDARDS WORKING GROUP AT computer.org/standards/

20 Computer CALL FOR PAPERS The 1st IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems

(MASS-2004) GENERAL CHAIR Dharma P. Agrawal October 25-27, 2004, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA University of Cincinnati http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~cdmc/mass PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Mario Gerla University of California, Los Angles ® IEEE Jie Wu Florida Atlantic University Sponsored by PROGRAM VICE CHAIRS IEEE TC on Distributed Processing and IEEE TC on Simulation Marco Conti (MAC layer and lower layers) CNR-IIT, Italy Recent Research on wireless networks and mobile computing has concentrated on single-hop networks, where network nodes communicating directly to a fixed Prasant Mohapatra (Network layer) infrastructure such as cellular or satellite systems. While in Ad hoc and sensor University of California, Davis networks multi-hop scenarios such as conference, hospital, battlefield, rescue and Ivan Stojmonvic (Algorithms and Topology) monitoring scenarios are covered, where network nodes communicate via other University of Ottawa, Canada network nodes. This conference covers the area of ad hoc and sensor systems, from physical issues to applications aspects. Yu-Chee Tseng (Applications) National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan Possible topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

TUTORIAL CHAIR - MAC protocols for ad hoc and sensor networks (801.11, Bluetooth, etc) Stephan Olariu - Routing protocols (unicast, multicast, broadcast, geocast, etc) Old Dominion University - Power-aware and energy-efficient design - Directional and smart antennas for ad hoc networks PUBLICITY CHAIRS Jean-Pierre Hubaux - QoS, security, and fault-tolerant issues EPFL, Switzerland - Location and mobility management - Topology construction and coverage maintenance Kia Makki / Chi Zhou - Distributed Algorithms (self-configuration, scheduling, synchronization, etc) Florida International University - Data gathering, fusion, and dissemination

Tom La Porta - Operating system and middleware support Pennsylvania State University - Complexity analysis of algorithms - Analytical, mobility, and validation models LOCAL ARRANGEMENT CHAIR - Applications of ad hoc and sensor networks Mihaela Cardei Florida Atlantic University Paper submission

FINANCE CHAIR All submissions will be handled electronically. Authors should prepare a PDF of their Anup Kumar full papers. Papers must not exceed 10 single-spaced and two-column pages using at University of Louisville least 11 point size type on 8.5 * 11 inches pages. Electronic submission instructions will be published on the website http://www.ececs.uc.edu/~cdmc/mass together PUBLICATION CHAIR Xiuzhen Cheng with style files. George Washington University Tutorials REGISTRATION CHAIR Proposals for half and full day tutorials are solicited. The selection criteria include the Hong-Yi Wu expertise and experience of the instructors and relevance to the central themes of the University of Louisiana conference. Proposals of at most 4 pages, including 1-page biographical sketch, INDUSTRY LIAISON should be submitted to the Tutorial Chair, Stephan Olariu ([email protected]), by Bob O'Dea April 30, 2004. Motorola Important dates IEEE TC CHAIRS Chita Das (Distributed Pro cessing) Manuscript Submission due: April 15, 2004 Anup Kumar (Simulation) Acceptance Notification due: July 20, 2004 Final Manuscript Due: August 30, 2004 TECHNOLOGY NEWS

SECURITY THREATS Clients, not network administrators, Is Peer-to-Peer control P2P networking, which is described in the sidebar “The Ins and Outs of Peer-to-Peer Networks.” Individual users are responsible for Secure Enough for securing their files and directories. P2P thus circumvents many types of corporate security, including controls over who is allowed to enter workspaces Corporate Use? and which system resources visitors have access to. George Lawton Companies that run or are considering running P2P programs are concerned that users could accidentally share important corporate data. Jim Lowrey, a security specialist at En- eer-to-peer technology is deavors Technology, said another being used more frequently major security challenge is controlling for corporate activities. P2P the incoming P2P traffic that can enter P enables work teams, often a company’s network. Users are con- geographically dispersed, to cerned that P2P applications could let share information and coordinate pro- viruses or hackers enter systems. jects online, noted Nimisha Asthagiri, “One of the newer concerns is law- development manager for security suits occurring from [a company] hav- projects at P2P software vendor ing copyrighted material on its net- Groove Networks. work and servers, facilitating the trad- In a February 2003 study, market ing of this material. Companies are get- research firm Frost & Sullivan esti- ting [hit] with million-dollar settle- mated that revenue from the sale of Groove Workspace, and Joltid’s Peer ments because they have not prohib- corporate P2P systems will increase Enabler. And if vendors agree on a ited the use of these materials,” from $42.8 million this year to $4.53 solid, standards-based, widely sup- explained Frost & Sullivan security billion by 2007. As Figure 1 shows, ported infrastructure that provides analyst Jason Wright. Frost & Sullivan also predicted that the interoperability and platform indepen- Kevin Rowney, chief technology offi- number of enterprise P2P clients in the dence, corporate P2P adoption could cer of security vendor Vontu, said, US alone will rise from about 100,000 increase even more. “Most of the corporations we deal this year to about 1.8 million in 2007. However, now that P2P is being used with would prefer to see P2P use Within a company, explained Rice for more important functions, security stopped entirely on their networks. University Assistant Professor Dan has become a critical issue. Thus, com- They frequently view P2P systems as Wallach, “P2P technologies might be panies such as BitTorrent, Intel, Joltid, exposing companies to an excessive used for instant messaging, file storage, Microsoft, and Sun are creating plat- amount of risk.” remote backup, or a number of other forms that simplify the development applications.” and deployment of secure P2P applica- Sharing sensitive information Many large vendors are beginning to tions. Vendors such as Applied Meta, A critical vulnerability is that most integrate P2P applications with the core Entropia, Groove, Popular Power, and P2P applications can turn a computer business programs they sell, such as United Devices have integrated stan- into a network file server. This their customer-relationship manage- dardized security approaches into their increases the chances of improper shar- ment systems. And vendors such as P2P products. ing of intellectual property, confiden- IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun Micro- These developments lend credibility tial corporate information, and other systems are integrating P2P functional- to P2P’s suitability for corporate use, sensitive documents. ity into other products. as well as for sharing music files, said A recent US Congressional study, Moreover, there is a growing num- Jarad Carleton, leader of Frost & “File-Sharing Programs and Peer-to- ber of stand-alone corporate P2P appli- Sullivan’s Internet infrastructure pro- Peer Networks: Privacy and Security cations, including Avaki Data Grid, gram. Risks,” found that many users of con-

22 Computer sumer P2P applications accidentally made highly personal information— 2,000 such as tax returns, financial docu- 1,800 ments, medical records, and attorney- client communications—available to 1,600 other users. Similar problems could 1,400 occur with corporate P2P networks. In addition, P2P software bugs could 1,200 cause systems to accidentally make 1,000 sensitive information available. “A P2P client is also a server, in that it will 800 accept connections from other ma- Units (thousands) 600 chines on the network,” explained Rice University’s Wallach. “Like any 400 server, it needs to be robust against 200 buffer overflows and the like. Any vulnerabilities in the P2P client would, like 0 vulnerabilities in a Web server, allow 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Source: Frost & Sullivan an attacker to break in and take control of the computer.” According to Wallach, the majority Figure 1. Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm, predicts that the number of corporate of P2P systems don’t include encryp- peer-to-peer clients in the US will increase steadily until 2005, when it will start rising tion and thus could let eavesdroppers more quickly. with sniffers or similar devices find and then view material sent by unsuspect- ing users. The Ins and Outs of Peer-to-Peer Networks Attackers could also steal private Peer-to-peer software lets users access files on other computers by creating information or even activity log files an interface to files that other users have made available via the P2P network. from a client by using a P2P applica- In some cases, systems implement P2P communications by giving each node tion to scan for an accessible directory both server and client capabilities. Users start by downloading and executing on a victim’s system or by exploiting a P2P networking program. After launching the program, users can enter the system vulnerabilities. IP addresses of other computers on the P2P network with whom they want to As is the case with other applications, communicate. the most difficult type of P2P-based Users then decide which of their files they want to share and which they data theft for organizations to prevent want to password-protect. When they want to communicate with another net- involves authorized users misappropri- work member, their computer establishes a connection online with the mem- ating or being careless with data. ber via the appropriate IP address. Usability problems Most consumer and many corporate P2P applications communicate as HTTP traffic on TCP/IP port 80, making communications from outside an Network administrators can set up organization difficult to stop with standard firewalls, which generally leave P2P applications with varying degrees the port open to give users access to the Web. of centralized control. However, users Sender-anonymizer and encryption technologies make it even harder for frequently maintain control of manag- firewalls and other technologies to analyze P2P messages and determine ing their own file directories and the whether to stop them. permission process for accessing them. For P2P applications to be secure, users must know how to configure them properly. For example, they must either correctly or in compliance with software (as well as system-clogging, ensure that they set up only the proper company policies can create serious activity-tracking spyware) as part of directories for sharing with other P2P security problems. files they access. They could also quickly users and that all data is identified as spread malware they accidentally ac- to whether it can be shared and if so, Spreading malicious code quire from e-mail or other sources. with which groups or individuals. P2P users could accidentally down- Consumer P2P systems have already The failure to perform these tasks load viruses, worms, or other malicious seen proof-of-concept worm attacks

January 2004 23 Technology News

such as VBS_GNUTELWORM and limit the access that other parties have Although effective, PKI can be com- W32/Gnuman. There is also concern to system resources. This requires plex, expensive, and time-consuming that P2P could spread malware in part authorization, in which a system defines to implement. because of software-design flaws. a user’s or group’s ability to access spe- Directory services. Companies could Sharon Ruckman, senior director at cific directories or sets of data. also use their existing enterprise direc- antivirus vendor Symantec’s Security tory services, which list the resources Response center, said its biannual Authentication available within a network, to identify Internet Threat Report found that of Because basic P2P applications lack users, find their public keys, and oth- the most prevalent 50 viruses and their own security, including identity erwise provide some P2P authentica- worms, the number that could attack authentication for those involved in tion. Companies such as Endeavors P2P systems increased from four in P2P communications, users can’t and Groove plan to take this approach 2002 to 19 this year. assume that other parties are who they with their products. say they are, explained Kevin Beaver, Users could accomplish directory- External attacks chief technology officer of security ven- based authentication by various means, There is considerable concern about dor Principle Logic. including the lightweight directory P2P systems opening a network to access protocol, which is a set of pro- external attacks. As is the case with Web tocols for accessing information direc- servers or e-mail servers, P2P software Vendors are looking at tories. can have bugs that hackers can exploit various ways to provide A directory usually covers a single by creating problems such as buffer security for P2P systems. administrative domain, generally rep- overflows, noted Rice University’s resenting a single organization or Wallach. department, and thus would help According to Frost & Sullivan’s Digital signatures can help authen- authenticate P2P users from that Wright, “If you are running a P2P app ticate P2P communications. The sig- domain but not from other domains. at home and using a [virtual private natures are digital codes that are network] into the [company’s] net- attached to an electronically transmit- Encryption work, you are essentially providing a ted message and that uniquely identify Encryption can play several roles in pathway for anyone who wants to scan the sender. P2P applications. For example, it can you as a host. There are ways to PKI. Peers can identify each other by protect a particular transmission be- manipulate that situation to gain directly exchanging credentials, such tween peers on an unsecured network. access to a corporate network through as digital certificates. Administrators can also use encryp- a VPN tunnel.” They can also use public-key infra- tion to create a VPN for communica- structure (PKI) technology, in which a tions over unsecured networks. In PROPOSED SOLUTIONS trusted third-party authority issues dig- addition, by using keys unique to spe- Vendors are looking at various ways ital certificates. A user who wants to cific users, encryption can support the to provide security for P2P systems. send an encrypted message applies for authentication process. For example, in its P2P products, a digital certificate from a certificate A few smaller companies, such as Endeavors uses WebDAV (Web dis- authority. The authority issues an Endeavors, have developed corporate tributed authoring and versioning), an encrypted digital certificate containing P2P systems that use the encryption- Internet Engineering Task Force stan- the applicant’s public encryption key based secure sockets layer (SSL) tech- dard that provides HTTP extensions and other identifying information. nology, which provides security for to facilitate collaborative editing and The message recipient uses the Internet messaging. Other firms are file management between users work- authority’s own, readily available pub- working with Pretty Good Privacy ing together over the Internet. lic key to decode the certificate encryption, used extensively with e- A new security model would peri- attached to the sender’s message. The mail. Other options include crypto- odically redirect P2P data from the recipient verifies that the authority graphic technologies such as the RSA client, where the user keeps it, to a cen- actually issued the certificate and then public-key encryption system with tral server for auditing, Groove’s gets the sender’s public key and identi- 2,048-bit keys and the 192-bit-key ver- Asthagiri said. This auditing could fying information from the certificate. sion of the Advanced Encryption identify problems that have already With this information, the recipient Standard algorithm. occurred and security trends that need can send an encrypted reply that only to be watched. the original sender can decrypt with a Intel’s Peer-to-Peer In P2P communications, as in many private key, which corresponds math- Trusted Library other types of transactions, users must ematically to the public key. Intel has a free, open source devel-

24 Computer opers’ library that companies can This could help the firewalls better prise, the future for this technology download to add security to P2P sys- detect and block sensitive P2P content could be very bright,” he added. “On tems they develop. The Peer-to-Peer being improperly sent outside a cor- the other hand, if vendors consistently Trusted Library (http://sourceforge.net/ porate network. fail to standardize around a platform projects/ptptl) supports digital certifi- Unlike today’s faster technologies, that addresses these concerns, network cates, peer authentication, secure stor- slower firewalls couldn’t handle the administrators will work to stop these age, encryption, and digital signatures. overhead of such extensive inspections. deployments.” The library is built on the open source OpenSSL toolkit (www.openssl.org/). George Lawton is a freelance technol- aid Vontu’s Rowney, “The enor- ogy writer based in Brisbane, Califor- Application-layer firewalls mous power of [P2P] systems to nia. Contact him at glawton@glawton. Traditional firewalls evaluate the S enhance the creative exchange of com. header information on packets to information, ideas, and content can’t determine whether to admit them to a easily be brushed aside by security con- network. Frost & Sullivan’s Wright cerns. Over time, companies will find said a new generation of application- productive ways to conduct business Editor: Lee Garber, Computer, 10662 Los layer firewalls, from vendors such as using these technologies.” Vaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos, Check Point Software Technologies “If vendors of P2P platforms com- CA 90720-1314; [email protected] and Sanctum, use deep packet inspec- mit themselves to addressing the rea- tion to examine a message’s contents. sonable security concerns of the enter- GET CERTIFIED 2004 Test Windows: 1 April—30 June and 1 September—30 October Applications now available! CERTIFIED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL PROGRAM

Doing Software Right Demonstrate your level of ability in relation to your peers Measure your professional knowledge and competence Certiﬁcation through the CSDP Program differentiates between you and other software developers. Although the ﬁeld offers many kinds of credentials, the CSDP is the only one developed in close collaboration with software engineering professionals.

“The exam is valuable to me for two reasons: One, it validates my knowledge in various areas of expertise within the software ﬁeld, without regard to speciﬁc knowledge of tools or commercial products... Two, my participation, along with others, in the exam and in continuing education sends a message that software development is a professional pursuit requiring advanced education and/or experience, and all the other requirements the IEEE Computer Society has established. I also believe in living by the Software Engineering code of ethics endorsed by the Computer Society. All of this will help to improve the overall quality of the products and services we provide to our customers...” — Karen Thurston, Base Two Solutions

Visit the CSDP web site at http://computer.org/certification or contact [email protected]

January 2004 25 NEWS BRIEFS

E-Mail Security Gets Personal

US company has developed private key based on the public one. In to customers,” said Ahmad, because and released a simplified, less addition to providing public-key tech- the technology is expensive and diffi- expensive e-mail security sys- niques, Ahmad said, Voltage’s tech- cult to use. tem that derives its public nology also offers strong elliptic-curve By automatically using an e-mail A encryption key from a mes- cryptography. address to create keys that enable sage sender’s own e-mail address. Voltage says its approach automates trusted, secure communications, Voltage Security’s SecureMail soft- and simplifies the authentication Voltage’s technology eliminates PKI’s ware suite, which works with desktops process, reversing the trend of increas- requirement that communicating par- or laptops, transparently executes the ing complexity in technology that ties always enroll with and receive cer- cryptography, making it as simple as establishes trust between two commu- tificates from a third party attesting to sending unencrypted e-mail, said com- nicating parties. This could attract their identities. pany spokesperson Wasim Ahmad. users who want more secure e-mail but With PKI, senders who have SecureMail’s server-based software are concerned about the amount of received certificates must find a recip- uses one algorithm to convert an e-mail work necessary to implement public- ient’s public key in a directory and use address into a large number that func- key infrastructure technology, the tra- that key to scramble a message. tions as a public encryption key and ditional way to encrypt e-mail. Recipients then must unscramble it another algorithm to create the user’s “You can’t roll out traditional PKI using a private key that is mathematically related to the public one. Thus, PKI entails a complex, costly process that requires overhead such as certifi- Company cate management. With Voltage, only the sender needs Internal network the software in advance. Recipients running various e-mail applications Voltage SecurePolicy Suite can click on a link to download free Voltage software that automatically decodes the message and lets them send an encrypted response. They can Enterprise Management console Internet also use a no-download reader that lets authentication them read the mail in a browser but

Public not send an encrypted response. parameters Because of the direct communica- (hosted on tion between senders and recipients, Web server) Enrollment Key the Voltage system further reduces server server complexity and potential management Firewall Firewall problems by not requiring a dedicated server to handle the secure transmis- Desktop sions. To succeed, Voltage must determine Source: Voltage Security how to get enough users to work with the technology for it to be effective, explained Phebe Waterﬁeld, analyst for Voltage Security has released an e-mail security system that automatically authenticates the Yankee Group, a market research users and derives its cryptographic keys for encoding messages from a user’s own e-mail firm. And when widely used, she address. This is simpler than public-key-infrastructure technology, a traditional but com- added, the approach must prove to be plex way to secure e-mail. Voltage users who work with the system for the ﬁrst time as transparent as Voltage claims. The authenticate themselves to the enrollment server. Once authenticated, they receive keys system has yet to be rigorously and from the key server. The public parameters contain all the information an organization independently tested, she noted. needs to create keys for any user. —Linda Dailey Paulson

26 Computer Ceiling for Controversial US H-1B Visas Drops he US has reduced the number of time when domestic unemployment is L-1 visas, which permit intracompany people admissible under its con- a politically sensitive issue. transfers of foreign managers and T troversial H-1B visa program, The AILA estimates 900,000 H-1B workers with specialized skills. which lets skilled foreign workers— employees, 35 to 45 percent from Some businesses say that they plan many in the computer technology India, currently work in the US. to cope with lower H-1B visa caps by field—take jobs in the country for up Steadman said US technology firms outsourcing work overseas. to six years. are currently finding some of the over- The US Congress refused to change seas employees they want by using —Linda Dailey Paulson a policy, called for by the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act (AC21), that decreased the annual Technique Speeds Data Transmission in Computers visa ceiling beginning this fiscal year to 65,000. The cap the past three years Sun Microsystems researchers have discovered a way to transmit data inside was 195,000. a computer 60 to 100 times faster than with traditional techniques by letting Paul L. Zulkie, president-elect of the information pass directly between chips placed next to one another. The American Immigration Lawyers’ approach would also reduce energy consumption. Association (AILA), which supports The Sun researchers say they sent data at 21.6 Gbits per second between chips higher H-1B caps, predicts the US will using a pared-down version of their new technology. Principal investigator award all 65,000 visas by March 2004. Robert J. Drost said this prototype was a proof of concept that used chips with He said this would leave many com- 0.35-micron feature sizes rather than chips using today’s smaller feature sizes. panies without the qualified employees Speeds could be even greater using current chip technology, he noted. they need until the next fiscal year Traditionally, data passes between elements in a computer via wiring. With starts on 1 October. Sun’s approach, chips sit next to each other and transmit data between con- The H-1B visa program has sparked nection points, which include tiny transmitters and receivers, via capacitive cou- ongoing controversy. Many technol- pling. When chips are brought into alignment, explained Drost, the capacitance ogy companies say they hire US work- between them carries the signal across the short open space between the con- ers when possible but need higher visa nection points with very little of the latency that occurs when signals have to pass caps to fill important positions requir- through wires. ing skills for which qualified domestic A system’s total throughput would increase with more interchip connections. workers aren’t readily available. Thus, Drost said, when Sun’s technique is used fully in computers, data rates H-1B opponents, on the other hand, could exceed a trillion bits per second. have assailed the program for taking Currently, the 25-micron wiring that takes data into and out of chips is sol- away scarce technology jobs from US dered to processor edges at ball-bond pads with pitches 250 microns wide. With workers and giving them to workers Sun’s approach, connection points would be only 50 microns wide. Thus, there from other countries who, they say, is room for more data connections, which leads to higher transfer rates. often accept lower salaries. Meanwhile, because the system only has to push signals across a small open- Zulkie said AC21’s temporarily ing between connection points, it uses less power. higher visa caps failed to provide a Sun’s approach would also improve performance by letting computer design- long-term solution to US employers’ ers pack chips into a system far more densely than is possible today. need to hire foreign professionals. However, because the chips would be in close proximity, there is concern that However, president John Steadman of the approach could generate excessive heat and that the connection points could the IEEE-USA, which opposes high H- create interference. Some also question whether the technique can be imple- 1B, said the unemployment rate for US mented effectively on an assembly line. IT professionals is high enough that “It’s an extremely difficult problem. [Sun’s approach] is unique and holds a many domestic engineers are available great deal of promise,” said Christopher Willard, research vice president with to hire. market research firm IDC. Harris Miller, president of the Although Sun hasn’t fully tested its technique, Drost said, the US Defense Information Technology Association Advanced Research Projects Agency has expressed interest in it. Meanwhile, the of America, an H-1B supporter, said company says it wants to find commercial implementations as soon as possible. the US Congress didn’t want to con- —Linda Dailey Paulson sider approving a higher ceiling at a

January 2004 27 News Briefs

Viewing the World through Interactive Panoramic Images

hotographs limit viewers to see- For one thing, high-resolution digital noted, fast Internet connections ing the image captured in the cameras have minimized the work improve the viewing process by quickly P viewfinder, no matter how inter- needed to build panoramas from indi- delivering detailed, full-screen images. esting the surrounding areas might be. vidual photos by producing images that Other photographers are experi- However, interactive panoramic images don’t have to be digitized first. Also, menting with ways to expand the are beginning to solve this problem and Goetze said, getting images on a Web viewer’s experience by providing create a new art form. server is easier and quicker than in the video-like transitions to link separate The increasingly popular panoramic past. It’s now possible to produce a but related sets of panoramic images. images let viewers move their cursor working panorama perhaps 5 minutes Also, companies such as Zoomify across a photograph and get a 360- after shooting it, he explained, although are developing software that can zoom degree view of a scene beyond the small more work improves the final product. in on panoramic images and stream image visible in a browser window. Creating a panorama also requires additional detail into a scene as the Panoramas used to be made primar- stitching multiple images together and viewer moves “closer.” ily by hobbyists who took a series of editing the image to make sure the A few businesses are exploring aug- photos across a scene and then used a stitching was done precisely. Stitching mented panoramas, which are computer to assemble them horizon- applications—such as Apple’s Quick- designed to make a scene more inter- tally. They displayed the finished prod- Time VR Authoring Studio, Pano- esting by adding animated characters uct in a browser window in which Tools, and RealViz Stitcher—analyze or streaming Webcasts of people. viewers could move from side to side image pairs and work with common However, this approach is not com- to see the entire view. features to match them properly. mon because it is time-consuming. Panoramic-image creation now Some applications let designers cre- Fred Ritchin, director of the online appears to be expanding for several ate spherical panoramas in which a magazine Pixel Press and an associate reasons, said Web designer and pho- viewer can look up and down as well professor of photography and commu- tographer Erik Goetze. as side to side. Meanwhile, Goetze nications at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said designers haven’t begun to explore panoramic Web Sites that Offer Panoramic Images images’ full potential. For example, he said, they could be The following Web sites offer panoramic images, some of which require used with text and other types of con- plug-ins to view: tent to create a more interesting Web • The Picture Project’s 360degrees site is a social-documentary project on experience. the US criminal justice system: www.360degrees.org. • Australian commercial photographer Peter Murphy started a Weblog showcasing panoramas: www.mediavr.com/blog. He also has panoramic images at www.mediavr.com/bronte1.htm and http://culture.com.au/ Linda Dailey Paulson is a freelance virtual/. technology writer based in Ventura, • 360 VR Studio, with New Jersey commercial panoramic photographer California. Contact her at ldpaulson@ Jook Leung, offers panoramic images shot in the New York City area: yahoo.com. www.360vr.com. • Danish commercial photographer Hans Nyberg maintains a Web site with links to other sites containing 30,000 panoramas: www.panoramas.dk. • Belgian photojournalist Tito Dupret has panoramas of places such as Beijing’s Forbidden City and Cambodia’s Angkor Wat on the World Heritage Tour Web site: www.whtour.net. Editor: Lee Garber, Computer, 10662 Los • An augmented panoramic image can be found at www.throbbing. Vaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, Los Alamitos, com/bikerace. CA 90720-1314; [email protected]

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Executive Director: Asia/Pacific Office VP, Regional Activities: MARC T. APTER ANNE MARIE KELLY Watanabe Building Publisher: ANGELA BURGESS 1-4-2 Minami-Aoyama,Minato-ku, VP, Standards Association: JAMES T. CARLO Assistant Publisher: DICK PRICE Tokyo107-0062, Japan VP, Technical Activities: Director, Finance & Administration: Phone: +81 3 3408 3118 • Fax: +81 3 3408 3553 VIOLET S. DOAN RALPH W. WYNDRUM JR. E-mail: [email protected] Director, Information Technology & Services: IEEE Division V Director: ROBERT CARE GENE H. HOFFNAGLE Manager, Research & Planning: JOHN C. KEATON IEEE Division VIII Director: JAMES D. ISAAK President, IEEE-USA: JOHN W. STEADMAN PERSPECTIVES A Tale of Three Disciplines ... and a

Jesse H. Poore University of Tennessee Revolution

espite years of hard work and dedicated champions, software Some disciplines, like engineering still struggles to become the discipline its founders envisioned. Its educational and industrial constituents have circuit and genetic not only failed to converge, but the already large gap between software education and industry practice continues to grow. engineering, seem to CurriculaD are diffuse, software systems continue to have ever larger error counts, and the ﬁnancial risks of taking on a software project are growing. evolve from theory to Not that efforts haven’t been valiant. Vic Basili, Fred Brooks, Barry practice relatively Boehm, Harlan Mills, and David Parnas, in particular, have worked hard to align software engineering foundations with curricula and curricula with responsibly. Software industry practice. As accomplished scientists and engineers, they have artic- ulated fundamentals, written textbooks, taught in universities, led signiﬁcant engineering, on the programs in industry, and modeled good practices from positions of pres- tige. Their efforts produced one success after another as software engineer- other hand, while not ing emerged into an academic discipline and profession. yet at the guillotine, has But I believe even they would agree that academic software engineering has had too little impact on the software industry. In part, the evolutionary suffered a decided lack environment was to blame. Like Dickensian protagonists, software engineering suffered through the best and worst of times. The best was when its of direction. It may be advocates embraced economic opportunity; the worst was when they strug- time to storm the gates. gled with complexity. Wisdom and foolishness alternated as we pitted formal abstractions against individual ingenuity. As the bonds of theory, practice, and tools fused and broke apart by turns, we progressed in the light or wandered aimlessly in the dark. And like the heroes of the French Revolution, we look to a future that will bring us everything or nothing, depending on the public trust. But other disciplines evolved in similar environments and have either become successful or have established the framework to become successful.

THE CHARACTERS Circuit engineering is a discipline that has done the job right, and genetic engineering is at least trying to do the job right. Both have managed vast complexity and achieved a high level of public trust. Software engineering could take lessons from either discipline—and this is not simply an acade- mician’s lament; the cost of software is enormous and the risk to public safety daunting.

30 Computer Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE Circuit engineering Enormous state space characterized this Electronic circuit engineering began with Claude complexity, yet engineers treated it explicitly. From the Shannon’s 1938 thesis. From this point, engineers The number of active components also char- recognized that a circuit was a rule for a function— acterized complexity, which innovators man- beginning, a Boolean function. Pioneers of the field were aged by continually adhering to a description the correspondence strongly motivated to proceed in a thoughtful, of components assembled according to the between circuit methodical way. Electronic components and hard- mathematics of functional composition. diagrams and ware construction were expensive. Repair—destruc- Computer-aided design, engineering, and functional tion and reconstruction—cost both money and time. manufacturing tools were at the industry’s Shaped by talented mathematicians and engi- heart, making abstraction practical and equations neers, the field fully exploited the Boolean algebra enforcing an affinity of theory, practice, and was exact. associated with circuits. In fact, the entire process tools. Testing was an integral part of the engi- of circuit design was a mathematical activity, and neering, and design for testability was a fun- the hardware mirrored the algebraic operations damental consideration. Design tools and AND, OR, and NOT. Theorems made it possible standard best practice were always available and to build any circuit from just NAND gates, which automated in step with hardware evolution. proved economical. Mathematicians developed nor- Reverse engineering was also a consideration, mal forms for functions using specific operators. with its focus on determining a circuit’s function Innovators recognized the power of visual graph- by observing its input-output behavior or even ics early on and devised a notation that the com- divining its internal state design. However, circuit munity adopted and sustained. From the beginning, engineering was and still is mostly a matter of for- the correspondence between circuit diagrams and ward design using established components and functional equations was exact. Only rank ama- leaving a documented design trail. teurs in their home radio shacks would construct As the field progressed, its proponents kept the devices without first sketching diagrams, scribbling research frontier linked to undergraduate training, functions, and consulting parts catalogs. The idea textbook notation, and industry practice. Tools of building every new function from scratch—from were generally in step with demand. The vocabu- AND, OR, and NOT gates—was ludicrous. lary retained the mathematics, physics, and engi- Engineers defined larger units (registers, shift reg- neering concepts that engineers knew and used. isters, adders, multiplexers, demultiplexers, and so There was a consensus as to what constituted good on) mathematically, constructed them physically, professional practice, and practitioners generally and reused them routinely. Reuse was always a managed projects well because everyone under- smart idea. In fact, developers precisely prescribed stood a worker’s qualifications in terms of training and cataloged each component’s functional input- and experience. output relationship for just that purpose. Today, the complexity of circuit engineering This process streamlined the innovation of bet- matches or exceeds that of any other field. ter, cheaper, faster components, since with the functional precision of each catalog description, Genetic engineering manufacturers could hide internal secrets from the Although its evolutionary pace is swifter than user. Moreover, the assembly of a new circuit from circuit engineering’s, genetic engineering is follow- components was always clear because a function ing a similar path. The discovery of DNA’s double- represented each component, and all the functions helix structure, attributed to James Watson and were of the same family. The engineer would sim- Francis Crick in 1953, revolutionized life sciences ply formulate the new function at the highest level in general. Although the details vary among organ- of abstraction. isms, we now know that genomes carry a complete Innovations from physics and engineering paced set of instructions for an individual’s lifetime. progress, spanning devices from vacuum tubes to Humans have trillions of cells, each of which has transistors to integrated circuits. At the same time, 23 pairs of chromosomes. Each chromosome has a the mathematical theory flourished. In the 1960s, DNA strand, a regular double-stranded helix as progress accelerated, the theory of finite state linked by bonds between guanine and cytosine on machines as sequence recognizers paved the way the one hand and thymine and adenine on the for scaling up complexity. By the 1980s, circuit other. These linkages are base pairs. The gene itself complexity (still rules for functions) had vastly is a segment of a DNA molecule and can have a increased. few hundred to several million base pairs. The

January 2004 31 human genome, for example, comprises the size of the problem and concluded that their some three billion base pairs. Genetic instruc- only hope was to follow scientific fundamentals Although genetic tions are encoded in these pairs, and like the and best engineering practice, which requires engi- engineering is circuit, provide the rule for a function. neers to catalog and reuse all results and conduct mostly a matter of In genetic engineering, the circuit is already peer reviews of all working methods and work reverse engineering, defined, the program already written; the life- products. In other words, they recognized both a it holds many ware function (or relation) is already imple- sequence-processing problem and a substantial mented in the gene. It is true that some information systems problem. parallels with genetic engineering occurred before the DNA Next, the scientific-industrial leaders of the field circuit engineering. discovery, but the process was trial and error, turned to mathematics to characterize problems guided by experience, intuition, and experi- and to computer science for the appropriate tech- mental principles. The mathematical model nology. Obviously, considering every sequence was for DNA waited just under the surface to be not possible, so scientists adopted a mathematical recognized, and once it was, scientists and engi- approach to successively partition the space and neers embraced it. work productively. The mathematical work is not At this stage, genetic engineering is mostly a mat- complete, but scientists continue to study the alge- ter of reverse engineering. Still, it holds many par- bras and operators. An important remaining task is allels with circuit engineering. Genetic engineers to build sequence recognizers that can divine inner want to determine what a gene does, where it is structure strictly from input-output behavior. located, or which gene causes an observed phe- Complex as these issues are, they are somewhat nomenon (disease or talent). They want to know similar to problems in electrical engineering and how to modify genetic circuits so that the organ- automata theory. In the final analysis, a genetic- ism will respond differently. As with electronic cir- engineering effect is a (possibly nondeterministic) cuits, these modifications can be physically small transformation, and a gene is a rule for a function but produce dramatic behavioral or physical (or relation). Moreover, because most genetic-engi- changes in the organism. neering transformations are embarrassingly paral- Genetic engineers are also interested in learning lel, engineers can use algorithms that exploit how to make new genes from other genes—in parallelism. And finally, researchers who under- essence, how to reuse gene segments as components. stand both mathematics and genetics are writing Lifeware differs from hardware in that it self- the code. Verification and test will proceed care- replicates, can self-repair, uses novel information- fully because errors could lead to false research con- processing modes, and can develop diversity from clusions, harm people and the environment, and undifferentiated state. culminate in a huge financial loss. For the same rea- The life sciences have certainly benefited from sons, the community is highly likely to share mathematical thinking in the past, as in the contri- accepted codes and catalog established results for butions of R.A. Fisher. However, most life scien- subsequent use. tists were not trained in the mathematical The genetic-engineering industry and academia specialties that current field research and practice are committed to the idea that students will be require. Modern genetic engineers must confront trained in the appropriate life science, mathematics, numbers arising from combinatorial complexity on and computer science fundamentals. Curricula a par with the state space that circuit designers rou- changes update the mathematics and computer sci- tinely address. For example, consider all possible ence courses. The industry and research community combinations of base pairs in double strands of evolves tools that enforce genetic engineering’s foun- length 120,000. Then, consider all possible cuts of dations and consensus on processes. The vocabulary length, 1, 2, 3, ..., n, depending on the application retains reference to the mathematics and cell science and all possible reconnections of cuts of compati- on which genetic engineering is built. Industry and ble length that might lead to a crossover having cer- the research community intend to go forward with tain properties. Imagine the complexity if genetic qualified workers trained in the fundamentals (Elias engineers achieve their goals and determine all the Zerhouni, “The NIH Roadmap,” Science, vol. 302, genes in the DNA sequences of multiple organisms 2003, p. 63). and develop intellectual and laboratory tools to use this information with precision. Software engineering The reaction by scientists in genetic engineering Many of us regard the 1968 NATO conference to this situation is exemplary. First, they observed as the birth of software engineering, which was

32 Computer then regarded as the design of computer programs We must work harder at becoming disci- and software-intensive systems within a perfor- plined: Whereas physics and hardware reali- We can mance, quality, and economical framework. ties hold circuit engineering to fundamentals, design software (Ironically, the source material for Frederick P. and chemistry and life imperatives restrict Brooks’ The Mythical Man Month was shipping in genetic engineering, software engineering for testability— quantity at that time, so perhaps the conference must freely elect and self-impose its intellec- but we assumed that it is never too late for a revolution.) tual principles. Nonetheless, the complexities generally don’t. Harlan Mills was the keynote speaker at the 1975 are more or less equal. ACM national conference, where he presented “The Complexity in the software industry grew New Math of Computer Programming” (Comm. more slowly than in genetic engineering, yet ACM, Jan. 1975, pp. 43-48)—one of his many today, the genetic engineering industry is ahead efforts to remind us of the mathematical basis for of software engineering in principles, methods, software development. Like a circuit, a program is training, notation, vocabulary, tools, and produc- a rule for a function and subject to an algebra of tivity! Why? Because both genetic engineering and program construction, which Mills defined. All the circuit design follow good science and engineering benefits that accrued to the circuit design industry practices. could have accrued to the software industry had Software engineering had a later start than either researchers and practitioners simply acted similarly circuit or genetic engineering, so it had the chance on this basic fact. to model itself after either one. We knew from John Yet, despite our knowledge, the software indus- von Neumann that software development is an try progressed by dint of nonconformist intellect inherently mathematical activity—just as much so and massive amounts of money rather than by dis- as circuit or genetic engineering—and we under- ciplined science and engineering. stood many of the mathematical facts from the out- set. We grasped that we ask the same questions as A FAR BETTER THING circuit or genetic engineers: What must the new In each of the three disciplines, the steps from program do? What does this program do? Where conception to final product are similar. For specifi- is the program that does such and such? How can cations in circuit engineering, we have functions we modify the program to behave differently or over fixed-length sequences of a two-symbol alpha- construct new programs more efficiently? bet with Boolean axioms. For genetic engineering, Ironically, software engineering uses little com- we have functions over arbitrary-length sequences puter power relative to circuit engineering or of a four-symbol alphabet with DNA axioms. For genetic engineering to support design and testing. software engineering, we have functions over arbi- All three disciplines are (or could be) based on very trary-length sequences of an arbitrary alphabet similar symbol manipulation, component reposi- with axioms that must be derived from the appli- tories, design and validation, state space manage- cation itself. ment, and certification testing. In all three cases, specifications give rise to state Circuit and gene designers are generally willing to machines. Prescriptions for implementation in var- pay the computational price for design and testing, ious systems, or the code, map the state machine to but software engineering will cop a plea rather than the target implementation. Code can be correct by turn to supercomputers when the state space grows design in all cases. We can design circuits with testa- large or (statistically) exhaustive testing is in order. bility built in. We can design genes with a known This may sound harsh, but we have much at stake. way to test them. And we can design software for I’m not denying the software accomplishments, testability—but we generally don’t. When we can’t the existence of virtuoso programmers and effec- fully automate exhaustive testing, we can use sta- tive development teams, or the use of tools such as tistical models to assure that the circuit/gene/soft- editors, compilers, and leak detectors. (Indeed, ware meets quality standards by statistical protocol. many have debunked the “productivity paradox.”) Like circuit and genetic engineers, software engi- But neither am I willing to ignore the chaos, fail- neers should look first to the underlying science for ures, and risks to public safety nor the enormous vocabulary, methods, and tools. Half a century sums wasted. later and after a correct start, the software indus- We can manage only so much complexity ad hoc, try remains disconnected from university training, and we can absorb only so much financial waste and university training is disconnected from soft- and tolerate only so much risk to public safety. We ware’s mathematical foundations. have compelling reasons to try to get it right, espe-

January 2004 33 cially where correctness, performance, qual- mia’s early efforts to lead gave way to frantic efforts ity, and economy really matter. to appear relevant to an industry unencumbered by Erroneous and The software engineering industry would the baccalaureate experience. arbitrary solutions be better off today if it had followed the pat- This failure has many ugly faces, and the list of are too often tern of circuit engineering, and it will be bet- have-nots is long: We have no accepted as the ter off tomorrow if it follows the path of genetic engineering. I find it bizarre that, • standard notation with mathematical fidelity designer’s creative given software’s origin and its very nature, that everyone will use, prerogative. we could have such a gross disconnection • normal forms and cataloged components, among the field’s foundations, university cur- • experimentally validated best practices ricula, and general practice. We can only par- • productive programming languages in wide- tially blame the lack of physical or chemical spread use, constraints, legions of extremely bright indepen- • tools evolved systematically over decades that dent thinkers, and unlimited sums pushed into soft- facilitate abstraction and enforce software’s ware development and maintenance. Also, the foundations in industrial practice, industry has become complacent, enjoying an inex- • vocabulary with a mathematical and engi- plicable degree of blind public trust and acceptance neering basis (instead we have beans), of low quality. It has had little motivation to con- • curricula in close rapport with the workforce, nect practice with preparation. • standards for product usability and correctness, MADAME DEFARGE’S SCARF • workforce trained in the fundamentals and Every revolution starts with a list of culprits that experienced in standard practice based on fun- must be beheaded or at least retrained. In software damentals, and engineering, the culprit is our academic programs. • industry that will employ only qualified work- Across the university, from accounting to zoology, ers and pay only for quality work. we are teaching students to be proud of writing small programs badly (comparatively few of the Software is the hope and means for progress in population design little circuits and little genes) and science and in better industrial products, yet soft- to be grateful for shabby application software. ware engineering seems to be languishing in a dark I recently examined several of the software pack- prison of its own making. ages included with nutrition textbooks as well as software that health clinics actually use. I found VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION that although the textbooks had a rather uniform It will take much hard work and planning to get look and feel, the software packages were very dif- academia and industry into alignment and make ferent, ranging from intuitive and easy to use to software engineering worthy of public trust. I don’t inscrutable. The programs were easy to hang and see that we have a choice. We can’t afford not to most lost state awareness during use. Moreover, try. Worldwide software industry waste is measured when I entered the same data using each package, in hundreds of billions of dollars annually, exclud- I got materially different results. We seem to have ing physical (death) and social (identity theft) costs. no quality watchdog for this kind of software, since Must heads roll before we do something? book production attends to the book’s quality but To start this revolution, we must advance three ignores the software that comes with it. fronts simultaneously. In our primary computer science, computer engineering, information science, information engi- Certification neering, and even software engineering curricula, Professional societies, industry associations, and we fail to introduce and reinforce with urgency the government regulators must certify products in nar- mathematical foundations throughout the degree row specializations. We could begin with our old- program: disciplined system and program design, est specialty, mathematical software. There is a the seriousness of design errors, and designs that worldwide trust of numerical analysts who have a satisfy a social responsibility, not just the author’s deep understanding of algorithms, performance ego. Erroneous and arbitrary solutions are too often and error in calculating transcendental functions, accepted as the designer’s creative prerogative. numerical integration and differentiation, basic lin- A look at history from the 1965 ACM curricu- ear algebra operations, and so on. People in the lum to current offerings makes it clear that acade- know can name the mathematicians, software,

34 Computer hardware, and organizations to be trusted. It would certifying that the software’s authors are be a relatively simple step for this society to define dependable, capable, and working according scientific certification protocols for such software- to an approved process for the application in Programming hardware implementations and to issue a seal of question. Airline pilots and mechanics require language compilers approval for each use by a compiler or application formal training and a license, but not so for is an area that is package. We could then relax and trust the calcu- the authors of the avionics software systems sufficiently mature lations behind a spreadsheet GUI or application that fly the planes. Pharmaceuticals must stand to support effective package. This is especially important when the up to statistical protocols in clinical trials, industry experiences major shifts, for example, but the software systems that aid in the man- certification when the mainframes of the 1970s gave way to the ufacture, distribution, and tracking of these protocols. workstations of the 1980s and when vector and pharmaceuticals go unchecked. parallel processors arrived on the scene. The examples are endless: digital controls Programming language compilers is another area of nuclear power plants, air-traffic-control that is sufficiently mature to support effective cer- systems, automotive braking and (soon-to-come) tification protocols. Existing professional societies steering systems, and so on and so on. could step up to this task. In view of the 50 years of programming language research and the poten- Curriculum reform tial for accumulating knowledge and skill in com- While certification and licensing apply pressure piler implementation, we have little justification for from the top down, curriculum reform attacks using languages that fail to enforce sound practices the problem from the bottom up. McMaster Uni- or for tolerating compiler errors or variations versity’s software engineering curriculum is the best among compilers of the same language. example of how to align foundations with curric- Industry associations could establish certification ula and curricula with engineering practice (David protocols and centers for many consumer products L. Parnas, “Software Engineering Programmes Are that are software intensive but not a threat to pub- Not Computer Science Programmes,” Ann. Soft- lic safety. Perhaps the controls for home appliances ware Eng., vol. 6, 1998, pp. 19-37). The curricu- would become simpler, more uniform, and less lum holds that software developers should prone to transcendental behavior. understand the products or systems they are devel- In one certification area—medical devices and oping. It also relies on an understanding of physi- other products that directly relate to public safety— cal systems and control engineering to exert we should begin immediately. Government regula- discipline on the software. Finally, it focuses on tory agencies may not do this type of certification knowing and teaching what is true of software. expertly at first, but in time they should be able to I sincerely hope that after apprenticeships under perform it at least as well as they now do for pre- masterful software engineers, graduates of the scription drugs and Florida orange juice. McMaster program will be armed with an advan- A few other areas—statistical packages built on tage beyond knowledge, more than a college degree mathematical software, transaction processing and and more than successful experience—an engi- database management systems, and embedded real- neering license that permits the holder to do things time systems—are also mature enough for a mean- that those without the license cannot do. ingful measure of product certification by cohorts The process of declaring individuals qualified or of well-qualified practitioners. unqualified to participate in the development of specific software-intensive products would go a Licensing long way toward driving consensus among acade- Regulatory authorities must license certain prac- mics worldwide to get the curricula right. titioners and processes, such as those associated with Curricula reflect the degree of disciplinary con- medical devices and financial systems. Software- sensus and some degree of local circumstances and intensive systems now dominate many devices and strategy. If there are three schools of thought, there processes that impinge on social and physical pub- will be three flavors of curricula. Accreditation and lic well-being. The risks are unacceptably high. standards are both a blessing and a curse: If applied Surgeons require formal training and a license, but too soon, they stifle development and creativity; if the authors of the software inside surgical instru- applied too late, the field becomes woefully sub- ments do not. Software runs medical devices from optimal. If applied first to the best programs, they pacemakers to radiation-therapy systems, but no become goals for all to achieve; if applied first to public authority is thoughtfully and conservatively weak programs, they become company to avoid.

January 2004 35 Curriculum reform is, of course, a matter the same time differentiate some software devel- of building consensus where we have too lit- opment methods as superior in quality and pro- The software tle. Mathematics is taught across the univer- ductivity to the efforts of those unschooled in the field must find sity, often to avoid foundations and treat foundations. We must establish both in fact and a way to bind applications directly, but a hard problem is message, “Our way isn’t just different; it’s better in university gladly taken to a member of the mathemat- ways that matter.” ics faculty for expertise and assistance. It is fair to ask whether circuit engineering and preparation with English is used and taught across the univer- genetic engineering resorted to certification and industry practice. sity, but a member of the English faculty will licensing. In some sense the answer is yes. There are be the final arbiter of a dispute on grammar, professional engineering licenses, home wiring however pedantic the experience might be. codes, appliance design standards, and indepen- Electrical engineering is the place to get dent laboratory testing. When electrical shock is advice on circuit design, and the life sciences own not a threat, the threat of product recall drives high genetic engineering. Computer and information sci- standards or, more recently, drives the functional- ence and engineering, on the other hand, seem to ity from hardware into software. Because of soci- be in everyone’s job description. Worse, when a etal concern for genetically altered foods, the role good physicist becomes a bad software developer, of genetics in medical therapies, and the public fear it is with unstinting confidence and resolve that he of uncontrolled experimentation with life forms, knows no peer. Thus, it is no surprise that when the we may see extensive government involvement in nutritionist encounters an array of software pack- most aspects of genetic engineering—perhaps all ages that supposedly do the same job but seem to except the software. have an arbitrary design, he wonders what the com- We have seen with circuit engineering—and will puter scientists are teaching. see with genetic engineering—close attention to Curriculum reform must start with the freshman preparing students for field participation and care- service courses. We must communicate the essence ful integration of workers in industrial practice. and importance of the field’s foundations and at The software field must find a similar way to bind university preparation with industry practice. New! t is never too late for a revolution, and in cir- Software Engineering Overview: cuit and genetic engineering we have two wor- I thy role models. Given the state of affairs in Preparing for the software engineering today and the pervasive and IEEE Computer Society intrusive role of high-risk software in public wel- fare, I, for one, am willing to be a Sydney Carton— CSDP Examination to act quickly to save something I cherish. In this case, the price is one of calculated restriction to save Expand your knowledge and advance your the reputation of software engineering and ensure that it is never the weakest link. Theoretically, soft- career with a new online training course ware is the only component that can be perfect, and created exclusively for software professionals. this should always be our starting point.

This interactive course offers 10 modules that cover all Jesse H. Poore is a professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and holds the 11 knowledge areas of the CSDP exam. Key concepts and Ericsson-Harlan D. Mills Chair in Software Engi- principles of software engineering are presented with neering. He is the Director of the University of Ten- clear and concise explanations. Plus the course provides nessee–Oak Ridge National Laboratory Science a list of references to aid further study for each area. Alliance. His current interests are the economical production of high-quality software and federal science policy. Poore received a PhD in information Register Now and computer science from the Georgia Institute of For more information or to enroll for Technology. He is a member of the IEEE, the IEEE Software Engineering Overview online by visit Computer Society, and the ACM and is a fellow of the AAAS. Contact him at [email protected]. www.computer.org/certiﬁcation/distancelearning PERSPECTIVES

The End of Science

John Horgan Revisited

ne of my most memorable moments as a science journalist Because science has occurred in December 1996, when I attended the Nobel Prize festivities in Stockholm. During the white-tie banquet for advanced so rapidly 1,500 presided over by Sweden’s King and Queen, several prizewinners stood to give brief speeches. David Lee of Cor- over the past century nellO University, a winner in physics, decried the “doomsayers” who were claiming that science is ending; the work for which he and his colleagues or so, we assume that it had been honored showed just how vital physics is. can and will continue As the audience applauded, several people at my table whispered and jabbed their fingers at me. They knew Lee was alluding to my book, The to do so, possibly End of Science (Addison-Wesley, 1996), which had been stirring up trouble since its release six months earlier. The book argued that science—especially forever. But science pure science, the grand quest to understand the universe and our place in it— might be entering an era of diminishing returns. As the New York Times itself tells us that there put it in a front-page review, “The great days of scientific discovery are over; are limits to our what science now knows is about all it will ever know.”1 The book was denounced by eminences such as Bill Clinton’s science advi- knowledge. sor, the British minister of science, the heads of NASA and the Human Genome Project, the editors of Science and Nature, and dozens of Nobel laureates. These denunciations usually took the form not of detailed rebut- tals of my arguments but of declarations of faith in scientific progress. Scientists need a certain degree of faith to bolster their confidence in the arduous quest for truth; lacking such faith, science would not have come so far so fast. But when researchers reflexively deny any evidence and arguments that challenge their faith, they violate the scientific spirit. Perhaps recognizing this fact, some pundits reacted thoughtfully to my book. Moreover, I suspect that more than a few scientists who publicly assailed my views privately acknowledged their merit. David Lee was a case in point. When I introduced myself to him at the Nobel banquet to tell him how flattered I was that he had mentioned my book, he said he hoped that I hadn’t been offended. He had enjoyed the book and had agreed with much of it, particularly the argument that achieving fundamental discoveries is becoming increasingly difficult. He just felt that the only way for scientists to truly know the limits of science is to keep trying to overcome them.

BUMPING UP AGAINST LIMITS Today, scientists and nonscientists alike still ﬁnd it hard to accept that science may be bumping up against limits. I can understand why. We have grown

0018-9162/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society January 2004 37 up in a period of explosive scientific and tech- has an intriguing corollary: If science has limits, The more we know nological progress, reflected by such measures then it might be moving at maximum speed just as Moore’s law. When I started working as a before it hits the wall. about the Earth, journalist in 1983, I wrote on an IBM the less there is Selectric typewriter. I literally cut and pasted NANOTECH AND FUSION to discover. (actually Scotch-taped) manuscripts, and Some researchers grant that the basic rules gov- slathered Whiteout on like housepaint. My erning the physical and biological realms may be first computer, a “portable” Kaypro, was as finite, and that we may already have them more or bulky as a filing cabinet and had a 64K mem- less in hand. But they insist that we can still explore ory. Ten years later, I was writing The End of Science the consequences of these rules forever and manip- on a Macintosh laptop. Talk about progress! ulate them to create an endless supply of new mate- Because science has advanced so rapidly over the rials, organisms, technologies. Proponents of this past century or so, we assume that it can and will position often compare science to chess. The rules continue to do so, possibly forever. But science itself of chess are quite simple, but the number of possi- tells us that there are limits to our knowledge. ble games that these rules can give rise to is virtu- Relativity theory prohibits travel or communica- ally infinite. tion faster than light. Quantum mechanics and This point is reasonable, but some enthusiasts— chaos theory constrain our predictive ability. particularly in the trendy field of nanotechnology— Evolutionary biology keeps reminding us that we take it too far. As espoused by evangelists such as are animals, designed by natural selection not for Eric Drexler, nanotechnology resembles a religion discovering deep truths of nature but for breeding. more than a field of science.3 Drexler and others Perhaps the most important barrier to future proclaim that we will soon be able to reconstruct progress in science—especially pure science—is its reality from the atomic scale on up in ways limited past success. only by our imaginations. Our alchemical power Postmodernist philosophers will find this a terri- to transform matter will help us achieve infinite bly naive comparison, but scientific discovery in wealth and immortality, among other perks. some respects resembles the discovery of the Earth. Nanotechnology has also inspired some enter- The more we know about the Earth, the less there is taining science fiction about nanobots running to discover. We have mapped out all the continents, amok, such as Michael Crichton’s novel, Prey oceans, mountain ranges, and rivers. Every now and (Harper Collins, 2002), and an essay by Bill Joy of then, something interesting turns up. Scientists find Sun Microsystems titled “Why the Future Doesn’t a new species of lemur in Madagascar or exotic bac- Need Us” (Wired, Apr. 2000). But to the extent that teria living in deep-sea vents. But at this point we are researchers have experimental experience at the unlikely to discover something truly astonishing, like nanoscale level, they tend to doubt the more far- the lost continent of Atlantis or dinosaurs dwelling fetched claims—positive or negative—that nan- inside the Earth. otechnologists make. “The level of hard science in In the same way, scientists might be unlikely to these ideas is really low,” the Harvard chemist discover anything surpassing the big bang, or George Whitesides remarked recently.4 After all, quantum mechanics, or relativity, or natural selec- nanotechnology is just a glossy wrapping for nitty- tion, or DNA-based genetics. Nobel Prizes reflect gritty work done in chemistry, molecular biology, the trend toward diminishing returns. The Russian solid-state physics, and other fields that investigate physicist Pyotr Kapitsa discovered superfluidity nature at small scales. Experiments often reveal that in liquid helium in 1938 and won a Nobel Prize what should work in principle fails in practice. for that finding 40 years later. David Lee and his Take nuclear fusion. Physicists such as Hans two colleagues won the 1996 prize for showing Bethe elucidated the basic rules governing fusion— that superfluidity also occurs in a helium isotope, the process that makes the sun and other stars He-3. shine—more than 60 years ago. By the 1950s, this If we accept that science has limits—and science knowledge had spawned the most fearsome tech- tells us that it does—then the only question is when, nology ever invented: thermonuclear weapons. not if, science reaches them. The American histo- Next, physicists hoped to harness fusion for a more rian Henry Adams observed a century ago that sci- benign application: a clean, economical, boundless ence accelerates through a positive feedback effect.2 source of energy. Knowledge begets more knowledge; power begets When my career began in the early 1980s, more power. This so-called acceleration principle fusion-energy research was a staple of the science

38 Computer beat: Keep the money coming, researchers sory randomness “pseudonoise.” Two par- promised, and in 20 years we will give you energy adigmatic examples of pseudonoisy systems AI researchers have too cheap to meter. Twenty years later, the US are the Mandelbrot set, discovered by Benoit has drastically reduced its budget for magnetic- Mandelbrot, and “Life,” a cellular automa- come up with some confinement fusion, formerly the leading candidate ton devised by John Conway. useful inventions, for power generation. Chaoplexologists such as Wolfram assume but these advances Inertial-confinement fusion—in which giant lasers that much of the noise that seems to pervade pale beside the blast tiny fuel pellets—has fared better, but only nature is actually pseudonoise, the result of hopes that because its main application is nuclear-weapons some underlying, deterministic algorithm. research. Surveys of sustainable-energy methods This hope has been nurtured by certain gen- AI pioneers once rarely even give fusion a courtesy mention any uinely significant findings, such as Mitchell had for their field. more—and please don’t bring up cold fusion. Feigenbaum’s discovery more than 20 years Diehards may still cling to the dream, but realists ago that gushing faucets and similar turbulent acknowledge that fusion energy is effectively dead, systems, although they seem hopelessly noisy, the victim of technical, economic, and political con- actually adhere to a rule called period doubling. straints. But a gushing faucet is laughably simple compared to a stock market, a human brain, a genome, COMPUTERS AND CHAOPLEXITY or a rain forest. These hideously complex phe- Of course, technological advances often enable nomena—with their multitudes of variables—have researchers to overcome seemingly insurmountable shown no signs of yielding to the efforts of chao- obstacles. Computers in particular have vastly plexologists. One reason may be the notorious but- increased scientists’ capacity for data acquisition, terfly effect, elucidated by Edward Lorenz in the analysis, storage, and communication. Innovations 1960s. The butterfly effect limits both prediction such as optical and quantum computing may and retrodiction, and hence explanation; specific extend the reign of Moore’s law indefinitely— events cannot be ascribed to specific causes with although, as the astute computer theorist Rolf complete certainty. This is something that has Landauer often warned, quantum computers may always puzzled me about chaoplexologists: be so sensitive to thermal noise and other disrup- According to the butterfly effect—one of their fun- tions that they remain a laboratory curiosity.5 damental tenets—achieving many of their goals But adherents of certain computer-driven fields— may be impossible. notably artificial life, chaos, and complexity—seem to view computers not as tools but as wands that SEEKING ARTIFICIAL COMMON SENSE will magically solve even the toughest puzzles. In One would think that chaoplexologists would also The End of Science I lumped chaos and complex- be chastened by the failure of artificial intelligence ity together under a single term, chaoplexity, to live up to expectations. AI researchers have come because, after talking to scores of people in both up with some useful inventions, including devices fields, I realized there is no significant difference that can translate languages, recognize voices, judge between them. loan applications, interpret cardiograms, and play Chaoplexologists have argued that with more chess. But these advances pale beside the hopes powerful computers and mathematics they can that AI pioneers once had for their field. solve conundrums resistant to conventional scien- In 1984, I edited an article for IEEE Spectrum in tific reductionism, particularly in “soft” fields such which AI expert Frederick Hayes-Roth predicted as ecology, psychology, economics, and other social that expert systems were going to “usurp human sciences. Stephen Wolfram recently reiterated these roles” in professions such as medicine, science, and claims in his magnum opus, A New Kind of the business world.7 When I called Hayes-Roth Science, which touts cellular automatons as the key recently to ask how he thought his predictions had that will unlock all the riddles of nature.6 held up, he cheerfully admitted that the field of As many critics have noted, Wolfram’s “new” expert systems, and AI generally, had stalled since science actually dates back at least to John von their heyday in the early 1980s. Neumann, the inventor of cellular automatons. Not all AI’ers have conceded defeat. Hans Von Neumann and many others have shown that Moravec and Ray Kurzweil still prophesize that simple rules, when followed by a computer, can machines will soon leave flesh-and-blood humans generate patterns that appear to vary randomly in their cognitive dust.8,9 (In The End of Science, I as a function of time or scale. Let’s call this illu- called this sort of speculation “scientific theology.”)

January 2004 39 These cyberprophets cite Garry Kasparov’s viewed him in 1997, Brooks said, “Ultimately you There are clear loss to the IBM computer Deep Blue in 1997 have to ground it out. You have to attach it to some signs that as a portent of AI’s impending triumph. other sensory motor experience, and that’s what I Actually, that contest underscored the lim- think he’s missing.” mathematics is itations of artificial intelligence. Chess, with already outrunning its straightforward rules and tiny, Cartesian THE END OF MATHEMATICS? our limited cognitive playing field, is a game tailor-made for com- Some of the harshest attacks on The End of capabilities. puters. Deep Blue, whose five human handlers Science came from scientists whose fields I hadn’t included the best chess programmers in the bothered to denigrate. world, was a prodigiously powerful machine, When I encountered him at a New York Academy capable of examining hundreds of millions of of Sciences meeting in November 1996, chemist and positions each second. If this silicon monster had to Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach commented that strain so mightily to beat a mere human at chess, not only had I failed to include a chapter on chem- what hope is there that AI engineers will ever create istry, my index included only two measly references HAL, the lip-reading killer in the film 2001? to the subject. I didn’t have the heart to tell Some prominent AI’ers acknowledge that com- Herschbach that chemistry just seemed too passé to puters will probably never be as smart as HAL. dwell on. In a 1992 interview, Linus Pauling assured Although computers excel at tasks that can be pre- me that he had laid out the basic principles by 1930, cisely defined, such as chess, they will never acquire and who was I to disagree with Linus Pauling? (Also, the flexible, all-purpose intelligence—the ordinary to be honest, I have always found chemistry excru- common sense—that every normal human acquires ciatingly dull.) by the age of five or so. Similarly, the mathematician John Casti com- In HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream plained in Nature12 that I had neglected to include and Reality,10 a recent collection of essays by AI a chapter titled “The End of Mathematics.” experts, David Kuck stated flatly, “Under any gen- Actually, I had planned to include such a chapter; eral definition ... AI so far has been a failure.” I just ran out of gas. I would have agreed with Casti Roger Shank declared that HAL “is an unrealistic that there are no limits, in principle, to mathemat- conception of an intelligent machine” and “could ics, because mathematics is a process of invention never exist.” The best that computer scientists can rather than of discovery; in that sense, mathemat- hope to do is to create machines “that will know a ics resembles art or music more than pure science. great deal about what they are supposed to know Moreover, Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorem about and miserably little about anything else.” established that any moderately complex system of Even Marvin Minsky, who had predicted in the axioms gives rise to questions that cannot be mid-1960s that computers would be as smart as answered with those axioms. By adding to their humans within three to eight years, admitted that base of axioms, mathematicians can keep expand- “we really haven’t progressed too far toward a truly ing the realm within which they play, posing new intelligent machine.” conjectures and constructing new proofs, forever. One AI’er still pursuing the original vision of a The question is, how comprehensible will these computer with an all-purpose rather than highly spe- proofs be? cialized intelligence is Douglas Lenat. For 20 years, There are clear signs that mathematics is already he has been trying to create a software program that outrunning our limited cognitive capabilities. The mimics common-sense knowledge. Lenat’s goal was largest conventional proof ever constructed is the for this program, called Cyc, to become more or less classification of finite simple groups, also called autonomous, capable of acquiring new knowledge “the enormous theorem.” In its original form, this by scanning newspapers, books, and other sources theorem consisted of some 500 separate papers, of information. In 1997, Lenat predicted that by totaling more than 20,000 pages, written by more 2001 Cyc would become a “full-fledged creative than 100 mathematicians over a period of 30 years. member of a group that comes up with new discov- It has been said that the only person who really eries. Surprising discoveries. Way out of boxes.”11 understood the proof was Daniel Gorenstein of The world is still waiting. Rodney Brooks of MIT Rutgers University, who served as a kind of gen- has complained that Cyc’s intelligence has nothing eral contractor for the project. Gorenstein died in in common with the human variety; far from inter- 1992. acting with the world in flexible or creative ways, A growing number of mathematical proofs are Cyc is really just a fancy dictionary. When I inter- constructed with the help of computers, which can

40 Computer carry out calculations far beyond the capability of true, empirical science. Ironic science crops mere mortals. The first such proof, constructed in up in the so-called hard sciences, such as 1976, demonstrated the truth of the four-color physics and cosmology. Superstring theory Neuroscience’s most theorem, which states that four hues are sufficient is my favorite example of ironic science. It’s important discovery to color even an infinitely broad map so that no science fiction with equations. may be that different identically colored countries share a border. The But ironic science is most pervasive in fields regions of the brain proof depended on a calculation that took a com- that address human cognition and behavior. are specialized puter 1,000 hours to complete. Theories of human nature never really die— Mathematicians like to wax rhapsodic about the they just go in and out of fashion. Often, old for carrying out elegance, beauty, and depth of proofs. But computer ideas are simply repackaged. The 18th-cen- different functions. proofs yield truth without insight or understanding. tury pseudoscience of phrenology is reincar- So yes, mathematics can, in principle, continue for- nated as cognitive modularism. Eugenics ever. The problem is that no mere human will be evolves into behavioral genetics. Social able to understand it. In 1997, the mathematician Darwinism mutates into sociobiology, which in Ronald Graham said to me,“We’re not very well turn is reissued as evolutionary psychology. adapted for thinking about the space-time contin- One astonishingly persistent theory is psycho- uum or the Riemann hypothesis. We’re designed for analysis, which Freud invented a century ago. Once picking berries or avoiding being eaten.” defined as “the treatment of the id by the odd,” psychoanalysis has been subjected to vicious criticism THE UNDISCOVERED MIND since its birth. Some Freud-bashers imply that while Some criticism of The End of Science, I admit, was French philosophers and other fuzzy-brained sorts on target. When I met the eminent British biologist may still fall under Freud’s spell, real scientists are Lewis Wolpert at a biology conference in London in immune to his charms. Actually, many prominent 1997, he declared that my book was “appalling, neuroscientists—such as Nobel laureates Gerald absolutely appalling!” He was particularly upset by Edelman13 and Eric Kandel14—still defend Freudian the chapter titled “The End of Neuroscience.” How theory. dare I dismiss all the vast and vital research on the Freud’s ideas have persisted not because they brain in a single chapter, which focused not on gen- have been scientifically confirmed but because a uine neuroscientists but on Francis Crick, a molec- century’s worth of research has not produced a par- ular biologist, and Roger Penrose, a physicist? adigm powerful enough to render psychoanalysis Neuroscience was just beginning, not ending! obsolete once and for all. Freudians cannot point to Wolpert stalked away before I could tell him that unambiguous evidence of their paradigm’s superi- I thought his objection was fair. I had already ority, but neither can proponents of more modern decided that mind-related science had so much paradigms. potential to alter our world, both intellectually and materially, that it deserved a more serious, detailed THE HUMPTY DUMPTY DILEMMA critique than it got in The End of Science. I offered Neuroscience was supposed to deliver us from such a critique in my second book, The Un- this impasse. Neuroscientists have acquired an discovered Mind: How the Brain Defies Repli- astonishing ability to probe the brain with micro- cation, Medication, and Explanation (Free Press, electrodes, magnetic resonance imaging, positron- 1999). As the subtitle suggests, this book looks at emission tomography, and other tools. Neuro- attempts to explain the mind, treat its disorders, science is clearly advancing. It’s getting somewhere. and replicate its functions in computers. In addi- But where? So far, neuroscience has had virtually tion to neuroscience, this book also covers psy- no payoff in terms of diagnosing and treating such chiatry, psychopharmacology, behavioral genetics, complex mental illnesses as schizophrenia and evolutionary psychology, and artificial intelligence. manic depression. It has failed to winnow out all My conclusion was that these fields have largely the competing unified theories of human nature, failed to live up to their advertising. In spite of all whether psychoanalysis, behaviorism, connection- this investigation, the mind remains largely undis- ism, or evolutionary psychology. covered. In The End of Science, I coined the term Neuroscience’s most important discovery may be “ironic science” to describe science that never gets that different regions of the brain are specialized a firm grip on reality and thus doesn’t converge for carrying out different functions. For example, on the truth. Ironic science is more like philoso- the visual cortex contains one set of neurons dedi- phy, literary criticism, or even literature than like cated to orange-red colors, another to objects with

January 2004 41 high-contrast diagonal edges, and still Rational Mysticism (Houghton Mifflin, 2003). Mystical another to objects moving rapidly from left While researching the book, I spoke to a wide vari- experiences to right. The question is, how does the brain ety of scholars studying mysticism, including neu- coordinate and integrate the workings of roscientists, psychologists, and anthropologists. can’t give us the these highly specialized parts to create a Early on, one of these sources warned me that kind of absolute mind? Neuroscientists have no idea. This is you can’t comprehend mystical experiences if knowledge that sometimes called the binding problem, but you’ve never had one. With that in mind, I learned we crave. I prefer to call it the Humpty Dumpty Zen meditation. I had my temporal lobes electro- dilemma. Neuroscientists can take the brain magnetically tickled by a device called the “God apart, but they can’t put it back together machine.” I consumed a nauseating psychedelic again. brew called ayahuasca, which serves as a religious Particle physicists once faced a similar dilemma. sacrament for Indians in the Amazon. I concluded In the 1950s, the number of particles detected in that mystical experiences can’t give us the kind of accelerators proliferated wildly. Theorists trying to absolute knowledge that we crave. Quite the con- make sense of it all were baffled. Then a brilliant trary. Mystical experiences do not give us The young physicist named Murray Gell-Mann showed Answer to the riddle of our existence; rather, they that all these different particles were made of a few let us see just how truly astonishing the riddle is. more fundamental particles called quarks. Order Instead of a big “Aha!” we get a big “Huh?” emerged from chaos. But in terms of sheer complexity, particle physics WHAT’S MY POINT? is a child’s game compared to neuroscience. All pro- After I gave a talk on the limits of science at tons, neutrons, and electrons are identical; a the- Caltech, a neuroscientist in the audience angrily ory that applies to one particle applies to all. But asked me what my point was. Did I think he and his each brain is unique, and it changes every time its colleagues should simply give up their research? owner is spanked, learns the alphabet, reads Thus Should Congress take its funding away? Good Spake Zarathustra, takes LSD, falls in love, gets questions. divorced, undergoes Jungian dream therapy, or suf- I hope I don’t sound disingenuous when I say fers a stroke. Scientists cannot simply ignore each that I would hate to see my prophesies become self- individual’s uniqueness, because it is central to our fulfilling—not that there is any chance of that any- humanity. This fact immensely complicates the way. I always encourage young people to become search for a unified theory of the brain and mind. scientists, and I would be delighted if my children Some scientists have reluctantly concluded that pursued that path someday. science may never fully solve the mysteries of the Grant for a moment that I am right—that sci- brain and mind. This position is sometimes called ence will never again yield revelations as monu- “mysterianism.” One well-known mysterian is the mental as the theory of evolution, general rela- psychologist Howard Gardner, who contends that tivity, quantum mechanics, the big bang theory, neither psychology, neuroscience, nor any other DNA-based genetics. For example, physicists will field has provided much illumination of such peren- never discover a unified theory that reveals “the nial riddles as consciousness and free will.15 These mind of God,” as Stephen Hawking once put it.16 subjects “seem particularly resistant to [scientific] And grant that some far-fetched goals of applied reductionism,” Gardner said. He suggests that psy- science—such as immortality, superluminal space- chologists may advance by adopting a more “liter- ships, and superintelligent machines—may forever ary” style of investigation and discourse—the style elude us. that Freud exemplified. I nonetheless have no doubt that researchers will A surprising number of scientists have proposed find better treatments for cancer, schizophrenia, that investigations of mystical states of conscious- AIDS, and other diseases; more benign sources of ness—such as those induced by meditation, prayer, energy (other than fusion); and more convenient or psychedelic drugs—might yield insights into the contraception methods. In the realm of pure sci- mind that complement or transcend those of science, scientists will surely gain a better under- ence. This notion has inspired a series of highly standing of how galaxies formed, how life began publicized meetings—most recently at MIT last on Earth, how Homo sapiens became so smart so September—between prominent scientists and the fast, how neural processes generate awareness, how Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. I a single fertilized egg turns into a fruit fly or a con- explore this possibility in my most recent book, gressman.

42 Computer But I would like to see a greater recognition of It or Praise It?” New Ideas in Psychology, vol. 10, science’s limitations—particularly in mind-related no. 2, 1992, pp. 179-190. fields, where our desire for self-knowledge can 16. S.W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam make us susceptible to pseudoscientiﬁc cults such as Books, 1998. Marxism, social Darwinism, eugenics, and psychoanalysis. Science is never more dangerous than when it seeks to tell us what we are, what we can be, and even what we should be. John Horgan, a former senior writer at Scientiﬁc American, has written for the New York Times, Discover, Slate, Time, and other publications. y goal is to foster an attitude that I call He has posted essays, articles, and profiles at “hopeful skepticism.” Too much skepti- www.johnhorgan.org. Contact him at jhorgan@ M cism culminates in a radical postmod- highlands.com. ernism that denies the possibility of achieving any truth. Too little skepticism leaves us prey to ped- dlers of scientific snake oil. But just the right amount of skepticism—mixed with just the right amount of hope—can protect us from our lust for answers while keeping us open-minded enough to The publishes recognize genuine truth if and when it arrives. over IEEE

References 1. N. Angier, “Dark Days in the Laboratory,” New York Computer Times, book review, 30 June 1996. 2. H. Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, Society Houghton Mifflin, 1918. 3. K. E. Drexler, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era 150 of Nanotechnology, Anchor, 1986. conference 4. D.E. Duncan, “Discover Dialogue: Chemist George Whitesides,” Discover, Dec. 2003, p. 24 proceedings 5. R. Landauer, “The Limits of Scientific Knowledge,” Santa Fe Institute meeting, 25 May 1994. a year. 6. S. Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, 2002. 7. F. Hayes-Roth, “The Machine as Partner of the New Professional,” IEEE Spectrum, June 1984, pp. 28-31. for a 8. H.P. Moravec, Robot: Mere Machine to Transcen- dent Mind, Oxford Univ. Press, 1998. preview of 9. R. Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, Oxford Univ. Press, 1998. the latest 10. D.G. Stork, HAL’s Legacy: 2001’s Computer as Dream and Reality, MIT Press, 1997. papers 11. S. Garfinkel, “Happy Birthday, HAL,” Wired, Jan. Not a member? 1997, p. 188.

Join online today! in your ﬁeld, 12. J.L. Casti, “Lighter than Air,” Nature, 29 Aug. 1996, p. 769. visit 13. G.M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Mat- ter of the Mind, Basic Books, 1993. 14. E.R. Kandel, “A New Intellectual Framework for Psy- chiatry,” Am. J. Psychiatry, Apr. 1998, pp. 457-469. www.computer.org/proceedings 15. H. Gardner, “Scientiﬁc Psychology: Should We Bury

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2003 Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors

This update to the 2001 ITRS Roadmap shows the industry shifting its focus toward systems on chip, wireless computing, and mobile applications.

Don wo years ago, our report titled “2001 memory—as well as the SoC products they com- Edenfeld Technology Roadmap for Semiconduc- prise. The 2003 ITRS system drivers chapter pre- Intel tors” (Computer, Jan. 2002, pp. 42-53) sents an overarching SoC context for future semi- summarized our assessment of the oppor- conductor products, along with new discussions of Andrew B. T tunities and challenges awaiting the semi- technology requirements for analog/mixed-signal Kahng conductor industry in its continued pursuit of and embedded memory fabrics. University of Moore’s law. The 2003 edition updates this effort California, and reveals a significant shift in the industry’s focus. Systems on chip San Diego Today, the introduction of new technology solu- The SoC product class is a yet-evolving design tions is increasingly application-driven, with prod- style that integrates technology and design elements Mike ucts for different markets using different technology from other system driver classes into a wide range of Rodgers combinations at different times. General-purpose high-complexity, high-value semiconductor prod- Intel digital microprocessors for personal computers ucts. SoC manufacturing and design technologies have been joined by mixed-signal systems for wire- are typically developed originally for high-volume Yervant less communication and embedded applications. custom drivers such as processors, field-program- Zorian Battery-powered mobile devices are as strong a dri- mable gate arrays (FPGAs), or memories. SoCs inte- Virage Logic ver as wall-plugged servers. System-on-chip (SoC) grate building blocks from the other system driver and system-in-package (SiP) designs that incorpo- classes and increasingly subsume the application- rate building blocks from multiple sources are sup- specific integrated circuit (ASIC) category. planting in-house, single-source chip designs. SoCs exist to provide low cost and high integration. Lower implementation cost requires greater SYSTEM DRIVERS reuse of intellectual property as well as platform- The International Technology Roadmap for based design, silicon implementation regularity, or Semiconductors (ITRS) provides quantified, self- other novel circuit and system architecture para- consistent models of canonical products—system digms. Cost considerations also drive the deploy- drivers—that drive the semiconductor industry. ment of low-power process and low-cost packaging These models support extrapolation of future tech- solutions, along with fast-turnaround-time design nology requirements for basic circuit fabrics— methodologies. The latter, in turn, require new stan- processor, analog/mixed-signal, and embedded dards and methodologies for IP description and test,

0018-9162/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society January 2004 47 Logic SRAM Flash E-DRAM CMOS RF FPGA • development of SoC test methodology, includ- FRAM ing test reusability and analog/digital built-in MEMS self-test (BIST). Chemical sensors Electro-optical Electrobiological Multitechnology integration. Considerations such as 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 06 08 10 12 cost, form factor, connection speed and overhead, and reliability drive the need to build heterogeneous systems on a single chip. As process technologists Figure 1. Existing and predicted first integrations of SoC technologies with stan- seek to meld CMOS with MEMS, bio and chemical dard CMOS processes. sensors, and so on, process complexity and production cost become major constraints. The total cost of processing is difficult to predict for future mate- 1.60 rials and new combinations of processing steps. Dynamic power LOP However, at present, cost considerations limit the 1.40 Dynamic power LSTP number of technologies on a given SoC: Processes Static power LOP are increasingly modular, but the modules are not 1.20 Static power LSTP Memory power LOP generally stackable. Memory power LSTP 1.00 Power for LOP bottom-up CMOS integration with other technologies Power for LSTP bottom-up depends not only on basic technical advances but 0.80 also on being more cost-effective than multiple-die Watts SiP alternatives. Figure 1 shows how first integra- 0.60 tions of each technology within standard CMOS 0.40 processes—not necessarily together with other technologies, and not necessarily in volume produc- 0.20 tion—might evolve. The power challenge. Recent ITRS editions project 0.00 the implications of power management—a grand 2003 2006 2009 2012 2015 2018 challenge for the semiconductor industry—on the achievable space of SoC designs. From the func- Figure 2. Total chip power trend, in watts, for a SoC-LP personal-digital-assistant tionality of a canonical low-power multimedia application, for both low-operating-power (LOP) and low-standby-power (LSTP) PDA application, an architecture of processor, modes. memory, and interface blocks can be inferred. Chip power requirements can then be estimated bottom block interface synthesis, and so on. Heterogeneous up from the implied logic and memory content, and integration requires merging reprogrammable, from the roadmap for process and circuit para- memory, analog and RF, MEMS, and software ele- meters. ments, as well as chip-package-system cooptimiza- Figure 2 shows the bottom-up lower bound for tion. Thus, SoCs provide the driver for convergence total chip power at an operating temperature of of multiple technologies not only in the same sys- 100° C, even given the assumption of multiple tem package, but also potentially in the same man- device technologies integrated within a single core ufacturing process. Overall, SoC designs present to afford greater control of dynamic power, standby many challenges to design, test, process integration, power, and performance. The salient observation and packaging technologies. Most daunting among is that significant advances are required in archi- these challenges are tecture and design technology to meet the system targets of 100 mW peak and 2 mW standby power. • design productivity improvement of greater than 100 percent per node, including platform- Mixed-signal chips based design and integration of programma- Analog/mixed-signal (AMS) chips at least par- ble logic fabrics; tially deal with input signals whose precise values • power management, especially for low-power, matter. This broad class includes RF, analog, ana- wireless, multimedia applications; log-to-digital, and digital-to-analog converters— • system-level integration of heterogeneous tech- and, more recently—many mixed-signal chips in nologies, including MEMS and optoelectron- which at least part of the chip design must measure ics; and signals with high precision. These chips have design

48 Computer 22 Super 1 kW audio 20 1 W 18 1 mW and process technology demands that differ from those for digital circuits. Technology scaling is not 16 Audio GSM necessarily helpful for analog circuits because deal- 14 ADS_ basestation ing with precision requirements or signals from a GSM fixed voltage range is more difficult with scaled 12 1 µW Cable voltage supplies. In general, AMS circuits and Resolution (bit) 10 W-CDMA DTV process technologies present severe challenges to Blue- VDSL tooth WLAN 8 Tele- Video Storage cost-effective CMOS integration. phony The need for precision also affects tool require- 6 ments for analog design. Digital circuit design cre- Inter- 4 connectivity ates a set of rules for correct logic gate function; as long as developers follow these rules, precise cal- 1 kHz 10 kHz 100 kHz 1 MHz 10 MHz 100 MHz 1 GHz culation of exact signal values is unnecessary. Signal bandwidth Analog designers, on the other hand, must concern themselves with many second-order effects to obtain the required precision they require. Relevant Figure 3. Recent analog-to-digital converter (ADC) performance needs for issues include coupling and asymmetries. Analysis important product classes. tools for these issues are mostly in place but require expert users, while synthesis tools are immature. occupy less area at the expense of increased Manufacturing test for AMS circuits poses a prob- total cost; lem that remains essentially unsolved. • technology choices can impact design cost by Most analog and RF circuitry in today’s high- introducing greater risk of multiple hardware volume applications resides in SoCs. The economic passes; regime of a mainstream product is usually highly • parametric yield sensitivities can impact man- competitive: It has a high production volume and ufacturing cost; and hence requires a high level of R&D investment; • a SiP multidie solution can be more cost- thus, technology requirements drive mixed-signal effective than a single SoC solution. technology as a whole. Mobile communication platforms are the highest-volume circuits driving Such considerations make mixed-signal design the needs of mixed-signal circuits. cost estimation difficult. We can attempt to quan- Mixed-signal evolution. The interplay between cost tify mixed-signal cost by first restricting our atten- and performance determines mixed-signal driver tion to high-performance applications, since these evolution, including its scope of application. also drive technology demands. Because analog fea- Although mixed-signal performance is an impor- tures are embodied as high-performance passives tant metric, cost of production is also critical for or analog transistors, that area can be taken as a practical deployment of AMS circuits. Together, proxy for cost. Since improving digital density cost and performance determine the sufficiency of drives transistor scaling, analog transistors can given technology trends relative to existing appli- simply follow, and it isn’t necessary to specifically cations. They also determine the potential of given address their layout density. At the same time, technologies to enable and address entirely new embedded passives determine total area in most applications. current AMS designs, whose area consumption Cost estimation. In mixed-signal designs, chip area dominates a system’s mixed-signal costs. determines only one of several cost factors. The Estimating technology sufficiency. Figure 3 shows area that analog circuits occupy in a SoC typically requirements for analog-digital converter (ADC) cir- ranges from 5 to 30 percent. Economic forces to cuits in terms of a power-performance relationship. reduce mixed-signal area are therefore not as strong Under conditions of constant performance, a as those affecting logic or memory. Related con- straight line with slope of −1 represents constant siderations include the following: power consumption. Increasing performance— achievable with better technology or circuit design— • sometimes, shifting the system partitioning is equivalent to a shift of the power consumption between the analog and digital parts can lines toward the upper right. The data shows a very reduce the analog area; slowly moving technological barrier line for ADCs • introducing high-performance analog devices for a power consumption of 1 W. Most of today’s increases process complexity so that solutions ADC technologies lie below the 1 W barrier, and

January 2004 49 near-term solutions for moving the barrier Embedded memory more rapidly are unknown. SoC designs contain an increasing number and The challenge Although ADC performance has improved variety of embedded RAM, ROM, and register file for compound at a rate adequate for handset applications, it memories. Interconnect and I/O bandwidths, semiconductors is clearly has failed to do so for applications design productivity, and system power limits all to increase the such as digital linearization of GSM base sta- point to a continuing trend of high levels of mem- number of devices tions, or handheld and mobile high-data-rate ory integration in microelectronic systems. digital-video applications. Assuming progress Driving applications for embedded memory tech- per unit area and at recent rates, manufacturing ADCs with nology include code storage in reconfigurable integrate them with adequate performance in volume will not applications, data storage in smart or memory CMOS processing. occur until 2010 or later. Silicon and silicon cards, and the high memory content and high- germanium technologies have the necessary performance logic found in gaming or mass stor- bit resolution, but not the speed, to provide age systems. such performance now; on the other hand, Opportunities and constraints. The balance between III-V compound semiconductor technologies have logic and memory content reflects overall system the speed but not the bit resolution. The challenge cost, power and I/O constraints, hardware-soft- for compound semiconductors then is to increase ware organization, and overall system and mem- the number of devices per unit area and to integrate ory hierarchy. With respect to cost, the device them with CMOS processing. performance and added mask levels of monolithic Enabling new applications. In the semiconductor logic-memory integration must be balanced against industry, improving technology and design perfor- chip-laminate-chip or other SiP integration alter- mance enables new applications, which pushes the natives. Levels of logic-memory integration also industry into new markets. Researchers also can reflect tradeoffs in hardware-software partitioning use mixed-signal design analysis to estimate design as well as code-data balance. needs and feasibility for future applications and I/O pin count and signaling speeds determine new markets. how system organization trades off bandwidth ver- Alternatively, when they know the specifications sus storage: Memory access can be made faster at of a new product, researchers can design the tech- the cost of peripheral overhead by organizing mem- nology needed to fulfill these specifications and ory in higher or lower bank groups. Access speed estimate the timeframe in which the semiconduc- also depends on how pin count and circuit com- tor industry will be able to build that product with plexity are balanced between high-speed, low-pin- acceptable cost and performance. The ability to count connections and higher-pin-count, lower- build high-performance mixed-signal circuitry at speed connections. low cost will continuously drive the semiconduc- In the traditional processor architecture domain, tor industry to develop new products and mar- memory hierarchy is crucial in matching processor kets. speed requirements to memory access capabilities. Mixed-signal challenges. For most of today’s This has led to the introduction of several layers of mixed-signal designs, a voltage difference repre- hardware-controlled caches between main mem- sents the processed signal so that the supply ory and foreground memory in the processor core. voltage determines the maximum signal. Typically, one physical cache memory is present at Decreasing supplies—a consequence of constant- each layer. However, the choice of hierarchy also field scaling—mean decreasing the maximum has strong implications for power. Conventional achievable signal level. This strongly impacts architectures increase performance largely at the mixed-signal product development for SoC solu- cost of energy-inefficient control overheads by tions. Typical development time for new mixed- using, for example, prediction and history mecha- signal parts takes much longer than for digital and nisms and extra buffers arrayed around highly asso- memory parts, which makes lack of design ciative caches. From the system viewpoint, the resources another key challenge. embedded multimedia and communication appli- Overall, the most daunting mixed-signal chal- cations that dominate on portable devices can profit lenges are decreasing supply voltage, increasing rel- more from software-controlled and -distributed ative parametric variations, increasing numbers of memory hierarchies. analog transistors per chip, increasing processing Different layers of the hierarchy require differ- speed, increasing crosstalk, and shortage of design ent access modes and internal partitionings. The skills and productivity. use of page, burst, and interleaving modes, and the

50 Computer physical partitioning into banks, subarrays, and counts that are enabled by smaller feature divided-words and bitlines generally must be opti- sizes and spurred by consumer demand for Embedded software, mized per layer. Increasingly dominant, leakage increased functionality, lower cost, and power constraints also lead to more heterogeneous shorter time to market. Together, these chal- manufacturing test, memory hierarchies. lenges imply exponentially increasing design and design Embedded memory challenges. At the circuit level, process complexity. New paradigms are verification continue scaling issues such as amplifier sense margins for needed in every area of design technology— to escalate into SRAM and decreased I drive currents for DRAM design process, system-level design, logical- on crises, even as present two clear challenges. Smaller feature sizes physical-circuit design, design verification, allow integration of more devices into a single and design for testability—as we move to traditional product, which leads to increased parametric yield the 65-nm technology node and beyond. complexity loss with respect to both noise margins and leak- Examples from the 2003 ITRS include: challenges persist. age power. Future circuit topologies and design methodologies will need to address these issues. • Communications-centric design. As it Another challenge, error tolerance, becomes becomes impossible to move signals severe with process scaling and aggressive layout across a large die within one clock cycle, or densities. Embedded memory’s soft-error rate to run control and dataflow processes at increases with diminishing feature sizes and affects the same clock rate, design will likely shift both embedded SRAM and DRAM. Moving bits to asynchronous or globally asynchronous and in nonvolatile memory can also suffer upsets. locally synchronous styles. A new focus on Particularly for highly reliable applications such as on-chip communication architectures and pro- those in the automotive sector, error correction will tocols will usher in an era of communications- remain a requirement that entails tradeoffs of yield centric design. and reliability against access time, power, and • Robustness. Network-oriented paradigms, as process integration. Finally, cost-effective manu- well as yield and synchronization issues, sug- facturing test and BIST is a critical SoC requirement gest that future SoC design will contend with for both large and heterogeneous memory arrays. potentially lossy communication and node failures, placing a new focus on robustness. DESIGN For example, implementing a completely spec- Previous ITRS editions documented a design pro- ified function in an inherently imperfect fab- ductivity gap in which the number of available tran- ric demands new approaches to design, sistors grows faster than the ability to meaningfully mapping, and verification. design them. Yet, investment in process technology • Scalability. Tools that operate at the lowest has far outstripped investment in design technol- abstraction levels—such as logical and physi- ogy. Fortunately, progress in design technology con- cal design and verification tools—face instance tinues: The 2003 ITRS estimates that the design cost complexities that at least double with each of the low-power SoC PDA is approximately $20 technology node. Scalability requires new million in 2003, versus $630 million had design ways to manage data, search solution spaces, technology improvements since 1993 not been real- and map optimizations onto distributed and ized. However, embedded software, manufacturing parallel computational resources. Construct- test, and design verification continue to escalate into by-correction methodologies and the rise of crises, even as traditional complexity challenges per- reuse demand tool runtimes that are propor- sist. In the 2003 ITRS, the design chapter includes tional not to the size of their inputs, but rather new material on AMS-specific design technology, to the size of changes from the previous ver- as well as the future evolution of design processes. sion of the inputs. • Cost optimization. Multitechnology integra- Facets of the complexity challenge tion in SoC or SiP brings analog and mixed- As our January 2002 ITRS article described signal into the mainstream, as well as codesign (Computer, pp. 48-49), design technologists are of die, package, and substrate levels. System caught between two basic challenges. Silicon com- cost optimization must span many degrees of plexity refers to the emergence of nanometer-scale freedom: multiple-die and stacked-die options, variability and physical effects that place long-stand- package and board interconnects, IP reuse ing paradigms at risk, while system complexity across process generations, and the use of refers to the exponentially increasing transistor reprogrammable blocks.

January 2004 51 • Cooptimization. Implementation tleneck and leveraging reusable, retargetable ana- tools create logic and timing struc- log IP generators. More general techniques can aug- AMS scaling and tures concurrently with constraint ment today’s specialized automatic circuit syntheses migration faces budgets and spatial embedding. for particular circuit classes. Syntheses must also many challenges, For example, today’s register trans- handle future regimes of increased manufacturing including decreasing fer level (RTL) floorplanning and variability using, for example, hybrid analog- supply voltages and global interconnect planning tools digital compensation for device mismatch. define repeater insertion and pipe- In design verification, AMS circuits require increasing relative lining, along with detailed layout checking to specification, not structure. New veri- parametric of global signals. As logical-physi- fication solutions must include statistical tech- variations. cal and layout-clock-test synthesis niques, better compact models that speed up unifications continue, a near-term simulation while increasing accuracy, and new goal is cooptimization of timing acceptance criteria. AMS designs also force the structure, signaling strategies, logic issue of performing hybrid-systems verification into optimization, placement, and routing in a the near term. This creates an immediate challenge single environment. to improve the current ad hoc approaches and find a path toward more powerful techniques. Analog/mixed-signal challenges Analog and RF circuits differ from digital circuits Design process trends in that they lack quantized information represented Four major trends govern future leading-edge in a defined range of voltage levels for the two states chip design processes and their supporting design of a bit and during a defined discrete time interval. system structures: Rather, analog and RF circuits process continuous signals to a much higher degree of precision or • Tight coupling. Design processes are evolving smaller tolerance both in time and amplitude. into collections of modular applications that Therefore, factors such as linearity, noise, parasitic operate concurrently and share design data in elements, and electrical nonuniformity directly memory. In modern methodologies, optimiza- cause distortion and noise in analog or RF signals. tion loops can no longer contain slow file Speed issues, or simply that a signal-recovery accesses, and the plethora of design issues circuit produces more noise and distortion than it requires simultaneous optimization of multi- prevents, make these factors much more challeng- ple criteria. Further advances will be needed ing and less straightforward in the analog domain. to avoid noise problems, minimize power dis- AMS scaling and migration faces many challenges, sipation, and ensure manufacturability. including decreasing supply voltages; increasing rel- • Design for manufacture. More intelligent data ative parametric variations; increasing numbers of preparation requires new characterizations of analog transistors per chip; increasing signal, clock, manufacturing process and cost tradeoffs. and intrinsic device speeds; increasing leakage and While inspection and repair form the largest crosstalk in SoC integration; and a shortage of component of mask-making cost and delay, design skills and automation. manufacturers perform the process without In system-level design, the critical AMS chal- insight into design intent, wasting effort in sat- lenges are analog circuit nonscalability and analog isfying identical tolerances for every shape. We behavioral modeling and synthesis. Automated need a standard framework to communicate analog circuit synthesis and optimization is needed, design data criticality to the mask-making along with language-level modeling methodologies process and to feed manufacturing complex- that permit analysis of overall system function and ity back to the design process. interfaces with other integrated technologies. Issues • Increasing abstraction levels. Most design include coping with vastly varying time scales in today takes place at the gate level for greater simulation, creating heterogeneous test benches and productivity and at the RTL to specify design ensuring coverage, achieving systematic top-down in a modern flow. Continued designer pro- constraint propagation, and mixing functional and ductivity improvements require an emerging structural representations. system-level of design, well above RTL. Higher Analog synthesis provides the key challenge in abstraction levels allow verification to discover logical, physical, and circuit design. Scalable SoC problems much earlier in the design process, design requires eliminating the analog design bot- which reduces time to market and lowers costs.

52 Computer • Increasing automation levels. Using new mod- In general, solutions to silicon complexity els to specify design intent leads to opportu- challenges will entail restrictions on design In general, solutions nities for introducing other tools, such as rules as well as continued improvement in synthesis. This trend replaces designer guid- analyses. Potential solutions to system com- to silicon complexity ance with constraint-driven optimization to plexity challenges will strive for increased challenges will reduce the number of iterations in later capacity, use of hierarchical methods, and a entail restrictions process steps. In future technology nodes, the higher abstraction level of design. Joining on design rules system-level specification must include both these two trends is the evolution of the design software and hardware and become the con- process and design system architecture itself, and continued trolling representation for constraint-driven as depicted in Figure 4. Tool integrations must improvement in implementation. minimize unproductive data translation time analyses. and data redundancy and support synthesis- Detailed implications of these precepts are given analysis tool architectures that execute con- in the context of a new ITRS canonical design flow, currently on distributed or SMP platforms. which serves as a framework for specification of Some specific predictions for the future follow. future design technology innovations. For exam- Designer productivity will improve through mul- ple, in system-level design the simplification of tilevel automation, increased reuse, and freedom mixed hardware and software system specification, from choice. To systematically advance design tech- verification, and implementation requires a new nology in this direction, design must be treated as level of abstraction above the familiar RTL. This science, not art, with designers adopting a measure- necessitates the following advances: to-improve mindset. Eventually, predictive models of application- or driver-specific silicon implemen- • Reuse-based design. Reusable, high-level func- tation will be needed, while complementary inno- tional IP blocks offer the potential for pro- vations should measure and improve design ductivity gains estimated to be at least 200 technology productivity. percent. Preverification and reusable tests Approaches to reduce time to market will include reduce design complexity, and libraries of use of reprogrammable and structured-ASIC fab- reusable software modules can speed embed- rics, reuse of predesigned cores and platform archi- ded software development. tectures, and pervasive automation. New tools will • Platform-based design. An extension of core- be required to support a find-and-try style of reuse- based design creates highly reusable groups of centric design-space exploration and design opti- cores to form a complete hardware platform, mization. Development and formalization of design further simplifying the SoC design process. rules that, if followed, assure reusability, will • System-level verification. Raising the abstrac- require associated design and analysis software. tion level will require a single notation for sys- In the long term, building on the design for man- tem-level design. Several years of experimenta- ufacturability trend, we will need restricted design tion with C, C++, and Java variants has led to rules, as well as the integrated design and manu- the recent emergence of SystemC as an option facturability optimizations indicated in Figure 4. for building interoperable system models of Even today, the focus on yield-driven layout makes hardware and software for simulation. manufacturability a standard design criterion. • Microarchitecture synthesis. Although system synthesis is extremely difficult, progress will TEST likely start with automatic creation of an effec- The dramatic increase in SoC and SiP designs, tive RTL specification from a slightly higher- largely targeted to commodity consumer applica- level representation of the hardware in tions, has consequently increased pressure to microarchitecture-specification form. reduce the cost of test for mixed-technology • Hardware-software cosynthesis. Achieving the designs. These designs break the traditional barri- best overall solution will require the ability to ers between digital, analog, RF, and mixed-signal concurrently synthesize a hardware and soft- test equipment capability requirements, resulting ware implementation. By 2007, we anticipate in a trend toward highly configurable, one-plat- that an automated step will replace the manual form-fits-all test solutions. The first generation of process of mapping a behavioral specification this equipment combined leading-edge technology to a software program and a hardware from all segments, with the consequence of increas- microarchitecture. ing test cost due to the high capital cost of this

January 2004 53 Past (180 nm) Present (130–90 nm) Future (65 nm–)

System System System System System System design design model design model model

Specification Functional Specification performance Performance Functional HW/SW HW/SW testability model verification optimization optimization verification

Functional SW Cockpit verification SW Software optimization Autopilot RTL Software RTL Optimize Analyze optimization Performance HW/SW Communication Performance testability SW Timing HW/SW Synthesis verification Logic Power Circuit data Noise + Timing analysis model Place Test + Placement optimization Cockpit EQ check Wire Mfg. Autopilot Other Repository Other Performance Optimize Analyze File testability verification Logic Communication Timing Masks EQ check Place Power Wire Data Noise • Multiple design files converge into one efficient data model Place/wire EQ check Other model Test • Disk accesses are eliminated in critical + Timing analysis Other + Logic optimization methodology loops Repository • Verification of function, performance, testability, and other design criteria all move to earlier, higher levels of abstraction followed by File Masks • Equivalence checking • Assertion-driven design optimizations Masks • Industry standard interfaces for data access and control • Incremental modular tools for optimization and analysis

Figure 4. Required approach. Low-cost-equipment solutions targeting approach offers several potential advantages. It evolution of design DFT-enabled devices do not scale into the mixed- would system technology space today. The next logical step is to architecture. increase test system configurability and flexibility • focus research and development investment, to achieve a more appropriate cost performance both dollars and effort, on the test instrument point—which is leading to a fundamental shift in itself rather than test infrastructure; test equipment architecture. • base differentiation on test capability rather This revision of the Roadmap finds the test- than platform; equipment industry at the beginning of a signifi- • focus supplier efforts on developing solutions cant shift from traditional test-architectures to within their particular core competency, reduc- universal-slot architectures with high levels of testing cost and speeding time to market; instrument encapsulation and modularity. The con- • reduce the investment in reengineering infra- tinued evolution of technology and increased structural elements; and integration level of design components has enabled • eliminate the need for each supplier to be this shift. In many cases, a single FPGA or ASIC everything to everyone. can take the place of entire electronics subsystems. Encapsulation and modularity have led to the Ultimately, the industry will drive this approach’s open-architecture concept: the ability to mix and success. No one can dispute, however, that the next match test instruments from multiple suppliers into several years represent a turning point for many a single tester hardware and software environment. test-solution suppliers. Regardless of the open- This concept presents significant business model architecture approach’s success, emerging plat- challenges to the test equipment industry, which forms offer a new level of capability, flexibility, and today is based on full vertical integration and pro- longevity that will significantly impact the indus- prietary platforms. However, an open-architecture try and test deployments. Quite possibly, the next

54 Computer significant equipment selection decision could iden- penetration of high-speed serial protocols tify the test platform deployed for all products into the microprocessor, ASIC, and SoC mar- through the next decade. kets in the form of multilane buses has accel- The high complexity While for many years the cost of the tester has erated dramatically. This trend brings a of SoC design overwhelmed all other parameters—with the single complex test problem, previously limited to creates design-and- exception of throughput—significant progress has the high-speed networking environment, into test development- been made to address this aspect of the overall the mainstream. productivity and device-test cost equation. Focus is shifting to address Key lessons from this market segment indi- the numerous secondary costs that now become cate the need to execute extensive testing such test-quality large contributors. This analysis must encompass as jitter tolerance and jitter transfer on these challenges. all aspects of test cost, including the design non- interfaces. Such testing is done today in the recurrent engineering associated with design for test, analog domain through a rack-and-stack or handler or prober equipment, device interface hard- mixed-signal tester approach. These solutions ware, and facilities cost, among many other factors. impose significant manufacturing cost considerations due to test time and equipment capital cost, SoC test and they support a relatively limited number of SoC test is dependent on a highly structured DFT high-speed serial ports on a single device. As these methodology to enable observability and control- interfaces proliferate to many ports on a single lability of individual cores. Increasingly, SoC design device, the traditional analog test approach will fail will rely on a database of preexisting IP cores that due to the scalability of analog instrumentation. encapsulate the design itself, interfaces to other As the frequency of these interfaces and the num- blocks, and test. ber of interfaces on a single design continue to A fundamental challenge of SoC test is the need increase, alternative equipment solutions and test to combine test requirements from multiple sources methods will need to be developed to enable cost- with differing testability approaches and methods. effective, high-coverage engineering and manufac- Opportunities exist to define standards for test to turing test. conform to a hierarchical methodology; these standards are most easily imposed on internally Reliability screens designed cores. However, when IP is purchased or The test process is responsible for the screening licensed from a third party, it is typically the test of manufacturing defects that affect device func- methodology that must adapt. Many electronic tionality, performance, and reliability to reduce cus- design automation (EDA) tools already leverage a tomer perceived defects per million. A portion of standard format for logic designs. This standard the test flow is dedicated to the acceleration of must be extended to other core types, such as ana- latent defects that do not appear as test failures but log circuits. would manifest as longer-term reliability failures. Structured use of IP core wrappers and test access Traditional techniques for screening of reliability mechanisms must be developed for testing of indi- failures include IDDQ, burn-in, and voltage stress. vidual cores within a SoC. These should be devel- The effectiveness of these methods is challenged oped carefully to enable functional, at-speed by the continued device scaling with each successive parametric and interconnect testing. Further, these process generation. Increases in device quiescent methods should be standardized with the interface current in the off state is raising the level of back- language for interoperability of EDA tools. One ground current to the milliampere and, in some such effort is the Core Test Language development cases, ampere range. These levels of background within the IEEE P1500 standard. The high com- current increase the difficulty of identifying plexity of SoC design creates design-and-test devel- microampere to milliampere level IDDQ fault cur- opment productivity and test-quality challenges. rents. Continued extension of techniques such as

EDA tools and data interchange standards must be delta-IDDQ that have enabled extensions into cur- developed to aid management of this complexity. rent process generations is uncertain. At the same time, the effectiveness of voltage and High-frequency I/O temperature acceleration methodologies used by High-speed serial interfaces have been used in burn-in and voltage stress is declining due to the the communications market segment for many reduced margin between operational and overstress years. While the communications market is conditions. Costs associated with burn-in tech- expected to maintain a signiﬁcant frequency lead, niques continue to rise and, in some cases, now

January 2004 55 dominate manufacturing costs for high-power that the resulting effort is indeed reduced over exist- products. ing methods and that pre- and postprocessing of data The increasing cost and declining effectiveness do not eliminate throughput gains. of current techniques for latent defect acceleration combine to create one of the most critical challenges facing the industry for future process gener- revious ITRS editions documented a design ations. Extensions to current techniques may prove productivity gap, with the number of avail- adequate for the next several years, but funda- P able transistors growing faster than the abil- mental research in the development of new method- ity to meaningfully design them. Yet, investment in ologies is required. process technology has by far dominated investment in design technology. Automated test program generation The good news is that enabling progress in design Correct-by-construction test programs and pat- technology continues. The bad news is that soft- terns have long eluded test development teams. ware can account for 80 percent of an embedded Increasing design complexity and demands on team system’s development cost, test cost has increased productivity require significant improvement in test exponentially relative to manufacturing cost, and program generation automation to limit or reduce verification engineers outnumber design engineers time-to-market impact. The EDA industry has on microprocessor project teams. Overcoming developed and deployed many tools intended to aid many existing design technology gaps will require the entire process of test development, content cre- a concerted effort by the entire industry. ation, and equipment translation. However, device makers seldom have a homogeneous environment provided by a single EDA supplier, and the general Acknowledgments lack of interoperability standards among tools cre- We acknowledge the efforts of the many indi- ates significant challenges requiring effort by the viduals who contributed to making the 2003 edi- device maker to enable automation. Cooperation tion of The International Technology Roadmap for among EDA and test equipment suppliers is increas- Semiconductors a successful endeavor. ing, and a focus on tool interface and interoperability standards is growing. The challenges increase Don Edenfeld is responsible for test equipment def- with every process generation and related growth inition and selection at Intel. He received an MS in in design integration. electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. Achieving full automation of test-program-gen- Edenfeld is a member of the IEEE Computer Soci- eration will require increased standardization of the ety. Contact him at [email protected]. test-equipment software environment itself. Histor- ically, each equipment supplier has taken a holistic Andrew B. Kahng is a professor of computer sci- and proprietary approach to definition and devel- ence engineering and electrical and computer engi- opment of its specific software environment. Similar neering at the University of California, San Diego. to EDA, most device makers do not have a homo- He received a PhD in computer science from the geneous test environment of equipment provided by University of California, San Diego. He is a mem- a single supplier. Increased standardization of the ber of the ACM, the IEEE, and SPIE. Contact him test-equipment software environment where appro- at [email protected]. priate would lower the entry barrier for suppliers as well as simplify the porting of test content between Mike Rodgers is responsible for test technology platforms as required by the device maker. integration at Intel. He received a BS in electrical Today’s environment of platform-unique supplier engineering from the University of Illinois. Rodgers software solutions and homegrown tools for equip- is a member of the IEEE Computer Society. Con- ment programming, automation, and customization tact him at [email protected]. will drive unacceptable growth in test- development engineering and factory-integration efforts. Auto- Yervant Zorian is the vice president and chief mation of common tasks and decreasing test-plat- scientist of Virage Logic. He received a PhD in form integration time demand a focus on standards electrical engineering from McGill University. to enable more efficient use of resources in line with Zorian is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member shrinking product development life cycles. New tool of the IEEE Computer Society. Contact him at development must comprehend the end use to ensure [email protected].

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NASA’s Mission Reliable

Like industrial development organizations, the US space agency struggles with the challenge of creating reliable software. NASA’s deep space community is attacking its software crisis via two complementary approaches—one stressing the power of engineering discipline, the other the potential of automated code generation and veriﬁcation.

Patrick oth predictable and unpredictable hazards sion aims to land a rover as big as a car for a tour Regan await the spacecraft, robots, and scientific lasting more than a year. Many more missions in the New Jersey Network instruments that humans dispatch to $200 million range are in flight, in development, or Public Television and explore our solar system. The toughest on the drawing boards. Radio B hazard to harden a space probe, orbiter, or rover against may be one of the most pre- HIGHER STAKES, GREATER RISKS Scott dictable: the known presence of unknown bugs in On increasingly frequent and ambitious missions, Hamilton even the most rigorously tested software. these remote laboratories radio back pictures of Computer As this article goes to press, spacecraft from other worlds; measure radiation, particles, and Europe, Japan, and the United States are converg- fields in the interplanetary environment; probe the ing on Mars, and some sophisticated software sys- chemistry and dynamics of planetary bodies; and, tems are approaching their ultimate test. With all above all, equip scientists to test theories, answer- eyes turning toward the red planet, some observers ing long-standing questions and raising new ones. will recall the software-related failures of the Mars NASA and other space agencies rely on ever Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter missions in larger, more complex software systems to do more 1999—and pay special attention to the performance challenging science. Because of the nature of their of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers, twin robotic missions and the distance from ground control— science platforms about the size of a golf cart. with communications requiring from tens of min- Meanwhile, far beyond Mars, the Cassini space- utes to hours of “round-trip light time”—spacecraft craft cruises toward a rendezvous in March with and rover systems demand increasing autonomy Saturn. The Voyagers launched in the 1970s report that introduces new dimensions of complexity. back from the boundary region between our sun’s This trend raises the stakes and increases the risks sphere of influence and interstellar space. Orbiting that a problem older than the expression “software observatories take the measure of the universe. And engineering” poses: It’s not getting any easier to pro- back in California, the next billion-dollar project duce reliable software. is already in development at Jet Propulsion Labora- Within the earthbound labs responsible for tory, managed for NASA by Caltech. Scheduled for designing and flying NASA’s space missions, com- launch in 2009, the Mars Science Laboratory mis- puter scientists and software engineers have been

0018-9162/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society January 2004 59 tions from Earth. Although such fault-protection mechanisms have had a long history of success, safing a spacecraft at critical junctures such as orbit insertion is obviously a recipe for disaster. Perhaps more important, scientists have come to expect exponentially more from these missions. Safing a spacecraft or rover for minor faults that do not put it at risk and waiting hours for instructions can greatly reduce the amount of scientific data that can be obtained and sent back to Earth— indeed, such behaviors could preclude opportunis- tic science such as a comet fly-by. Although it is a hostile environment for physical hardware, deep space is a relatively benign environment for mission control because extended peri- Mars Exploration mobilized as never before to attack this problem. ods of time are available to plan nonemergency Rover—artist’s It may be that the perpetual “software crisis,” first maneuvers. A rover on the Martian surface, how- conception. declared at NATO’s 1968 conference on software ever, needs extensive autonomy to accomplish com- Courtesy NASA. engineering, will humble NASA as it has other plex missions in which it may have only seconds to organizations that have tried to address it. On the avoid toppling into a ditch. other hand, the urgency and unique resources that Autonomous control poses some of NASA’s NASA brings to the problem might produce break- trickiest problems and stimulates some of its most through solutions. advanced research. Yet the agency has more mun- Despite conspicuous and even tragic failures, the dane issues to deal with as well. US space agency has engineered the seemingly impossible and made it look routine. If NASA can SOFTWARE QUALITY INITIATIVE solve its own software crisis, it may help boost soft- During a career that began with semiconductor ware engineering and commercial development to engineering for Mariner missions to Mars and a higher stage of maturity. Venus in the 1960s, Tom Gavin, the senior member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s flight commu- FROM GROUND CONTROL TO nity, has seen software rise to prominence not only AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS as an enabling technology but also as a major risk Traditional mission control and planning have and cost factor. Gavin has made it his mission to been done on the ground, with humans in the loop improve JPL’s software processes, better integrate generating a time-based command sequence that software production with systems engineering, and tells the spacecraft what to do and when. Not- encourage research that focuses on a bulging port- withstanding the occasional surprise, this approach folio of flight projects. has been quite successful; however, with the many In the Mars Exploration Rover, entry, descent, small missions on the books, traditional ground and landing are software-controlled. Gavin says, operations costs have become prohibitive. “People see the mechanical system of this vehicle, Past spacecraft systems included limited auton- parachutes coming out, airbags coming out, and omy programs such as attitude control, fault pro- bouncing on the ground. But that is a software- tection, and orbit insertion, entry, and landing that driven system, and a lot of the project risk is in were tried and tested over decades and hardcoded how robust that software is.” Software accounts into the systems. However, new science mission for a large share of project cost too, in coding, requirements and more frequent missions have independent verification and validation, and test- necessitated efforts to generalize autonomous ing—four testbeds for the Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft control across multiple missions. alone, running 24 hours a day in three shifts, Traditional spacecraft control systems contain a with deadlines dictated by the movements of the fault-protection subsystem that monitors the sys- planets. tem’s behavior and “safes” the spacecraft by point- Missing a deadline that celestial mechanics ing its solar panels toward the sun, reporting a impose could trigger a long, costly delay—22 possible malfunction to ground control, shutting months for a mission to Mars, 19 to Venus, or 13 down unnecessary systems, and waiting for instruc- to Jupiter. Keeping such a deadline can exact a dif-

60 Computer ferent kind of penalty. Gavin notes that the soft- When NASA people use the term MDS, ware for PathFinder, which landed successfully on they could be referring to the architecture, Programming Mars in 1997, was largely undocumented. the idea, the million lines of code that cur- is a In an effort he says is still in its infancy, Gavin rently embody it, development of mission has charged the JPL software community with software for the Mars Science Laboratory, a human effort, developing a kind of discipline long established— set of development processes, or related and people and recently codified—on the hardware side. A few research. In any case, MDS offers a multi- make mistakes. years ago, engineers captured 40 years of hardware mission framework for building, testing, and experience in three books on flight project prac- reusing software that will fly in spacecraft, tices, design principles, and mission assurance. land in rovers, and operate here on Earth. Now the lab is investing $4 million a year in a soft- This is a striking departure from established prac- ware quality initiative aimed at getting developers tice, in which highly compartmentalized develop- to codify and buy into a similar set of software ment efforts have produced essentially one-off practices. A survey currently under way will help software systems for each space mission. define the baseline for this effort and for forward- Between them, Holzmann’s research and the looking research. MDS project don’t begin to encompass all the More effective matchmaking between practi- resources being brought to bear on ensuring that tioners’ needs and applicable research is an integral NASA software will reliably do what needs to part of the software quality initiative. Gavin is opti- be done. But they do represent the range of mistic that the initiative will succeed by involving approaches NASA is pursuing, and they illustrate the practitioners in documenting their practices. a philosophical tension that both polarizes and helps to energize the whole endeavor. RESEARCH GOES DEEP Meanwhile, exploratory research—at NASA TO ERR IS HUMAN facilities including Ames, Dryden, Glenn, Goddard, The basic observations underlying Holzmann’s Johnson, Langley, and Marshall as well as JPL— work are that programming is a human effort and aims at ensuring the reliability of software for that people make mistakes. He cites estimates that future missions. The unique challenges of deep around 50 software defects remain in 1,000 lines space have brought an infusion of funding to soft- of newly written uncommented code, and around ware reliability research at JPL, with close ties to 10 remain in code that’s been thoroughly tested. affiliated groups at Ames. Researchers are apply- Extreme measures of additional testing can push ing advanced technology for both code synthesis the number of residual defects per 1,000 lines and code verification of software that runs the down toward one, but that still adds up to a lot of gamut from artificial intelligence-based autonomy bugs in a large system, and few products ever reach software—which uses methods such as rapid that level. propositional deduction and adaptive neural nets to Statistics for novice and experienced program- uncover faults or execute plans—to large systems mers are essentially the same. “An experienced pro- with more conventional kinds of complexity. grammer tends to make just as many mistakes,” JPL established a Laboratory for Reliable Soft- Holzmann says, “but they are much more complex, ware in 2003, with model-checking guru Gerard they’re subtle, they require a lot of deep thought. If Holzmann as its founding member. Mission Data he makes a mistake, it is usually much more diffi- System (MDS) is a bigger enterprise within JPL’s cult to find.” Interplanetary Network Directorate that has simi- Testers are human too, and following this line of lar motivation. reasoning leads to the conclusion that human-dri- In 1998, just as it was about to launch six inde- ven testing processes are, like programming prac- pendently designed missions in the span of six tices, inherently flawed. For Holzmann, this alone months, JPL became acutely aware of the need to makes automating alternative methods an impera- make more effective use of its software engineer- tive. With a combination of optimism and patience, ing resources and to reuse software common to Holzmann is determined to convince his colleagues all missions. At that time, avionics engineer Robert of the power of automated model checking tech- Rasmussen championed MDS as a multimission niques as an alternative to the conventional ap- architectural framework that could unify software proach to software testing. and systems engineering, from the conception of a Methods like model checking, static analysis, and mission through development and flight.1 runtime analysis offer the ability to do exhaustive

January 2004 61 Mars Exploration Rover at the JPL spacecraft assembly facility. Courtesy NASA. and his colleagues at Bell Labs used Spin and associated technology for the first time in the development of a real product when they verified call- processing code for an Internet Protocol-based telephone switch. Although the chunk of code they checked was relatively small—10,000 lines out of roughly 25 million—it was functionally the heart of the system and a nightmare of potentially fatal interactions between concurrent processes. This application proved a few important claims for the technology, including that it could extract models from source code automatically. The creation of a “test harness” to extract models from C code was a one-time investment, reusable throughout the development process. exploration of source code, testing even the most JPL researchers who were using Spin to verify unlikely scenarios. Conventional testing, a time- code for the Cassini mission drew Holzmann into consuming operation for which the allotment of NASA’s orbit in the 1990s. Within weeks of his time tends to get squeezed as the delivery or launch move to California, he had helped to build a test date approaches, may root out the most likely fail- harness for verifying code already flying on the ure scenarios and more subtle vulnerabilities; how- Mars Exploration Rovers and was seeking ways to ever, it can never offer the possibility of finding contribute to the Mars Science Laboratory. At JPL, all the bugs. Holzmann is working to build a core group of the- Furthermore, testing methods lose ground all the orists, system builders, and “energizers” that will time. “We build systems more complex than we can interact with a virtual team of a few hundred to understand and more complex than we can check,” show that these techniques work. Holzmann asserts. “Conventional testing processes, which were designed for deterministic, sequentially SPINNING IN SPACE operating systems, haven’t really changed in 30 NASA researchers, including Ames’ Klaus years. Yet systems now are multithreaded, which Havelund and Thomas Pressburger, were early and makes them nondeterministic because of process insightful experimenters with the Spin model and thread scheduling—all the interleaving is dif- checker. Together, they developed their own inno- ferent in every run, events occur at unpredictable vative verification and testing technology, Java moments—and the test methods are simply not PathFinder 1, which translated high-level source designed to handle that.” code to Promela, Spin’s formal language.3 Sub- In contrast, he says, researchers are beginning to sequently, for Java PathFinder 2, Ames’ Willem win the battle of software analysis. Winning, in this Visser and Havelund developed a new model context, means that formerly unassailable prob- checker, in which a Java virtual machine interprets lems show signs of yielding to improved algorithms the source code.4 Work is under way to integrate and the steady march of processing power. By Java PathFinder 2’s model-checking technology Holzmann’s calculation, a small, automated test he with Java PathExplorer, a separately developed tool devised in 1980 would have kept a computer busy for runtime analysis and monitoring.5 for seven days, if he’d had one powerful enough to This effort began with Deep Space 1, a technol- run it at all. In 2000, with a thousand times more ogy validation flight. Part of the mission called for memory and processing speed readily available, the the Remote Agent software to take control of the same test could be done in seven seconds. Today, it spacecraft for two days. Havelund and Ames’ John would take two seconds; in two more years, it Penix ran part of the Plan Runner, a critical Remote should take just one. Agent code component, through a Spin cycle as a By the late 1970s, some believed formal meth- verification experiment. This check automatically ods could be automated and eventually scaled up. found five bugs, concurrency errors that were By the late 1980s, Holzmann had developed Spin, corrected before flight. probably the best known and most widely used Despite that check and 800 hours of preflight model checker in the world.2 In the late 1990s, he testing, Remote Agent hit a deadlock six hours after

62 Computer it was activated. A team assembled to analyze the model checker that uses a Java virtual system’s 12,000 lines of Lisp found the bug within machine. According to Visser, this model The software for five hours—the same kind of bug that Havelund checker could “analyze all the behaviors, all the Mars Science and Penix had found in their earlier work—in a the paths through the code, because we had module that had been reworked after their verifi- control of scheduling, so we could schedule Laboratory could cation experiment. Interestingly, the team opted not all the possible interleavings.” Visser says that grow to several to fix this particular bug because the chances of its creating the first version took only three million lines occurring again were extremely small. The bug did months, but they have been working for four of code. not recur—whereas a bug fix had a greater chance years to perfect it. of causing problems—again, showing how rare The largest program they have analyzed these bugs are to begin with and why they are so so far is 8,000 lines of prototype rover soft- hard to find with conventional testing. ware with six complicated threads, translated to That episode highlighted both model checking’s Java from the original C++. Like Spin, Java potential and its current limitations. “Particularly PathFinder is expected to become more effective for concurrent software where there is a lot of inter- simply by riding the hardware curve and benefit- leaving,” says senior research scientist Michael ing from improvements in automated translation. Lowry, “model checking can be much better than Penix is writing a C++ to Java translator so that testing.” Java PathFinder can be used on C++ code as well. According to Lowry, the increasing number of These researchers also aim to improve the effec- threads in some mission software is not the only tiveness of automated software analysis by coming trend driving up the risk of concurrency errors. at it from another direction. Whereas Java Path- Smaller numbers of complicated threads can have Finder searches the space of paths through the code the same effect. Beyond that, he says, “If you’re to find one that has an error in it, Java Path- interacting with an environment in complicated Explorer focuses on detecting errors in a single ways, the whole system becomes concurrent. Think path. The key, Havelund says, is using more pow- about a rover on Mars. As you move away from erful temporal logic “which can, for example, rea- time-based sequencing, you have lots of different son about future and past time logic at the same interleavings between what the environment does time, reason about real time, and reason about and what your software will do. That’s exactly values.” where you’re going to get a vehicle that’s capable of Java PathExplorer runs the program once, dealing with a rich environment—both for science recording the system’s state throughout that exe- return and for its own survival—and that’s a situ- cution. Working with an execution trace in which ation where concurrency occurs even if the soft- all events of interest have been logged, the tool ware program has only one thread.” employs one set of algorithms for exact analysis to Yet another trend highlights the challenge of scal- determine whether or not there is an error in that ing model checking to deal with large programs. particular trace. It uses another set of algorithms Numbers that Lowry cites as rough guides to this to infer whether other possible permutations of the trend are the 30,000 lines of code developed in the trace could contain errors. 1980s for the Cassini mission, 120,000 lines of Recent enhancements include strengthening the code for the mid-1990s development of the Mars tool’s temporal logic and extending its capability PathFinder, and 428,000 lines of code for the to high-level data races. An example of the latter Mars Exploration Rover. Others suggest that the would be a problem in which one thread updates software for the Mars Science Laboratory could x and y coordinates in a single operation, and grow to several million lines of code. another thread reads them separately, one at a time. Thus, if the first thread can update both coordi- FINDING ALTERNATE PATHS nates between the reading of x and y, a “correct” When Havelund and Penix began hand-trans- operation of the program could yield the wrong lating Deep Space 1 code for Spin to check, they coordinate pair. could analyze around 30 lines of code a day. Auto- Havelund and Visser plan to use the underlying mating translation in Java PathFinder boosted Java PathFinder and Java PathExplorer technology analysis to around 1,500 lines of code per day, lim- to generate tests automatically. They also have ited mainly by memory. At that point, however, the combined these model checking and runtime analy- researchers felt constrained by Spin and Promela. sis tools in a testing environment for K9, a plane- That’s when Visser and Havelund developed a tary rover.

January 2004 63 Mars Science Laboratory— artist’s conception. Courtesy NASA.

fers sharply from model checking, and it produces different kinds of results. According to Guillaume Brat, an Ames-based researcher, static analysis can analyze code on the basis of program semantics without constructing a model or running the pro- COMPONENTS IN CONTEXT gram. Brat and his collaborator, Arnaud Venet, In a complementary effort at Ames directed at have been working to optimize static analysis for improving model checking scalability, Dimitra NASA and to prove its practical potential in soft- Giannakopoulou and Corina Pasareanu focus on ware coding, unit testing, and integration. modular or compositional verification. Their Static analysis does not help much with concur- approach decomposes the analysis of a program rency, deadlocks, and data races. It can, however, into analysis of its components that might be eas- do a thorough job of rooting out errors in pro- ier to check than the whole, and it does this in a gramming style—such as uninitialized variables and way that guarantees the properties of the recon- pointers, out-of-bounds array access, and invalid structed whole. These researchers also are experi- arithmetic operations—that could corrupt data or menting with the K9 rover software. even crash a system at runtime. Almost by defini- Given an abstract model of a component’s behav- tion, such errors are common and plentiful, but sta- ior and a required property, Giannakopoulou and tic analysis has the potential to weed them out. Pasareanu have developed techniques for formu- This type of analysis produces a kind of mathe- lating assumptions, which encode the contexts or matical hologram—described as a computable environments in which the component will satisfy approximation to the set of values arising dynam- the property. When the component’s environment ically at runtime when executing a program—that is available, it is checked against the assumption researchers can view from various angles and probe to ensure correctness of the whole. “We split the for details. The method’s scientific basis is abstract component behavior into behavior that is control- interpretation, which expresses a program in terms lable and uncontrollable by the environment,” says of equations, and lattice theory, which offers tech- Giannakopoulou, “and get as a result how con- niques for solving the equations. The output essen- trollable behavior affects the satisfaction of re- tially is three sets of results: Errors the tool is sure quired properties.” are errors, code that is surely correct, and appar- These researchers have developed a framework ent problems that might be errors or might be based on the use of learning algorithms and model something else, such as dead code. checking for formulating assumptions incrementally. The objective is to compute numerical invariance When it’s not clear what the component’s environ- at every program point. The analysis must guess ment will be, the fallback is a twist on runtime analy- what values an integer can take for any execution sis—generate a monitor based on the assumption, of the program. For every concrete operation in the instrument the program, monitor the environment program, such as addition, there is an abstract against the assumption during deployment, and trig- operation based not on integers but on a finite rep- ger recovery code when the assumption is violated. resentation for those values such as an interval. An Because a lack of design information blocks this interval is an abstraction that represents the values approach at the model level, Giannakopoulou and of real variables in a program. For example, the Pasareanu are extending their approach to work interval 1-7 represents integers 1, 3, 5, 7. directly at the software level. Where design mod- Brat and Venet launched their project by apply- els of a system are not available, they want to apply ing the state-of-the-art PolySpace static analysis the same techniques to code—generating assump- tool to real NASA code from the space station, tions and performing the same kind of “modular Deep Space 1, and Mars PathFinder. The tool reasoning” on the source code. It’s an aspiration at worked just well enough to set baseline measure- this point, but they have some ideas about how to ments for scalability and precision—that is, the pro- make it work and the collaborations needed to test portion of definite classifications to warnings of their ideas. possible problems in the code. Then they created a specialized tool tailored for NASA software as they DYNAMICS OF STATIC ANALYSIS knew it. They have begun testing their new tool— Source code is in fact the starting point for static the C Global Surveyor—on entry, descent, and analysis, another kind of tool being honed on landing software for the Mars Exploration Rover NASA software. Though formal, this method dif- as well as on software for the rover itself. Along

64 Computer Mars Science Laboratory— artist’s conception. Courtesy NASA. with other researchers, they have begun exploring ways in which MDS developers might make gains in terms of automated verification by accepting some restrictions on how they program in C++.

TO BE HUMAN IS TO ENGINEER Kirk Reinholtz, one of the key collaborators work- or memory are limited and the system must inter- ing with Holzmann and other proponents of auto- act with an unpredictable physical environment.1,5 mated approaches, is an eloquent spokesman for a These various subsystems must share these limited different point of view. Reinholtz, who describes resources, but the assumptions that one subsystem himself as “a software engineer, born and raised,” design team makes might not hold across all sub- is the chief programmer on the Mars Science systems. For example, it is virtually impossible to Laboratory project. abstract an idealized camera in this environment In explaining how his team is building one million- because the physical camera draws power used by plus lines of Mission Data System code into a multi- other resources, consumes CPU cycles to process purpose system for the 2009 launch, Reinholtz shows data, and could be used as a navigation device to a firm faith in the power of human skills, judgment, track stars or celestial bodies. In the end, says and processes: “The purpose of that software is essen- Daniel Dvorak, MDS deputy architect, using tially to turn everything we’ve learned over decades object-oriented methodologies in such an environ- of doing embedded, extremely reliable software into ment leads to a hierarchical subsystem decompo- more of an engineering discipline than an art.” sition that is difficult to verify, validate, or reuse. According to Reinholtz, the genius of MDS lies Drawing on his vast experience with past JPL in “hoisting” issues that experience shows can be missions, Robert Rasmussen defined in MDS an real problems in actual missions to the architectural abstract architecture for designing next-generation level, “where we have fairly mature processes to deep-space systems. Such systems interact with the observe them, get plenty of eyes on it, do the veri- physical world, reacting to and trying to control fication, and so forth.” What a contemporary soft- physical state, and mission controllers on the ground ware engineer might tend to hide, he says, MDS think in similar terms. Therefore, Rasmussen pro- makes explicit. posed a state-based control architecture that mod- Down to the level of specifying a vocabulary for els the interactions between physical states and discussing engineering goals, MDS aims to make it attempts to control state by applying goals and con- easier for programmers to do the right thing and straints on state rather than employing a time-based harder for them to make mistakes. sequence of commands, thus allowing varying The approaches that MDS and model checking degrees of mission autonomy. typify—one more confident in experience and inge- Unlike traditional object-oriented subsystem nuity, the other more wary of human fallibility— decomposition, which hides or encapsulates system offer solutions that could contribute to the success interactions in local program variables, flags, coun- of the Mars Science Laboratory and other missions. ters, pointers, and if statements, MDS elevates state Both also may point toward a way out of what JPL variables to the top of the architectural hierarchy principal software architect Nicolas Rouquette calls where they can be seen, understood, and engi- “the traditional divorce and death march,” in which neered.1,6 As such, systems engineering becomes projects succeed because of the sacrifice of “heroes.” state analysis, with a precise and bounded vocabulary for describing all interactions between the DESIGNING NEXT-GENERATION SYSTEMS elements the project comprises. This vocabulary Traditional design methods—including those includes terms such as state variables, estimators, used at JPL in the past—involve a hierarchical controllers, state value histories, state effects models, decomposition of a system into subsystems, with measurements, time and state constraints, resources, each software engineering team providing its own commands, scenario fragments, and goals. customized solutions and iteratively integrating Just as important, this constrained vocabulary them at the system level. translates to the software engineering domain, pro- Although subsystem decomposition works in viding strictly defined input/output values that well-understood domains such as enterprise sys- either constrain or aid a system developer when tems, it works less well in an environment such as implementing that portion of the system: Either the deep space where system resources such as power programmer has introduced unnecessary com-

January 2004 65 plexity or a potential error, or the initial sys- STATE ANALYSIS MDS provides a tems analysis was wrong. Moreover, all hard- State analysis as embodied in MDS provides a ware components, their attributes, and the uniform, methodical, and rigorous approach to dis- domain-specific modeled transformations between them can covering, characterizing, representing, and docu- framework for be captured in a state database and queried menting a system’s states, and modeling their behav- a family of by mission planners and systems engineers; ior and the relationships among them. Knowledge applications and by software developers and their automated of the system and its environment is represented tools; by simulators testing software against over time in state variables, which include such their attendant undelivered hardware; and, perhaps more things as flight, ground, important, by onboard software in the case of and test platforms. unexpected system behavior. • dynamics—vehicle position and attitude, gim- Covering the entire engineering discipline bal angles, wheel rotation; and enforcing it from top to bottom, MDS • environment—ephemeris, light level, atmos- uses a shared vocabulary based on state pheric profiles, terrain; analysis for requirements capture. It applies this • device status—configuration, temperature, vocabulary to a software development process engi- operating modes, failure modes; neered down to the level of configuration manage- • parameters—mass properties, scale factors, ment, at the same time leaving room for new biases, alignments, noise levels; technical approaches. • resources—power and energy, propellant, data MDS combines a state-based systems architec- storage, bandwidth; ture and component-based software architecture • data product collections—science data, mea- to provide a domain-specific framework for a fam- surement sets; ily of applications—whether they are multiple gen- • data management and transport policies— erations of satellites, landers, or rovers—and their compression, deletion, transport priority; or attendant flight, ground, and test platforms.1 The • externally controlled factors—spacelink sched- state-based architecture offers a structured process ule and configuration. for disciplined analysis that emphasizes model- based design for estimation and control, makes MDS reports, stores, and transports information interactions explicit, and exposes complexity. The about the system as histories of state, measure- component architecture provides frameworks and ments, and commands. adapter’s guides, reusable building blocks in object- Systems engineers use state analysis to capture oriented design, guides for how to adapt it for con- mission objectives in detailed scenarios, keep track crete tasks, and examples of framework usage. of system constraints and operating rules, describe Flight software is largely embedded, whereas the methods they will use to achieve objectives, and ground software has extensive resources in the form record information about hardware interfaces and of servers, adequate power, and so forth. But operation. Throughout, the common framework whether it is one millisecond or one day, a com- elements (vocabulary) unify all aspects of the design munication delay closes the control loop from both process. For example, if the goal is to move a rover the architectural and customer viewpoints. For to a rock, the state variable to be controlled is the example, mission controllers view the spacecraft as rover’s position relative to the rock. Measurements a point in a two-dimensional plot, whereas the provide evidence for that state—for example, wheel spacecraft itself is an object in three-dimensional rotations, sun sensor, or stereo camera. For a stereo space. Then the question becomes, where is it camera, measurement models indicate the distance pointing? to terrain features, light level, camera power (on/ Both viewpoints use the same mathematical off), camera health, and so on. equations but derive different results due to their Figure 1 shows the MDS goal-oriented state- different degrees of freedom. In contrast, because based architecture. Given a model of how things MDS focuses on the similarities rather than the dif- work, estimators find “good” explanations for ferences, developers can use the same mathemati- measurement (sensor) and command (actuator) cal and architectural framework to write both the data to estimate state. State variables hold state val- flight navigation and ground control software. ues, including the degree of uncertainty. To describe Unlike past missions, JPL will cost together the state evolution, state timelines combine current and flight and ground software for the Mars Science past estimates with future predictions and plans. Laboratory—a major cultural change. Together, time-based state information and mod-

66 Computer Telecommand

State State State Goals variable els of state behavior supply the information needed to operate a system and assess performance.1 Operators express their intent in the form of Models Estimate Elaborate goals declaring what should happen—not how. The State Actions estimator Controller operators and planners can elaborate the goals Propagate Coordinate recursively, and even conditionally, into lower-level goals that are coordinated by a controller/sched- Measurements Commands uler that uses priority as the final arbiter to resolve Hardware Hardware conflicts. MDS keeps state estimations and state adapter control completely separate to avoid the tempta- Sensor tion to warp a state estimation to meet a control Actuator objective or the risk of having multiple interpreta- tions for the same data.1 Report Finally, MDS represents actual hardware components in software as hardware adapters that facil- Telemetry itate the delineation of the abstract system model (including time) by translating raw input/output data and measurement and command models into abstract declarations about state. In addition, soft- cent of the code for the DS1 fault-protection sub- Figure 1. MDS ware-based hardware adapters can augment system system from 60 or so state machines. Since build- architecture. A goal hardware with supplemental behaviors such as sam- ing such models can take several months and they is a constraint on pling, I/O, sequencing and synchronization, time can be revised 50 or more times, automatically gen- the value of a state and metadata tagging, data buffering and routing, erating efficient C code with a small code footprint variable over a time data format translation, error checking, and data was a huge win—allowing talented engineers to interval. State preprocessing and compression. More important build the system via models, as in civil engineering, variables hold state still, MDS isolates state frameworks from platform- rather than waiting for programmers to code, ver- values, including specific interfaces and supports real, simulated, or ify, and, more often than not, recode the particular degree of abstract hardware in real or virtual time. system repeatedly. However, this solves only half uncertainty. Models the problem. express mission- MISSION POSSIBLE? Over the past decade, code generators have indeed specific relations Elevating state to a first-class entity and con- become more clever, progressing from “dumb” pro- among states, trolling state through goals that constrain it over gramming tools that do simple string manipulation commands, and time will guarantee an ambitious agenda for MDS. to something more akin to a compiler that can parse measurements. Because MDS makes both state and the models a specification to gain a notion of valid input and Estimators interpret that describe it explicit, goals are self-checking by then perform internal processing to produce some measurement and nature, prescribing possible inputs and outputs. output. While these more sophisticated tools now command evidence Goals also provide hooks for model checkers, code do a very good job on the input side, says Rouquette, to estimate state. instrumentation, and verification and validation there is far less assurance on the output side, espe- Controllers issue tools to increase reliability. cially when producing output in languages whose commands, striving A more intriguing possibility proposed by JPL’s meager semantics are difficult to prove formally and to achieve goals. Rouquette would use automatic code generation hard for model checkers to check. Hardware proxies for the vast majority of spacecraft system software. With its state-based models, MDS offers a more provide access to Rouquette views current model checking tech- formal expression of valid input and output. hardware buses, niques as more suitable for niche problems, algo- Smarter languages with higher levels of abstraction devices, and rithms, and carefully chosen pieces of code where will facilitate model checking and make it possible instruments. developers know what they’re looking for— to apply modern compiler technology and algo- not for abstracted sections of code from large-scale rithms such as pattern matching, tree recognition, systems in which complexity arises from the inter- and algebraic formalisms for operations on trees actions between the different parts. Instead, to code generators themselves. Rouquette is banking on code generation and Rouquette’s grand vision is to generate 95 per- transformation techniques already used success- cent of the Mars Science Laboratory code auto- fully in Deep Space 1. matically, leaving only a small runtime that will be Rouquette used the MathWorks’ Stateflow tool- coded manually and will require extensive model box and some homegrown tools to generate 90 per- checking and testing for validation. Space is a

January 2004 67 largely unknown environment, says Rouquette, and could, in principle, generate savings for US indus- the only way to ensure mission success is by having try equal to the nation’s budget for space ex- the many bright people involved use their knowl- ploration. edge, imagination, and time to engineer systems instead of writing code. “Analyzing rocks on Mars sets our expectations way too low, and there are Acknowledgments many other nice places to go. But we have to make We thank Erik Antonsson, Matthew Barry, these things dirt cheap and a sure thing.” Guillaume Brat, Daniel Dvorak, Martin Feather, Erann Gat, Tom Gavin, Dimitra Giannakopoulou, Klaus Havelund, Gerard Holzmann, Michael y exploring new technologies and approaches Lowry, Kenny Meyer, David Nichols, Tom Prince, to develop provably reliable software within Kirk Reinholtz, Nicolas Rouquette, and Willem B tough constraints, NASA has a chance to Visser for their time. In addition, we owe a great deliver even more than the results of the scientific debt to Lisa Townsend at JPL and Michael probes it launches. “We’re the engineers,” Tom Mewhinney and John Bluck at Ames for arranging Gavin says, “but we do this in the name of sci- the interviews with these researchers. ence.” Whatever progress the space agency makes in addressing its own software issues seems likely to advance the state of the art, contributing to com- References puter science as well as software engineering. In 1. D. Dvorak et al., “Software Architecture Themes in addition, any successful spin-off that improves reli- JPL’s Mission Data System,” Proc. AIAA Space Tech- ability while cutting development time and costs nology Conf. and Exposition, 1999; http://x2000. jpl.nasa.gov/nonflash/publications/aiaa99_mds_final. pdf. 2. G. Holzmann, The Spin Model Checker: Primer and Reference Manual, Addison-Wesley, 2003. SCHOLARSHIP 3. K. Havelund and T. Pressburger, “Model Checking Java Programs Using Java PathFinder,” Int’l J. Soft- ware Tools for Technology Transfer, vol. 2, no. 4, MONEY FOR 2000, pp. 366-381. 4. W. Visser et al., “Model Checking Programs,” J. Automated Software Engineering, vol. 10, 2002, pp. STUDENT 203-232; http://ase.arc.nasa.gov/jpf/papers.html. 5. K. Havelund and G. Rosu, “Monitoring Java Pro- LEADERS grams with Java PathExplorer,” Proc. Workshop Runtime Verification, Electronic Notes in Theoreti- Student members active in IEEE Computer cal Computer Science, vol. 55, no. 2, 2001. 6. D. Dvorak, “Challenging Encapsulation in the Design Society chapters are eligible for the Richard E. of High-Risk Control Systems,” presentation, Conf. Merwin Student Scholarship. Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Seattle, 2002. Up to four $3,000 scholarships are available. Application deadline: 31 May

Patrick Regan is senior correspondent for science and technology at NJN News on New Jersey’s public television and radio network. Contact him at [email protected]. Investing in Students

www.computer.org/students/ Scott Hamilton is Computer’s senior acquisitions editor. Contact him at [email protected].

68 Computer COVER FEATURE IT Employment Prospects in 2004: A Mixed Bag

Signs of general economic recovery and renewed IT sector growth are dampened for IT workers globally by improved productivity and locally by a global labor market.

Fred recent issue of CIO magazine featured a A SHORT HISTORY: 1997-2003 Niederman successful information technology em- Following the euphoric increase in the demand for Saint Louis ployee from the United States, Mike IT professionals from 1997 to 2000, the recession of University Emmons, who skillfully adapted to sev- 2000-2001 marked new highs in unemployment. A eral generations of new technology and Earlier recessions had also triggered unemployment, apparently provided excellent value in his work, but not to the same degree. By the end of 2002, but was laid off along with his entire work group.1 unemployment among US mathematicians and com- What’s unusual is that Emmons and his colleagues puter scientists, a subset of IT professionals, rose to received a significant severance package on the con- the highest levels since 1982, when the Bureau of dition that they train their replacements, whom the Labor Statistics started collecting the data.2 company brought from India to work at substan- Although issues relating to definition and mea- tially lower wages. surement precision have prevented scientific confir- Clearly things have changed since 1999, when mation, most industry observers agree that demand the cover stories for US business magazines for IT workers in the late 1990s exceeded supply, described IT positions going unfilled and extensive certainly in the US. For example, a 1999 review of congressional lobbying to increase quotas for over- US labor literature3 showed many signs of a short- seas workers to fill them. For US workers, the age, including rising wages for IT workers and change raises questions of industry direction and unfilled job openings. national policy. However, the change also signals This changed, of course, when the Internet invest- the reality of a global marketplace. From this per- ment bubble burst, and many Internet firms went spective, it raises two different but complementary out of business. At the same time, companies that questions: had invested heavily in Y2K conversions began releasing employees hired specifically for that task. • What are the prospects for the global IT work- With the general downturn in the economy, com- force in the near and longer term? panies canceled new IT projects or put them on • How will IT jobs be distributed among com- hold, further slowing new hiring and adding to lay- peting labor markets around the world? offs. These general tendencies all worked in concert to increase the availability of IT workers for a The first question addresses total demand for IT decreasing number of positions. workers. The second addresses the economics of business investments and how governments, uni- US workforce shrinkage versities, communities, and individuals can com- The US IT workforce shrank significantly between pete successfully for them. 2000 and 2003. The Information Technology

0018-9162/04/$20.00 © 2004 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society January 2004 69 Figure 1. US IT 2.0 workforce demand based on estimated 1.5 open positions indicates a loss of more than 1 million 1.0 Productivity issues positions between The nature of IT work, particularly in compa- 2000 and 2003. 0.5 nies developing non-IT products, has been evolving steadily away from a structure of individual programmers banging out code in one language for Estimated openpositions (in millions) 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 use in one environment. Instead, software development has become a team activity that often extends existing systems written in multiple lan- Association of America, a trade association repre- guages for diverse execution environments. senting US IT industry, estimated a reduction of Modular development. This shift from building 500,000 IT workers between 2001 and early stand-alone systems to extending existing portfo- 2002—from 10.4 to 9.9 million total.4 Figure 1 lios should generate new IT products more effi- shows more recent ITAA data, estimating US ciently. It should also increase overall productivity demand for IT workers in terms of open positions.5 because incremental module additions to an exist- The estimated number of open positions peaked in ing applications portfolio accrue benefits as they 2000 at 1.6 million, dropped below 1 million in are installed, in contrast to approaches that require 2001, came back somewhat in 2002 to 1.2 million, completing a monolithic system before the first then fell dramatically to less than half a million in benefits can ensue. 2003. Adding new modules rather than developing Another indication of declining IT work in massive new systems lets programmers work on the US and other countries—notably Britain, smaller projects, which generally means less com- Germany, and Canada—is reduced recruiting from plexity and greater efficiency. It also decreases the overseas. Programs like the H-1B visa program in need to maintain detailed documentation for coor- the US, which had increased annual quotas to dination among many workers on a large project. 195,000 foreign scientists, engineers, and pro- The documentation for smaller projects might be grammers, are no longer filling their entire quota. crucial but should take less time to create. The US recently returned to a cap of 65,000 such A modular approach also increases opportuni- workers per year. ties for reuse and component-based systems that should decrease the programming time required to Likely global shrinkage complete projects. It gives organizations more flex- Job shrinkage in the US does not seem to corre- ibility in system development. They can order new late with equivalent or larger job growth in other modules to fit with changes in needs, labor avail- countries. For example, Narendra M. Agrawal and ability, and financial resources. Mohan Thite6 cite reports from the National As development environments grow in sophisti- Association of Software and Service Companies in cation, they offer more and better tools for code India indicating that the number of IT profession- reuse and generation, automated testing, version als increased from 6,800 in 1985-1986 to 522,000 control, and structured design methods. In addi- in March 2002. We don’t know if the March esti- tion to programmer-level productivity gains, com- mate represents growth, stability, or even shrink- panies can use organizational project environments age in India between 2000 and 2001. like the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Even if we assume an accelerating growth rate Maturity Model as tools for measuring and stan- that added 100,000 of those workers in 2001, it dardizing their development processes. If success- would not offset the decreased number of US jobs. fully implemented, these tools should result in more Nor is it likely that an increase in jobs throughout effective use of IT human resources through better the European Union and Eastern Europe would coordination, documentation, and organizational account for the balance. learning. The evidence is not strong, but the best tentative The IT field has likely increased its productivity conclusion is that the global IT workforce has con- over the past several years. Even as the total IT pro- tracted since 2000. fessional workforce has declined in numbers, the amount of retail e-commerce has increased. As TOTAL DEMAND FOR IT WORK Figure 2 shows, the US Department of Commerce Workforce contraction can result from both nor- estimated that the dollar value of retail e-commerce mal business cycles and from structural changes in in the US doubled from $6.25 billion during the the work. second quarter of 2000 to $12.48 billion during

70 Computer Figure 2. E- 15,000 commerce in the United States dou- 10,000 bled from 2000 to 2003, even as the workforce the second quarter of 2003.7 This suggests an 5,000 decreased. improved capacity to handle not just overall value but probably also numbers of transactions, even as US dollars (in billions) the overall number of employees has shrunk. 0 Shifts in the means of production for IT work- 2000 2001 2002 2003 ers—changing from custom development to package integration—will tend to move development work from non-IT-producing companies to IT-pro- Barring significant changes in self-repair capabili- ducing companies. It will also shift the total ties, however, aging system portfolios combined amount of IT work required: Doubling the staff with increasingly diverse computing environments for a package creator may reduce staff require- should continue to create new levels of technical ments by a few percentage points at hundreds of complexity. Ultimately, the good news for global non-IT-producing companies, creating a net pro- IT workers—though not necessarily IT con- ductivity gain but potentially reducing the overall sumers—is that complexity tends to increase faster demand for IT workers. than the number of elements added to a system. In practice, the net outcome of such structural shifts is difficult to predict. At non-IT-producing Product and service innovations companies, the workforce can decrease, but the New IT products and services also create new company can also reallocate staff to other projects opportunities for growth. IT has automated many and achieve a net balance of workers as mainte- tasks, but substituting computer labor for human nance requirements increase with increased total labor stimulates the conceptualization of additional IT activities and tools to support. tasks for automation and support. For example, Similarly, shifting IT work from a non-IT-pro- bank ATMs have evolved to “credit at the pump” ducing firm to a domestic outsourcer may accom- gas stations. Perhaps the next step will automate a plish the same level of work with fewer workers, “discussion” between each vehicle and a pumping assuming the outsourcer can create the same out- system algorithm that optimizes the blend of gas puts more efficiently. However, the outsourcer often and additives for higher performance and lower absorbs some or all of the non-IT-producing firm’s emissions. The savings in fuel could more than pay employees. The firm might retain some employees for the investment in distribution facilities as fuel to “interface” with the outsourcing company as reserves become more scarce. communicators or monitors or to work on new Although I am not aware of any single “killer application development or other projects. app” on the horizon, numerous “mini-killer apps” Distributed complexity. Many scenarios arise when exist across a variety of niches from radio frequency IT productivity increases. If the demand for new IT identification and supply-chain technologies to Wi- capabilities remains constant, fewer workers can Fi and endlessly morphing wireless applications. meet it. If the demand decreases, even fewer work- That millions of people have bought into cell phone ers are needed to meet it. More interesting is the case technologies and personal digital assistants prepares in which demand increases along with productiv- the ground for enterprising individuals and organi- ity. If productivity increases faster than demand, the zations to consider new uses for these tools, which number of workers could still decrease. Only when in turn will require employing workers to develop, demand increases faster than productivity can the test, implement, upgrade, and eventually maintain. number of workers also increase. Although this provides a useful mental frame- Workforce characteristics work, in practice many factors over and above the Another factor that influences the need for new addition of new portfolio elements can stimulate employees is the rate at which existing employees the hiring of new IT workers. Increases in portfolio leave the field. At present, the IT field—at least in sizes correlate with a shift toward more distributed, some sectors—includes a large number of individ- multiplatform environments and more complexity uals expected to retire within the next few years. in the organization’s full expanse of computer-ori- This seems particularly true in the US public sector. ented capabilities. The labor needed to maintain the A recent survey of US government technology system should increase with these changes. workers found their average age was 45 years, and The relationship between complexity and labor more than half were between ages 45 and 69.8 could change if efforts to create “self-repairing” Many state officials also report aging staffs, which software and systems become commonplace. could jeopardize IT service delivery if many of these

January 2004 71 Table 1. Average annual IT salaries by country, June 2003. Average annual salary Average annual salary Country in local currency in US dollars United Kingdom 50,757 GBP 81,553 United States 80,286 USD 80,286 Europe 59,406 EUR 68,218 Australia 95,559 AUD 62,257 While we may not see the booming growth of the Canada 79,117 CAD 56,599 1990s Internet explosion or a Y2K threat, there is Singapore 75,319 SGD 43,058 no indication of significantly shrinking demand for South Africa 225,922 ZAR 30,055 IT products and services. Brazil 57,427 BRL 19,982 India 397,818 INR 8,593 GLOBAL COMPETITION FOR IT WORK If the downturn in global IT employment largely Source: 2003 Information Technology Toolbox Salary Survey; represents a natural business cycle, then the total http://crm.ittoolbox.com/Research/survey.asp. Used by permission. IT workforce size will increase as effects of the recent recession fade. If so, the issue for most IT workers and employers shifts to concern for how experienced workers opt to retire when they become this work is distributed among them. eligible. One mitigating factor in assessments of the IT Wages workforce size is the diffusion of computing from In classic economic theory, when supply increases the sole domain of IT specialists to a wider array of and demand decreases, prices fall. In fact, organi- workers. Increasing numbers of workers employed zations generally find it difficult to reduce the wages at the IT boundary—Web developers, business ana- of full-time employees, though they might reduce lysts, and specialized end users such as nursing in- benefits and halt or delay bonuses and raises. formatics and geographic information systems The sharp growth in IT wages prior to the dot- specialists—use sophisticated IT components in com bubble burst leveled out afterward but still their work without being classified technically as IT continued to grow at a slower rate until very workers. This might also pertain to individuals in recently, when they began to flatten and even to IT-producing firms who evolve from clearly techni- recede for some job titles. A recent survey published cal workers to positions of customer support that in Software Development suggests that in the US, blend technical and marketing activities. both average and median manager salaries have Another influence on workforce size pertains to increased slightly between 2002 and 2003, while the trend toward shifting IT jobs from traditional salaries of other IT workers stayed about the same full-time employment to contract work. Many or declined very slightly during the same period.9 kinds of contractual arrangements exist between The ITAA mirrored this finding in its May 2003 employees and firms. Some arrangements resemble report, which concluded: traditional work except in terms of pay and benefits; others are project-oriented, with significant While compensation for IT workers is not by and employee movement. Current methods for esti- large growing, most workers are not seeing cuts mating workforce size may not capture all of the in pay or benefits. Amidst an uncertain business nuances of the arrangements that contractors have environment, companies appear determined to with organizations. For example, a full-time maintain the status quo. employee might still be counted as an IT worker even if between assignments, whereas a contract Table 1 shows survey results for worker salaries employee might not be. in different countries.10 The differences are significant, indicating that annual IT salaries in the US Growth in installed IT base and UK average approximately 9.5 times the aver- Assuming that global commerce and trade con- age in India. This data does not indicate changes tinue to grow, new applications—from customer over time, but the difference would motivate an resource management to ubiquitous computing— organization to at least consider hiring an Indian should continue to capture the imagination of orga- IT worker rather than one from the US or UK, if nizations and customers. Given organizational all else were constant. creativity in developing new applications, the immense body of installed software requiring main- Education pipeline tenance and updating, and the public appetite for Just a few years ago, IT careers could be sold to new IT-enabled products, it is reasonably safe to students as an entrée into an exciting, profitable predict continued growth of the installed IT base world where labor shortages meant that talented around the world. folks could almost name their price. Now, at least

72 Computer in the US, the number of students entering computer (consultants declined from about 5 percent science and business management information sys- to about 3 percent). tem (MIS) programs has decreased significantly.11 Even as Part of the decrease may reflect recent changes Potential shortages organizations in immigration procedures that have made it more What might happen if the business cycle reduce their difficult for foreign students to pursue studies in turns once again toward strong growth in the workforces overall, the US. In November 2003, the Institute for IT sector? they are still hiring International Education showed the number of stu- If the growth is strong enough to absorb dents coming to the US was still increasing but at all the people who lost their jobs during the individuals with a much slower rate than in previous years.12 2001 recession and its aftermath, the US selected skill sets. could return to a shortage situation. First, the The most popular fields of study for international number of students in the computer science students in the U.S. are business and management and information systems pipeline has (20%) and engineering (17%). After two years of decreased significantly. Second, even if the US very large growth, the number of international stu- decides to reinvigorate the H-1B program, it faces dents studying mathematics and computer sciences a number of difficulties. For example, the projec- has decreased by 6%, although these students still tions of job growth for software developers inside make up 12% of the total. India are significant. Estimates as of March 2003 give India about 500,000 IT workers, and the pro- It is logical, however, to expect enrollments in jected need is for 2.2 million in 2008. Although fields generally leading to IT careers to decline as a Indian IT workers have historically prized the result of downsizing and industry layoffs. Although prospect of coming to the US,6 their eagerness may many students are still drawn to IT for its intrinsic be dampened by observing the effects of thousands rewards, it has become more difficult to attract stu- of H-1B Indian workers essentially forced to return dents at the margin into IT. Careers must look home during the recession. much less stable and rewarding than they appeared English-speaking countries have an advantage in to be a few years ago when dot-com millions recruiting Indian workers relative to Japan and seemed near at hand. Germany, for example, where language poses a barrier. Moreover, the long history of Indian work- Selective hiring ers settling in the US offers an existing community Even as organizations reduce their workforces into which they can quickly be absorbed. overall, they are still hiring individuals with selected About 150,000 newcomers are estimated to be skill sets. For example, IBM has been cutting jobs ready to enter the job market in India.6 If the esti- over the past year, but a CNET.News.com story mates are correct, a worldwide shortage of IT quotes CEO Sam Palmisano indicating that the workers could create significant opportunities for company is also looking to add positions:13 other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, to replicate some of India’s success in this domain. As we look to 2004, more customers are expected to increase their investments in information tech- Effects of outsourcing nology. … We see the need for approximately Several factors over the past five years have led 10,000 new positions in key skill areas, including to increased and more effective use of what in the high-value services, middleware technologies, US is called “offshore outsourcing”: Linux, and open standards-based hardware and software. • improved communications technologies that allow smoother coordination of development Overall, employers can be more selective in the work; education and experience they require for new hir- • accumulated experience and knowledge about ing. A longitudinal study based on IT positions what is needed to successfully manage fully advertised in a variety of US locations from 1988 outsourced or to integrate partially outsourced to 2001 found more than 10 percent increases in work; number of jobs for software engineers, with equiv- • highly trained individuals in target countries, alent decreases for programmer/analysts and con- particularly in the area of coding; sultants.14 The study showed no change in the • cost differential for employing workers in percentage of permanent versus contract workers lower-cost-of-living countries; and

January 2004 73 • well-organized enterprises in the target organization to create new and often very effective Even in optimistic countries. competition. Even in optimistic scenarios in which the demand scenarios in which With regard to the last point, note that the for IT work and workers recovers from cyclical the demand for first company in the world to receive business forces, IT workers in the US, Canada, the IT work recovers Capability Maturity Model Level 5 certifi- EU, and even India will face increasing levels of 6 from cyclical cation was in India. competition. The number of qualified workers and 5 business forces, According to the 2003 ITAA study, some indigenous IT enterprises continues to grow 12 percent of US IT-producing companies throughout many parts of the world. For example, IT workers face have already moved jobs offshore, but only 3 in recent years Eastern Europe has shown signifi- increasing percent of non-IT producing companies have cant economic growth and striking expansion of competition. done so. This is likely to reflect a greater demand for telecommunications, wireless, and cable reluctance of companies focused on integrat- connections.17 All the Eastern Europe countries are ing packages and maintaining strategic appli- significantly increasing their capability to perform cations to outsource relative to companies IT work. that may be creating discrete products, such as soft- Systemwide benefits. The McKinsey Quarterly ware packages, or providing help desk or related published a report outlining four systemwide ben- types of support. The percentages, however, are rea- efits that accrue to countries that outsource jobs sonably similar to Gartner group estimates that to other countries:18 approximately 10 percent of IT work currently per- formed in US IT-producing companies will be out- • cost savings that may lower prices and increase sourced to workers in other countries, along with competitiveness in the marketplace; about 5 percent of the IT work in non-IT compa- • new revenues based on the growth in devel- nies.15 oping economies; Effects on total workforce. Several factors might • repatriated earnings, which may allow com- account for US outsourcing not reaching even panies to remain in business and return higher higher percentages. profits to their investors—many of whom can Although offshore salaries can be substantially reside in the outsourcing country; and lower, they do not represent the total cost com- • redeployed labor to the extent that IT work- parison to domestic development. The full cost ers can move into higher-value projects, includes costs of vendor selection, transitioning the develop entrepreneurial new products, or shift work, layoffs and retention, lost productivity and to other industries. cultural issues, improving development processes, and managing the contract. One estimate puts In India, for example, although an estimated two- these costs at from 15 to 55 percent above the con- thirds of revenue for IT products comes from out- tract.16 Moreover, some costs occur up front and side the country, the remainder points to a large take time and energy to recover. In addition, cost and potentially growing market for products and advantages might not be easy to maintain. For services that could come from inside its borders. example, salaries have increased an estimated 20 Much of the McKinsey analysis is based on broad percent annually in recent years in India.6 economic data across industries. IT people in gen- Firms will likely be less inclined to outsource if eral could be affected more adversely in shifting to they have any security concerns regarding their data new industries as they tend to start from a higher or systems. Although it is not clear that IT is more salary base that is difficult to match in other areas. secure in one location than another, crossing borders can add complexity, which can add to general Effects of insourcing security risks. On one hand, redundant work in mul- Offshore outsourcing has been increasing, but tiple locations can reduce the risk from disruption “insourcing” also remains significant in the US. An in any single location; on the other hand, security is Associated Press news story reported that the US only as strong as the weakest element, and multiple State Department issued 28,098 L-1 visas during locations offer multiple potential attack points. the first half of fiscal 2003, “... an increase of nearly Intellectual property can be a concern for some 7 percent from the same period in 2002.”19 The L- organizations. Individuals working in an out- 1 visa lets multinational firms transfer personnel sourced organization might be tempted to form for specialized tasks to the US from their station in new companies using know-how from their parent other countries. In contrast, the H-1B visa is

74 Computer intended to supplement the US workforce in criti- Moore22 found evidence that burnout among cal areas. An H-1B visa lets the holder stay in the IT professionals affects their decision to leave Both India and China US for five years based on organizational sponsor- an employer and the IT field. Moore also invest in science ship. Agrawal and Thite6 estimate that as many as found that men and women experience the 80 percent of the Indian IT workers who have come effects differently. The implications are per- and technology at to the US on this program have become permanent haps muted in the current economic climate, high levels relative residents or citizens. but if the labor market proves cyclical and we to their per capita Some educational institutions, notably Stevens return to IT worker shortages, issues of income. Institute of Technology,11 are recognizing the retaining skilled staff could again prove trou- increasingly multicultural US workforce by includ- bling. ing global IT courses and emphasizing cross- Employee turnover can be expensive not cultural communication in their curricula. only in immediate financial terms but also in terms Professionals who move to the US and other of lost intellectual capital and strategic power. Western countries represent a potential “brain Recent studies focused on IT workers have indi- drain” to their native countries, but workers who cated a bifurcation in strategic approaches to do return home usually have accumulated a valu- retaining IT employees.23 With the known half-life able array of experience, training, and capital for of IT skills, a segment of the industry and of non- investment. For example, a United Nations report IT-producing companies actually encourages a rea- found that returnees from the US started half of all sonably high rate of turnover. the companies emerging from Taiwan’s largest sci- The ultimate effect of this strategy on the indi- entific park, the Hsinchu.20 However, not all coun- vidual firm remains unclear. In the short run, it may tries are as successful in attracting significant replace higher-paid experienced workers with numbers of their most educated people to return. lower-paid newcomers. It could have a reverse From a US national perspective, insourcing jobs short-run effect if market prices are rising quickly. has many advantages over outsourcing. Insourced However, this policy is not likely to reward indi- workers buy homes, cars, food, and otherwise stim- vidual IT professionals for long years of difficult ulate the overall economy. Their potential for inno- education to prepare for entering the field, and it vation tends to be high, which can in turn create may adversely affect the retention of IT workers in new enterprises and jobs. Finally, insourcing the labor market as a whole. decreases the risk of losing intellectual capital to Soon Ang and Sandra Slaughter24 have consid- potentially competing countries.6 ered these labor strategies in a rich framework that What does the US or any country need to do to contrasts the emphases for internal and external remain or become competitive in the world IT mar- labor markets. Companies favoring internal labor ket? Success in developing a presence in this mar- markets tend to emphasize training and career ket is probably tied to disproportionate investment paths to retain firm-specific knowledge; those in science and technology by government and the favoring external labor markets tend to hire people private sector. One UN report,16 for example, notes with specific skills for specific projects. that both India and China invest in science and tech- Neither of these strategies is optimal for all firms nology at unexpectedly high levels relative to their in all situations, but consciously choosing a strat- per capita income. Ireland went to great lengths to egy and blending human resource practices that develop its public university system to support its match it can be helpful to individual organizations. success story in entering the world IT market.21 If the collective organizations that hire IT profes- Such investment is risky business, though, in a sionals want to make sure that sufficient employ- world where large numbers of highly trained pro- ees are available in an economic upturn, they may fessionals make the return on such an investment need to develop institutions that can blunt the risk less than certain. for individual workers during the downturns.

Workplace issues PROSPECTS FOR 2004 Recent IT research—mostly in the business MIS Prospects for IT workers for this year are difﬁcult literature—focuses on applying emerging human to reduce to a single generalization. The third-quar- resource management models to IT professionals. ter annualized growth rate of the US gross domes- One intriguing set of studies addresses the work life tic product was 8.2 percent, suggesting renewed of IT professionals. For example, in a study of the demand for IT workers; but it is not clear whether effects of prolonged stress on IT workers, Jo Ellen this increase will offset ongoing productivity

January 2004 75 improvements that enable fewer workers to do can represent an unbeatable advantage for any given more work. job. In this example, firm-specific skills—where to All indications point to the continued migration go for technical or financial assistance within the of jobs from the US, Canada, and Europe to devel- firm—are not easily transferred nor necessarily rec- oping countries—especially India, but also China, ognized for the value they potentially represent. Russia, and Eastern European countries. The Not everyone has all the requisites for creating migration has been strongest among programmers new products or services and setting up their own and IT service providers, such as help desk work- enterprises, but individual IT workers should not ers, but it could expand to designers and project lose sight of this possibility. I personally lived management. through major aviation engineering layoffs in Seattle, The IT job market also looks very different for which ultimately forced many engineers to start new workers in IT-producing companies such as companies that resulted in a stronger, more balanced Microsoft and Sun, outsourcing contract recipients regional economy over a period of some years. such as EDS and Tata, and non-IT-producing com- Individual IT workers might also need to be flex- panies such as McDonald’s and Disney. The com- ible in terms of physical location. Shifts in hot tech- petitive advantages of IT workers in development nologies can move job centers from place to companies typically emphasize mastery of tools and place—for example, from e-commerce startups in technologies for creating innovative products, Silicon Valley to government security specialties in whereas IT workers in outsourcing and non-IT Washington, D.C. companies need to know how to integrate and The IT profession offers numerous rewards, apply these same tools and technologies. including intrinsically satisfying work—particularly Clearly, macroeconomic forces will bring wind- when creating new systems or solving user prob- falls to some companies—perhaps those providing lems. It also includes the opportunity for receiving the outsourced services—even as they constrain average to excellent financial compensation. But as others—perhaps IT-producing companies that can engineers in many fields have learned over the years, diminish their risks by developing products across it is not immune from marketplace risks. various geographic locations. Unfortunately for the individual IT worker, there are few ways to lower individual risks. The ITAA References reports imply the need to accept continued loss of 1. B. Worthen, “The Radicalization of Mike Emmons,” jobs that can be replicated in lower-cost countries. CIO Magazine, 1 Sept. 2003; www.cio.com/archive/ These reports also suggest the need for constantly 090103/people.html. upgrading skills in cutting-edge technology. 2. E. Frauenheim, “Taking the Measure of IT’s Pain,” Broadening skills from the purely technical may CNET News.com, 8 July 2003; http://news. also be helpful in retaining work or finding new com.com/2008-1082-1023565.html. opportunities. Technical professionals with good 3. P. Freeman and W. Aspray, The Supply of Informa- business and communication skills can often find tion Technology Workers in the United States, Com- work supporting the interface between technology puting Research Association, 1999. and business in areas such as data analysis and pro- 4. Information Technology Association of America, ject management. “Bouncing Back: Jobs, Skills and the Continuing De- mand for IT Workers,” ITAA white paper, May 2002. 5. Information Technology Association of America, recent book from Mercer Human Resource “2003 Workforce Survey,” ITAA tech. report, May Consulting25 concludes with a discussion of 2003. A tactics for developing “self-managed careers.” 6. N.M. Agrawal and M. Thite, “Human Resource It emphasizes principles such as blending general Issues, Challenges, and Strategies in the Indian Soft- with firm-specific skills, understanding the labor ware Industry,” Int’l J. Human Resources Develop- market dynamics within an organization, and taking ment and Management, vol. 3, no. 3, 2003, pp. a role in assisting others in managing their careers. 249-264. But professionals must balance such general advice 7. US Census Bureau, “Retail E-Commerce Sales in with real competition from newly minted IT work- Third Quarter 2003 Were $13.3 Billion, Up 27.0 ers whose skill set may be narrow but is probably Percent from Third Quarter 2002,” Census Bureau targeted to emerging technologies. Together with Reports; www.census.gov/mrts/www/current.html. their availability at often lower cost, these workers 8. E. Chabrow, “Gap Analysis,” Government Enter-

76 Computer prise, Aug. 2003; www.governmententerprise.com/ 23. R. Agarwal and T.W. Ferratt, “Crafting an HR Strat- issue/002/itworkforce_01.html. egy to Meet the Need for IT Workers,” Comm. 9. A.W. Morales, “Salary Survey 2003: What Are US ACM, July 2001, pp. 58-64. Developers Worth?” Software Development, Nov. 24. S. Ang and S. Slaughter, “Retaining Information 2003; www.sdmagazine.com/documents/s=8939/ Technology Professionals: The Effects of Internal sdm0311a/ sdm0311a.html. Labor Market Strategies,” to be published in Data 10. R. Greenspan, “UK, US IT Pros Top the Salary Charts,” Base, 2004. CyberAtlas, 31 July 2003; www.cyberatlas. internet. 25. H.R. Nalbantian et al., Play to Your Strengths: Man- com/markets/professional/print/0,,5971_2242531,00. aging Your Internal Labor Markets for Lasting Com- html. petitive Advantage, McGraw-Hill, 2004. 11. T. Hoffman, “Job Skills: Preparing Generation Z,” Computerworld, 25 Aug. 2003; http://computerworld. Fred Niederman is the Shaughnessy Associate Pro- com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,84295,00. fessor of Management Information Systems in the html. Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University. 12. Institute for Int’l Education, “International Student His research interests focus primarily on human Enrollment Growth Slows in 2002/2003, Large Gains resource issues pertaining to computer and MIS from Leading Countries Offset Numerous Decreases,” personnel and secondarily on global information IIE press release, 3 Nov. 2003; http://opendoors. systems and collaborative, group support systems. iienetwork.org/?p=36523. Niederman received a PhD in management infor- 13. E. Frauenheim, “IBM Meets Earnings Target, Talks mation systems from the Carlson School of Busi- of New Jobs,” CNET.News.com, 15 Oct. 2003; ness at the University of Minnesota. He is a http://news.com.com/2100-7342_3-5091980.html. member of the Association for Information Sys- 14. M.J. Gallivan, D.P. Truex, and L. Kvasny, “Changing tems, the ACM, the Society of Information Man- Patterns in IT Skill Sets 1988-2003: A Content Analy- agement, and the Information Resource Manage- sis of Classiﬁed Advertising,” to be published in Data ment Association. Contact him at niederfa@ Base, 2004. slu.edu. 15. M. LaMonica, “Panel: Sharpen Skills to Keep U.S. Tech Edge,” CNET.News.com, 3 Oct. 2003; http:// zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5086181.html. IEEE 16. S. Overby, “The Hidden Costs of Offshore Out- save sourcing,” CIO Magazine, 1 Sept. 2003; www.cio. com/archive/090103/money.html. Computer 17. D. Halperin, “Worlds in Transition: IT in Eastern Europe,” TechNewsWorld, 6 Sept. 2003; www. Society % technewsworld.com/perl/story/31510.html. 18. V. Agrawal and D. Farrell, “Who Wins in Off- members shoring?” McKinsey Quarterly, no. 4, 2003; www. mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.asp?ar=1363 25 &L2=7&L3=10. 19. R. Konrad, “U.S. Tech Workers Training Their on all Replacements,” Associated Press, 11 Aug. 2003; www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/08/11/training. conferences replacements.ap/index.html. 20. A. Solimano, “Globalizing Talent and Human Capi- sponsored tal: Implications for Developing Countries,” United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and by the the Caribbean, 2002; http://wbln0018.worldbank. org/eurvp/web.nsf/Pages/Paper+by+Solimano/. IEEE 21. E.M. Trauth, The Culture of an Information Econ- omy: Inﬂuences and Impacts in the Republic of Ire- Computer Society land, Kluwer, 2000. Not a member? 22. J.E. Moore, “One Road to Turnover: An Examina-

tion of Work Exhaustion in Technology Profession- Join online today! www.computer.org/join als,” MIS Quarterly, Mar. 2000, pp. 141-168.

January 2004 77 COVER FEATURE DakNet: Rethinking Connectivity in Developing Nations

DakNet provides extraordinarily low-cost digital communication, letting remote villages leapfrog past the expense of traditional connectivity solutions and begin development of a full-coverage broadband wireless infrastructure.

Alex (Sandy) s a government representative enthusias- nectivity, is evidence that the marriage of wireless Pentland tically talks about the new telephone for and asynchronous service may indeed be that ker- MIT Media a village in remote rural India, a villager nel—the beginning of a road to universal broad- Laboratory asks, “Who am I going to call? I don’t band connectivity. Developed by MIT Media Lab A know anybody who owns a telephone.” researchers, DakNet has been successfully deployed Richard Yet, despite this sensible observation, a phone is in remote parts of both India and Cambodia at a Fletcher dutifully installed as part of the current govern- cost two orders of magnitude less than that of tra- Amir Hasson ment mandate to connect villages to neighboring ditional landline solutions. Villagers now get afford- First Mile Solutions towns. Although some villagers do use the phone able Internet services—and they’re using them. As occasionally, most still travel sometimes days to one man in a small village outside of New Delhi talk to family or to obtain the forms and other data remarked, “This is better than a telephone!” that citizens in developed nations can call up on a computer in a matter of seconds. THE WIRELESS CATALYST In short, the goal of “broadband connectivity for Recent advances in wireless computer network- everyone” has been shelved in favor of cutting back ing—particularly the IEEE 802 standards—have led to the minimum possible standard telephone ser- to huge commercial success and low pricing for vice in the mistaken belief that this is the cheapest broadband networks. While these networks are way to provide connectivity. This compromise is viewed as mainly for ofﬁces or for hotspots in urban particularly tragic given recent advances in wireless areas, they can provide broadband access to even the technology, which make running a copper line to most remote areas at a low price. Today, wireless cell an analog telephone far more expensive than broad- phone and wireless local loop (WLL) service costs band wireless Internet connectivity. Rather than roughly a third of copper or ﬁber landline service, backpedal on the goal of connecting everyone, soci- while packet-based broadband computer networks ety should be thinking, How can we establish the cost roughly a ninth of the landline service—and they kernel of a user network that will grow seamlessly are far friendlier to data services and to lower-grade as the village’s economics develop? In other words, voice service such as voice messaging. These new what is the basis for a progressive, market-driven technologies thus offer developing countries an migration from government seed services—e-gov- opportunity to leapfrog over wireline and WLL ernance—to universal broadband connectivity that telephony infrastructure to the forefront of broad- local users will pay for? band communications technology. DakNet, an ad hoc network that uses wireless Wireless data networks based on the IEEE technology to provide asynchronous digital con- 802.11, or WiFi, standard are perhaps the most

End-to-end distance 85 km

26 km Rajajipuram Lucknow promising of the wireless technologies. The forces BSNL Tower driving the standardization and proliferation of 16 km 12 km Hasanganj 23 km Safipur BSNL tower WiFi in the developed world have resulted in fea- BSNL tower Saroha 18 km Lucknow tures that can stimulate the communications mar- airport ket in the developing world. These features include Kanpur-Lucknow highway ease of setup, use, and maintenance; relatively high Mandhana Ajgain bandwidth; and, most important, relatively low BSNL tower 5.5 km cost for both users and providers. IITK As one demonstration of the practicality of this River Ganges new technology for rural connectivity, researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Figure 1. Digital Gangetic Plain project. Map shows the corridor of wireless working with Media Lab Asia (www.medialabasia. technology in central India. org), have “unwired” a 100-square km area of the Gangetic Plain in central India. Figure 1 shows the Village Mobile Village corridor. This project provides broadband connec- access point tivity along a corridor with almost one million residents, at a projected one-time cost of under $40 per subscriber. Other experiments have shown the Hub (Internet practicality of the technology in mountainous ter- Kiosk access point) Kiosk rain and in city centers. Indeed, several cities in the US have begun to deploy free Internet connectivity using IEEE 802.11b. Even with advances such as those demonstrated Village in the Digital Gangetic Plain project, the cost of real- time, circuit-switched communications is sufﬁciently Town Scale high that it may not be the appropriate starting 10 km point for rural connectivity in developing nations. Market data for information and communication Kiosk technology (ICT) services in rural India strongly implies that asynchronous service—voice messaging, e-mail, and so on—may be a more cost-effective Figure 2. DakNet concepts. Physical transport, in this case a public bus, carries starting point for rural connectivity projects. a mobile access point (MAP) between village kiosks and a hub with Internet access. Data automatically uploads and downloads when the bus is in range of MOBILE AD HOC CONNECTIVITY a kiosk or the hub. The DakNet wireless network takes advantage of the existing communications and transportation real-time Internet access). Low-cost WiFi radio infrastructure to distribute digital connectivity to transceivers automatically transfer the data stored outlying villages lacking a digital communications in the MAP at high bandwidth for each point-to- infrastructure. DakNet, whose name derives from point connection. the Hindi word for “post” or “postal,” combines DakNet operation thus has two steps: a physical means of transportation with wireless data transfer to extend the Internet connectivity • As the MAP-equipped vehicle comes within that a central uplink or hub, such as a cybercafe, range of a village WiFi-enabled kiosk, it auto- VSAT system, or post ofﬁce provides. matically senses the wireless connection and As Figure 2 shows, instead of trying to relay data then uploads and downloads tens of mega- over a long distance, which can be expensive and bytes of data. power hungry, DakNet transmits data over short • When a MAP-equipped vehicle comes within point-to-point links between kiosks and portable range of an Internet access point (the hub), it storage devices, called mobile access points automatically synchronizes the data from all (MAPs). Mounted on and powered by a bus, a the rural kiosks, using the Internet. motorcycle, or even a bicycle with a small genera- tor, a MAP physically transports data among pub- The steps repeat for every vehicle carrying a lic kiosks and private communications devices (as MAP unit, thereby creating a low-cost wireless net- an intranet) and between kiosks and a hub (for non- work and seamless communications infrastructure.

January 2004 79 Some Common Myths about Rural Information and Communication Technology

Myth: The village telephone is the best model for poor with people who have private phone lines, typically those of higher communities. economic status located in more urban areas. In the Grameen- Truth: Giving everyone access to digital messaging— Phone initiative, women were chosen as the community operators voice mail, digital documents, e-mail, and so on—is to help reduce this effect, since it was socially acceptable for better than installing a community telephone. women to deliver messages to everyone in the village. Rural information and communication technology (ICT) is typ- Until widespread private ownership of ICT devices becomes ically introduced as a communications channel that the commu- economically feasible for end users, it may be useful to consider nity shares. Whether through a public call office (PCO) or a public non-real-time infrastructures and applications such as voice mail, computer kiosk, users are introduced to ICT as shared utilities e-mail, and electronic bulletin boards. Also known as store-and- with a technically literate operator acting as an intermediary. forward or asynchronous modes of communication, these tech- In this shared-use model, much ICT has relied on real-time nologies can be significantly lower in cost and do not necessarily communications, such as landline telephone, cellular phone, or sacrifice the functionality required to deliver valuable user ser- satellite radio links. These real-time technologies can be useful for vices. They might also be more practical and socially appropriate immediate interactivity and accessing highly time-sensitive infor- for users than a shared real-time communications infrastructure. mation. Successful examples include India’s PCOs and the GrameenPhone initiative (www.grameenphone.com/). Myth: Poor people don’t need computers. While successful at providing basic services, the strategy of Truth: The poor not only need digital services, but they deploying shared, real-time communications also has serious are willing and able to pay for them to offset the much drawbacks. One is the large capital investment in a real-time higher costs of poor transportation, unfair pricing, and infrastructure, which requires a high level of user adoption to corruption. recover costs. The average villager cannot even afford a personal Some rural service providers (RSPs) have achieved profitabil- communications device such as a telephone or computer, let ity by offering lower-cost substitutes for a villager’s existing infor- alone a subscription fee for access to the communications infra- mation, communication, and transportation expenses. For structure. Hence, to recover cost, users must share the commu- instance, Drishtee (www.drishtee.com) provides an e-govern- nications infrastructure. This limits the all-important value added ment platform that lets villagers interact with local government from network effects. A villager who finds no use for a phone is offices remotely from a kiosk in their village that is managed by typical, and this is perhaps why so few of the world’s poor have a trained operator. A variety of services such as filing a com- used a telephone. plaint, applying for a loan, and requesting a driver’s license are The real-time aspect of telephony can also be a disadvantage: generating up to $2,000 per year per kiosk for Drishtee.1 The Both intended parties must be present at each terminal to capture significant demand for these services results from a sound value the infrastructure’s full value. If a caller wishes to contact some- proposition: Save villagers time and money. According to a vil- one who does not own (or is not present at) a telephone, the com- lager who filed a complaint using a Drishtee kiosk, munication is asynchronous despite the real-time infrastructure. Some kind of additional messaging mechanism (be it a messen- A visit to Sirsa costs Rs 50 [for travel], plus I waste a day. I will ger or an answering machine) is required to deliver the caller’s happily give Rs 10, even Rs 30 at the telecenter [kiosk] if I can message to its destination. save this. As a consequence, real-time telephony can reinforce gaps among rural populations since it encourages users to communicate mainly Drishtee’s success suggests that the introduction of ICT in

Even a single vehicle passing by a village once per nomic means, its inhabitants can use the same hard- day is sufficient to provide daily information ser- ware, software, and user interface to enjoy real- vices. The connection quality is also high. Al- time information access. The only change is the though DakNet does not provide real-time data addition of fixed-location wireless antennas and transport, a significant amount of data can move towers—a change that is entirely transparent to end at once—typically 20 Mbytes in each direction. users because they need not learn any new skills or Indeed, physically transporting data from village buy any new hardware or software. The addition to village by this means generally provides a of fixed transceivers would provide real-time con- higher data throughput than is typical with other nectivity, thus enabling new, more sophisticated ser- low-bandwidth technologies such as a telephone vices, such as voice over IP, which allows “normal” modem. real-time telephony. Thus, as the “Some Common Myths about Rural Seamless scalability Information and Communication Technology” In addition to its tremendous cost reduction, a sidebar describes, asynchronous broadband wire- critical feature of DakNet is its ability to provide a less connectivity offers a practical stepping-stone seamless method of upgrading to always-on broad- and migration path to always-on, broadband infra- band connectivity. As a village increases its eco- structure and end-user applications. Together with

80 Computer rural areas might not have anything to do with technology per Another SARI analysis done by McKinsey Consulting3 indi- se. Much rural ICT starts with a specific technology and then cates that although the universe of potential applications is large, tests out a variety of information and communication services “in the short-term only e-mail, scan-mail, voice-over-e-mail and to see which get accepted (a push approach). A better strategy chat are likely to be revenue-generating applications.” might be to start with a basic service—in Drishtee’s case, aggre- The McKinsey report also found that most of SARI’s appli- gating demand and brokering information exchange between cations do not require real-time connectivity. It estimates that the villager and the government—and then see how technol- 50 percent of all existing rural mail will convert to e-mail, and ogy can support and streamline that service. Drishtee deter- people often preferred voice messaging to a real-time voice chan- mined that computers and available connectivity were enough nel. Both e-mail and voice messaging are non-real-time applica- to capture, send, and receive information electronically. tions. Like other RSPs, however, Drishtee is constrained by India’s In addition to these non-real-time applications, providers can lack of a viable communications infrastructure. Many of the vil- use asynchronous modes of communication to create local infor- lages that Drishtee operates in lack working phone lines because mation repositories that community members can add to and of poor line maintenance and delayed installations. As a result, query. For example, a villager can access information from a Drishtee has resorted to “sneaker net,” an asynchronous computer somewhere outside the community and store that approach to connectivity that involves transporting and swap- information in a village repository so that others can use it. This ping ﬂoppy disks from the village to the government center and approach is particularly viable because the cost of digital storage back again. Despite this labor-intensive approach, sneaker net is decreasing faster than the cost of most communication tech- is successful because Drishtee’s applications that generate the nologies. most revenue require only intermittent connectivity. Moreover, users are apt to find the information in a local repository highly relevant, which further decreases their reliance Myth: Connectivity must be real time. on a real-time infrastructure and international bandwidth. Users Truth: Asynchronous ICT services are sufficient to meet could search and browse the Web in non-real time through appli- most rural community needs. cations developed for low-connectivity environments such as The Sustainable Access for Rural India (SARI) project in Tamil TEK (http://tek.sourceforge.net/). Nadu, India—a joint endeavor by the MIT Media Lab, the Harvard Center for International Development, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras—recently collected data about the communications needs, habits, and costs in hundreds of rural References Indian households to gauge the desire for and perceived afford- 1. Boston Consulting Group, “Drishtee Case Study,” Mar. 2002; ability of household communications.2 The study found that the www.digitalpartners.org/drishtee.html. current market for successful rural ICT services does not appear 2. C. Blattman, R. Jensen, and R. Roman, “Assessing the Need and to rely on real-time connectivity, but rather on affordability and Potential of Community Networking for Developing Countries: A basic interactivity: Case Study from India,” Feb. 2002; http://edevelopment.media. mit.edu/SARI/papers/CommunityNetworking.pdf. [Rural ICT companies] should start their operations by first 3. A. Pentland, R. Fletcher, and A.A. Hasson, “A Road to Universal focusing on providing basic communication and information Broadband Connectivity;” http://thinkcycle.org/tc-filesystem/ services rather than more sophisticated applications. ?folder_id=37675. the development of two other key rural communi- and VoIP telephones—may also soon become far cation components—robust, low-cost terminals and more affordable than traditional PCs or WLL equip- local user-interface design and applications— ment. PDA-like devices using an IEEE 802-like wire- DakNet makes it practical for individual house- less protocol retail for $100, with a manufacturing holds and private users to get connected. cost of approximately $50 (www.cybiko.com). System-on-a-chip technology is lowering these costs Economics even more, potentially enabling wireless PDAs at A back-of-the-envelope calculation for DakNet prices as low as $25 (www.mobilesolve.com). suggests that a capital investment of $15 million could equip each of India’s 50,000 rural buses with DAKNET IN ACTION a $300 MAP and thereby provide mobile ad hoc Villages in India and northern Cambodia are connectivity to most of the 750 million people in actively using DakNet with good results. As Figure rural India. This figure represents a cost that is 3 shows, local entrepreneurs currently are using orders of magnitude lower than other rural com- DakNet connections to make e-services like e-mail munication alternatives. and voice mail available to residents in rural vil- Costs for the interactive user devices that DakNet lages. supports—including thin-client terminals, PDAs, One of DakNet’s earliest deployments was as

January 2004 81 As Figure 4 shows, DakNet makes Bhoomi’s land records database available to villages up to 40 km away from Bhoomi’s district headquarters, or “taluka,” in Doddaballapur. In this deployment, we outfitted a public government bus with a DakNet MAP to transport land record requests from each village kiosk to the taluka server. The server processes requests and outputs land records. The bus then delivers the records to each village kiosk, where the kiosk manager prints them out and collects a payment of 15 rupees (US$0.32) per land record. The bus passes by the Figure 3. A local entrepreneur using a DakNet connection to sell e-services like hub and stops at each village six times per day voice mail and e-mail to residents in a rural Indian village. (three round-trips). A “session” occurs each time the bus comes within range of a kiosk and the MAP transfers data. The average length of a session is 2 minutes and 34 seconds, during which the MAP transfers an average of 20.9 Mbytes unidirectionally (kiosk to MAP or MAP to kiosk) and up to twice that amount bidi- rectionally (from kiosk to MAP and MAP to kiosk). The average “goodput” (actual data throughput) for a session, during which the MAP and kiosk go in and out of connection because of mobility and obstructions, is 2.47 Mbps. These averages are based on repetitive testing in a sample group of villages that reflect the range of different antenna con- figurations. The team used both omnidirectional and directional antennas with differing gains according to the orientation of each kiosk with the road and the bus stop. The total cost of the DakNet MAP equipment used on the bus is $580, which includes

• a custom embedded PC running Linux with 802.11b wireless card and 512 Mbytes of compact flash memory; Figure 4. DakNet support of the Bhoomi e-governance project. Map shows route • a 100-mW amplifier, cabling, mounting equip- between Bhoomi database and village kiosks. ment, and a 14-in omnidirectional antenna; and an affordable rural connectivity solution for the • an uninterruptible power supply powered by Bhoomi e-governance project. In September 2003, the bus battery. we also implemented DakNet in a remote province of Cambodia for 15 solar-powered village schools, The average total cost of the equipment used telemedicine clinics, and a governor’s office. to make a village kiosk or hub DakNet-ready was $185. Assuming that each bus can provide Bhoomi initiative in India connectivity to approximately 10 villages, the Bhoomi, an initiative to computerize land average cost of enabling each village was $243 records, is recognized as the first national e-gover- ($185 at each village plus $580 MAP cost for 10 nance initiative in India. Pioneered by the State villages). Government of Karnataka, Bhoomi has been suc- Villagers along the bus route have enthusiasti- cessfully implemented at district headquarters cally received the DakNet-Bhoomi system. They across the state to completely replace the physical are grateful to avoid making the long, expensive land records system. trip into the main city to obtain land records.

82 Computer (b)

(a) (c)

Figure 5. The Internet Motoman project in Cambodia. (a) The main hospital, with its VSAT connection to the Internet, acts as the hub. (b) Because the roads are so bad during rainy periods, MAP-enabled Honda motorcycles are used to connect schools to the hub. (c) For locations with particularly challenging terrain, there is even a MAP-equipped ox cart.

E-mail for Cambodian schools clear these bureaucratic hurdles, however, govern- CambodiaSchools.com operates 225 rural ments might be able to connect the world’s poor to schools throughout Cambodia with funding from the Internet far sooner than anyone believed pos- private donors and the World Bank. Our aim was sible. to provide students with Internet access by providing asynchronous connectivity to the backbone or Alex (Sandy) Pentland is a Toshiba Professor of hub—a satellite dish in the provincial capital of Ban Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and cofounder of Lung, which has a 256-Kbyte-per-second link. MIT Media Laboratory’s Digital Nations consor- As in the Bhoomi project, we used public trans- tium, the Media Lab Asia in India, the LINCOS portation, but, as Figure 5 shows, the terrain in project in Costa Rica, and the Center for Future northern Cambodia is so difficult that we had to Health. His work encompasses wearable comput- place MAPs on Honda motorcycles instead of ing, communications technology for developing buses. For one particularly remote area, we even countries, human-machine interfaces, artificial affixed the MAP to an ox cart. The results of the intelligence, and machine perception. Pentland is project, which we dubbed the Internet Village also a cofounder of the IEEE Computer Society’s Motoman, were once again gratifying. For the first Wearable Information Systems Technical Com- time, students in these Cambodian schools could mittee, and he has won numerous awards in the send e-mail, request Web pages, and feel connected arts, engineering, and sciences. Contact him at to the rest of the world. [email protected].

akNet’s low deployment cost and its enthusi- Richard Fletcher is a cofounder of First Mile Solu- astic reception by rural users has motivated tions. He received a PhD in low-cost wireless elec- D dozens of inquiries for further deployments. tronics and sensors from the MIT Media Lab and We are already working on versions for Nigeria, has three patents, with seven more pending. His Jordan, and Colombia, as well as developing plans research projects other than DakNet include low- for offering a turnkey solution that will let users cost radio frequency identification tags and satel- deploy DakNet themselves (www.firstmilesolutions. lite-linked environmental probes for Mt. Everest, com). This should provide millions of people their Antarctica, and Costa Rica. Contact him at first possibility for digital connectivity, and, as study fletcher@firstmilesolutions.com. after study has shown, increasing connectivity is the most reliable way to encourage economic growth. Amir Hasson is a cofounder of First Mile Solutions, The larger goal is to shift the policy focus of the specializing in IT and Web consulting and mar- government’s universal-service-obligation funds keting. Hasson received an MS in the management from wireline village telephones to wireless ad hoc of technology from the MIT Sloan School of Man- networking. The shift will probably require formal agement and has spent the past year creating and assessment of user satisfaction, resulting economic deploying WiFi networks in developing countries. growth, and of course system reliability. If we can Contact him at amir@firstmilesolutions.com.

January 2004 83 great reasons to 1010 renew your IEEE Computer Society membership 1. New for 2004, an online reference book membership benefit – free! 2. Access to any or all of 100 distance-learning courses – free! 3. Personal subscription to Computer magazine – free! 4. Opportunity to subscribe to the complete IEEE Computer Society Digital Library or individual periodicals in your specialty area at the lowest available rates. 5. Advance notice of more than 150 IEEE Computer Society conferences, symposia, and workshops—plus generous discounts on registration fees. 6. Discounts on print books, tutorials, conference proceedings, and extended online reference book collections too! 7. Opportunities to participate in 40+ Technical Committees and over 160 Standards Working Groups. 8. Membership in the nearest of over 150 local chapters worldwide – free! 9. Prestigious email alias of [email protected] – free! 10. Be part of the profession and a network of over 100,000 of the best and brightest computing professionals around the world. Do it today! www.ieee.org/renewal COVER FEATURE Combining Optical Holograms with Interactive Computer Graphics

Merging optical holograms with 3D graphical elements can provide an acceptable tradeoff between quality and interactivity: The holographic data provides high-quality but static content, while additional graphical information can be generated, inserted, modiﬁed, and animated at interactive rates.

Oliver oday, many applications for optical holo- shaped version around its principal axis. Multiplex Bimber grams exist, including interferometry, copy holograms are not, however, truly interactive. Bauhaus University protection, data storage, and holographic Combining 3D computer graphics with stereo- optical elements. A hologram is a photo- scopic presentation techniques provides an alter- T metric emulsion that records interference native that allows interactivity. Although state-of- patterns of coherent light. The recording itself stores the-art rendering methods and graphics hardware the amplitude, wavelength, and phase information can produce realistic images at interactive rates, of light waves. In contrast to simple photographs, they do not approach the quality and realism of which can record only amplitude and wavelength holographic recordings. information, holograms can reconstruct complete Autostereoscopic displays allow for glass-free optical wavefronts. This results in the captured observation of computer-generated scenes. These scenery having a three-dimensional appearance that displays can present several perspective views at one can be observed from different perspectives. time, thus supporting multiple users simultaneously. Museum exhibits often use optical holograms Resolution and rendering speed, however, decrease because they can present 3D objects with almost no with the number of views generated. Holographic loss in visual quality. Displaying artifacts virtually images, in contrast, can provide all depth cues— removes the need to build physical replicas of the perspective, binocular disparity, motion parallax, original objects. In addition, this holographic tech- convergence, and accommodation—and theoreti- nology can be used to make medical, dental, archae- cally can be viewed simultaneously from an unlim- ological, and other recordings—both for teaching ited number of positions. and documentation. Optical holograms are static, however, and lack PRINTING AND RENDERING interactivity. Multiplex holograms offer an appar- The two main types of computer-generated holo- ent exception. Built from multiple vertical-strip grams, digital holography and electroholography, holograms that contain recordings of the same have become the focus of several groups research- scenery at different time intervals, they let observers ing applications for them. perceive the recorded scene in motion while moving Digital holography1 uses holographic printers to around the hologram or by spinning a cylindrically sequentially expose small fractions of the photo-

Both of the two basic optical hologram types—transmission holograms, one of the most popular white-light transmission and reflection—are reconstructed by illuminating them with hologram types, diffract each wavelength of the light through a monochromatic light, as described in Figure A. This approach different angle. This lets viewers observe the recorded scene from requires that the light hit the emulsion at the same angle as the different horizontal viewing positions but also makes the scene reference laser beam used to record the hologram. appear in different colors when observed from different points. In contrast to rainbow holograms, white-light reflection holo- Transmission and reflection holograms grams can provide full parallax and display the recorded scene To view a transmission hologram, the light source and in a consistent—but in most cases monochrome—color for dif- observer must be on opposite sides of the holographic plate. The ferent viewing positions. light is transmitted through the plate before it reaches the It is possible to produce both transmission and reflection vari- observer’s eyes. Those portions of the emulsion not recorded or ations of color white-light holograms. Usually, this process illuminated remain transparent. requires recording the same content on several emulsion layers To view a reflection hologram, the light source and observer while exposing each layer to laser light with a different wave- must be on the same side of the holographic plate. The light length. When reconstructed, each object wave from each layer reflects from the plate toward the observer’s eyes. As with trans- contributes its individual wavelength, merging together into a mission holograms, unrecorded or nonilluminated portions of multicolor image. the emulsion remain transparent. These two hologram types have generated a spectrum of vari- Parallax displays ations. Although some holograms can be reconstructed only with These CRT or LCD display screens are overlaid with an array laser light, others can be viewed only under white light. Rainbow of light-directing or light-blocking elements. Using these elements, the display directs emitted light to both eyes differently—allowing each eye to see individual portions of the displayed image. The observer’s visual system interprets corresponding light rays as being emitted by the same spatial point. Dividing the screen space into left and right image portions allows for a glass-free separation of stereo pairs into two or more viewing zones. Some displays control the parallax array mechanically or electronically, depending on the observer’s viewpoint, to direct the viewing zones more precisely toward the eyes. Others generate many dense viewing zones—each showing a slightly different perspective of the rendered scene at the same time. Such displays support multiple users simultaneously but do not yet allow for high frame rates. One parallax display type includes a barrier that applies an array of light-blocking elements—for example, a light-blocking film or liquid crystal barrier—in front of a screen. The light- blocking elements cover portions of the screen for one eye that are visible from the other eye. Figure A. Optical holographic recording and reconstruction. A laser Another parallax example, a lenticular-sheet display, utilizes beam can be split into two identical beams. One beam, the the refraction of a lens array—consisting of small, cylindrical, reference wave, illuminates the holographic emulsion directly prismlike or spherical lenses—to direct the light into the differ- while the other beam illuminates the object to be recorded. If the ent viewing zones. Images generated with lenticular-sheet dis- emulsion is illuminated with a copy of the reference wave, it inter- plays appear brighter than those displayed on barrier displays. acts with the recorded interference fringes and reconstructs the Although prisms and cylinders provide a horizontal parallax object wave, which is visible to the observer. only, spherical lenses support a full parallax.

metric emulsion with a computer-generated image. • rendering multiple perspective images, then This process results in conventional holograms that combining them into a stereogram;5 or display computer-generated content. This tech- • simulating the optical interference and calcu- nique also can be used to construct large-scale, tiled lating the interference pattern.6 holograms.2 Although digital holograms can be multiplexed to display scenes in motion, they Once computed, the system dynamically visualizes remain noninteractive. the fringes with a holographic display. Since creating Electroholography facilitates the computer-based a hologram requires processing, transmitting, and generation and display of holograms in real time.3,4 storing a massive amount of data, today’s computer Holographic fringes can be computed by either technology still sets electroholography’s limits. To

86 Computer overcome some of these performance issues, researchers have developed advanced reduction and compression methods that create truly interactive electroholograms. Unfortunately, most of these holograms are small, low resolution, and monochrome. However, recent advances in consumer graphics hardware may reveal potential acceleration possibilities that can overcome these limitations.7 Figure 1. Optical functioning. The explosion model of the optical layers’ stacked structure shows, from left to right: glass protection, holographic emulsion, mirror PARTIALLY RECONSTRUCTING OBJECT WAVES beam splitter for transmission holograms only, lenticular-lens sheet, and LCD Combining optical holograms with 2D or 3D array. Reflected light rays (red arrows) reconstruct the object wave on their graphical elements can provide an acceptable trade- return through the emulsion. Stereoscopic images (green arrows) pass through all off between quality and interactivity. While the layers until they merge with the hologram. holographic content provides high-quality but static content—as described in the “Holography and Autostereoscopy” sidebar—the combined technology can generate, insert, modify, and animate additional graphical information at interactive rates. Technically, researchers can use optical combiners such as mirror beam splitters or semitranspar- ent screens to visually overlay the output rendered on a screen over a holographic plate. However, the hologram’s reconstructed light will interfere with the overlaid light of the rendered graphics, making an effective combination impossible. To solve this problem, researchers can reconstruct the object wave only partially, leaving gaps at those places where they have inserted graphical elements. Doing this requires a point light source capable of selectively emitting light in different directions to create an incomplete reference wave. Conventional video projectors provide such light sources and are well suited to viewing white-light reflection or trans- Figure 2. mission holograms because today’s high-intensity ror beam splitter illuminates it from the front and Conceptual sketch discharge lamps can produce a very bright light. augments it with graphics from the back. Reflection of the display If we use autostereoscopic displays, such as par- holograms do not need this beam splitter. constellation. allax displays, to render 3D graphics registered to A thin glass plate protects the emulsion from being Colored areas on the the hologram, both holographic and graphical con- damaged and keeps it flat to prevent optical distor- graphical display tent appear three-dimensional within the same tion. The lenticular-lens sheet directs the light emit- and holographic space. This effect can also be achieved by using ted from the LCD array through all layers toward emulsion show stereoscopic displays with special glasses that sep- the observer’s eyes. The projected light is transmit- which visible image arate the stereo images. ted through the first two layers and partially reflected areas constitute the Both reflection holograms, which lack an opaque back—either by the beam splitter in combination hologram (red) and backing layer, and transmission holograms remain with a transmission hologram or by a reflection which constitute the transparent if not illuminated. Thus, they can serve hologram—to reconstruct the recorded content. The graphics (green). as optical combiners themselves—leading to very screen mostly absorbs the remaining portion of light compact displays. The illumination and rendering transmitted through all layers. Figure 2 shows how techniques work the same for both hologram types. the system computes the selective illumination on Figure 1 shows how a transmission hologram can the holographic plate to reconstruct the portion of be combined effectively with a flat-panel lenticu- the hologram not occluded by graphics. lar-lens sheet display—a variation of a parallax dis- Assuming that information about the holo- play that utilizes the refraction of a lens array to graphic content’s depth and a description of the direct light into the different viewing zones. graphical content area are available, researchers Placing a transmission hologram in front of a mir- can use conventional graphics hardware for ren-

January 2004 87 (c)

(a) (b)

Figure 3. Light- dering and illumination. Fortunately, the depth the depth buffer and the graphical content’s scene interaction and information required to approximate the holo- description into the depth and frame buffers. The proof-of-concept graphic content’s surface can be very coarse. For graphical display then shows the rendering image. prototypes. (a) To this example, it consists of a mesh with 5,000 tri- simulate virtual angles that totals 44.4 Kbytes. This image does not LIGHT INTERACTION shading and shadow come close to approaching the quality of its optical The reconstructed object wave’s amplitude is pro- effects on the counterpart but can be rendered easily in real time. portional to the reference wave’s intensity. Besides holographic content, The system geometrically aligns this content dur- using an incomplete reference wave for reconstruct- the recorded and ing an offline registered step. If the recorded holo- ing a fraction of the hologram, intensity variations physical illumination gram includes optical markers with the actual of the projected light permit local modification of effects must first be content, cameras can automatically perform this the recorded object wave’s amplitude. neutralized. (b) registration. In addition, the researchers must per- Practically, this means that to create the illumina- Autostereoscopic form an offline calibration to determine the video tion image, the system uses shading and shadowing prototype with projector’s extrinsic and intrinsic parameters with techniques to render the holographic content instead parallax display respect to the holographic emulsion. If it is mechan- of rendering it with a uniform intensity. To do this, and head-finder. (c) ically possible to mount the holographic emulsion the shading effects caused by the real light sources Active stereoscopic close to the graphical display, these two planes can used for illumination during hologram recording, as prototype with CRT be considered identical for the rendering algorithm. well as the physical lighting effects caused by the monitor, infrared To partially reconstruct the object wave, the sys- video projector on the holographic plate, must both tracking, and touch tem first creates an intermediate texture image by be neutralized. Next, the influence of a synthetic illu- screen. rendering the holographic content from the viewer mination must be simulated. This can also be done into the graphics card’s depth buffer and filling the with conventional graphics hardware, as Figure 3a card’s frame buffer entirely with the lighting source’s shows. Three intensity images must be rendered. predefined color values. In addition, the system ren- For the first image, the system renders the holo- ders the graphical scene description into depth and graphic content’s depth information from the stencil buffers, then it clears the frame buffer’s sten- desired relationship between the viewer and the ciled areas and copies the result into the memory emulsion, using a white diffuse material factor and block allocated for the intermediate texture image. graphical light sources that generate approximately If the graphics card provides a render-to-texture the same shading and shadow effects as the real option, the read-back operation from the frame light sources used during the holographic recording buffer into texture memory can be bypassed. The process. This results in an intermediate texture. The system renders the final illumination image from system generates the first image by rendering the the projector by drawing the holographic emulsion holographic emulsion from the perspective of the into the frame buffer and texturing its geometry video projector and texturing it with the interme- with the intermediate texture image. The projector diate texture. This image simulates the intensity of then beams the illumination image onto the holo- the recorded object wave. graphic emulsion. The system repeats the process to create the sec- Next, the system generates a rendering image from ond image, this time using graphical light sources to the viewer over the off-axis of the graphical display shade the holographic content under the new, virtual- by rendering the content’s depth information into lighting situation. The ratio of the second image to

88 Computer Figure 4. Rainbow hologram of a dinosaur skull combined with 3D graphical elements and synthetic shading effects. (a) The holographic plate illuminated with a uniform light. (b) The plate (a) (b) illuminated only at the portions not occluded by graphical elements such as muscles and other soft tissue. (c) The virtual light source located at the top-left corner, in front of the display. (d) The (c) (d) virtual light source placed at the top- right corner, in front of the display. the first image represents the required intensity of the shadows and extreme shading differences. Further, reference wave for the holographic plate’s emulsion. it cannot cancel out recorded color, reflections, and For the third image, the system renders the geom- higher-order optical effects. etry of the holographic emulsion from the projector with a white diffuse material factor and a virtual PROVING THE CONCEPT point light source located at the projector’s position. The autostereoscopic prototype in Figure 3b and This intensity image represents the geometric rela- the stereoscopic desktop prototype in Figure 3c tionship between the holographic plate and the video were built to validate the proposed techniques. projector as a physical point light source. This third These prototypes consist entirely of off-the-shelf image contains form factor components, such as the components, including either a lenticular-lens- square-distance attenuation and angular correlation sheet display with integrated head-finder for wire- of the projected light onto the holographic plate, and less user tracking or a conventional CRT screen it neutralizes the physical effects of the projector itself. with active stereo glasses, wireless infrared track- The final illumination image can be computed in ing, and a touch screen for interaction. Both pro- real time by dividing the second image by the first totypes use digital light projectors. A single PC image and then by the third image via pixel shades. with a dual-output graphics card renders the The projection of the resulting image onto the holo- graphical content on the screen and illuminates the graphic emulsion will neutralize the physical and holographic plate on the video projector. recorded illumination effects as much as possible In both cases, the screen additionally holds the and create new shadings and shadows based on the front layers—glass protection, holographic emul- virtual illumination. Again, the system must sten- sion, and optional mirror beam splitter. The cil out the appearance of the graphical content in remaining two layers shown in Figure 1—the the final image before displaying it. lenticular-lens sheet and LCD array—already form During all illumination and rendering steps, the sys- part of the autostereoscopic display. The display tem uses hardware-accelerated shadow-mapping tech- shown in Figure 3c does not need them because the niques to simulate real and virtual shadow effects on system uses shutter glasses to separate the images the holographic content’s depth information and the for the left and right eye. graphical scene description. Finally, the system can cast A rainbow transmission hologram and a reflec- synthetic shadows correctly from all holographic and tion hologram of a dinosaur skull were recorded graphical elements onto all other elements. with a 527.5-nm green laser. Figure 4a shows a This technique’s capabilities are clearly limited. photograph of the entire reconstructed hologram, It produces acceptable results if the recorded illuminated with a projected uniform light. The sys- scenery has been illuminated well while making the tem generates illumination and stereoscopic images hologram. However, it cannot neutralize recorded so that the graphical and holographic content can

January 2004 89 Figure 5. Display variations. (a) Desk- top display that can be used in a light- box fashion, with a special input device allowing interaction and providing haptic feedback of holographic and graphical content. (b) Wall-mounted display in a museum environment, with a ceiling-mounted video projector replacing conventional spot- (a) (b) lights. An integrated head-ﬁnder alerts the display when be merged within the same space, as Figure 4b tiplies. Moore’s law—which asserts that comput- observers stand in shows. Projecting an intensity image that contains ing power doubles every 18 months—must be front of it. new shading and shadow effects instead of a uni- applied many times for graphical or electroholo- form illumination lets the system neutralize most graphic rendering techniques and displays to reach of the diffuse shading recorded in the hologram and this quality at interactive frame rates. produced by the projector. The system can then A combination of interactive computer graphics consistently illuminate the holographic and graph- and high-quality optical holograms represents an ical content, creating matching shading and alternative that can be realized today with off-the- shadow effects, under novel lighting. shelf consumer hardware. Several commercial Figures 4c and 4d show the synthetic shading online services already offer uncomplicated and effects caused by a virtual light source. In addition, inexpensive ways to create color holograms from a the image shows virtual shadows cast correctly set of images or video clips. With this technology, between hologram and graphical elements. Note users can create holograms with almost any con- that none of the photographs have been retouched. tent—even outdoor scenes. When capturing these images, the system rendered Archaeologists, for example, already use optical the graphics monoscopically. Although Figure 4 holograms to archive and investigate ancient arti- shows the results with a monochrome transmission facts.8,9 Scientists can use hologram copies to per- hologram, reflection and color holograms can form their research without having access to the achieve the same effects. original artifacts or settling for inaccurate replicas. Given that hardware-accelerated consumer graph- They can combine these holograms with interac- ics cards support all these rendering techniques, tive computer graphics to integrate real-time sim- including shadow mapping and shading, using this ulation data or perform experiments that require method can easily achieve interactive frame rates. direct user interaction, such as packing reconstructed soft tissue into a fossilized dinosaur skull INDUSTRY, SCIENCE, AND EDUCATION hologram. In addition, specialized interaction Optical holograms can store a massive amount of devices can simulate haptic feedback of holographic information on a thin holographic emulsion. This and graphical content while scientists are per- technology can record and reconstruct a 3D scene forming these interactive tasks. An entire collection with almost no loss in quality. For example, the of artifacts will fit into a single album of holo- monochrome hologram shown in Figure 4 com- graphic recordings, while a light-box-like display prises a theoretical information content of approx- such as that used for viewing x-rays can be used for imately 96.42 Gbytes. Higher-quality holograms visualization and interaction, as Figure 5a shows. can store a fringe pattern that exceeds one terabyte. This approach has the potential for wide appli- Reaching the same quality and performance with cation in other industries. In the automotive indus- computer graphics would require rendering the try, for example, complex computer models of cars entire data set in real time on a 1.08 terapixel dis- and components often lack realism or interactivity. play—equivalent to 9 million points per square mil- Instead of attempting to achieve high visual qual- limeter on a 40 × 30 cm panel. For a color holo- ity and interactive frame rates for the entire model, gram of the same size, the information content mul- designers could decompose the model into sets of

90 Computer interactive and static elements. The system could holograms with 3D graphical elements, represent record physical counterparts of static elements in the first steps along this path. a hologram with maximum realism and release computational resources to render the interactive elements with a higher quality and increased frame Acknowledgments rate. Multiplexing the holographic content also lets Thanks to Tim Frieb and Holowood Holografie- users observe and interact with the entire model zentrum Bamberg for their technical support and to from multiple perspectives. Matthias Hanzlik for the illustrations in Figure 5. Augmenting optical holograms in museums with animated multimedia content lets exhibitors com- References municate information about the artifact with more 1. M. Yamaguchi, N. Ohyama, and T. Honda, “Holo- excitement and effectiveness than text labels offer. graphic 3-D Printer,” Proc. SPIE, vol. 1212, Springer, Such displays can also respond to user interaction. 1990, p. 84. Because wall-mounted variations like the one in 2. M.A. Klug, “Scalable Digital Holographic Displays,” Figure 5b require little space, museums can display Proc. Image Processing, Image Quality, Image Cap- a larger number of artifacts. ture Systems Conf. (IS&T PICS 2001), Soc. for Imag- Clearly, holograms or other replicas cannot sub- ing Science and Technology, 2001, pp. 26-32. stitute for original artifacts because viewing those 3. J.S. Kollin, S.A. Benton, and M.L. Jepsen, “Real- originals is the main reason patrons visit a museum. Time Display of 3-D Computed Holograms by Scan- If, however, a unique artifact is unavailable or too ning the Image of an Acousto-Optic Modulator,” fragile to be displayed, a hologram offers an entic- Proc. SPIE, vol. 1136, Holographic Optics II: Prin- ing alternative by showing the artifact as a high- ciples and Applications, Springer, 1989, pp. 178-185. quality, 3D image that, combined with computer 4. M. Lucente, “Interactive Three-Dimensional Holo- graphics, lets users experience it interactively. graphic Displays: Seeing the Future in Depth,” Sig- We can use this concept to develop a palette of dis- graph Computer Graphics, special issue on Current, play variations. For example, with only minor New, and Emerging Display Systems, ACM Press, changes to the presented rendering techniques, arbi- 1997, pp. 63-67. trarily curved holograms such as the cylindrical 5. M. Lucente and A. Tinsley, “Rendering Interactive shapes used for multiplex holograms can be sup- Images,” Proc. Siggraph 95, ACM Press, 1995, pp. ported instead of only simple planar plates. Even 387-394. without graphical augmentations, projector-based 6. M. Lucente, “Interactive Computation of Holograms illumination alone has several potential applications. Using a Look-Up Table,” J. Electronic Imaging, vol. In combination with optical or digital holograms, it 2, no. 1, 1993, pp. 28-34. can be used to create visual effects. Certain portions 7. C. Petz and M. Magnor, “Fast Hologram Synthesis of a hologram, for example, can be made tem- for 3D Geometry Models Using Graphics Hard- porarily invisible while others can be highlighted. ware,” Proc. SPIE 03, Practical Holography XVII Emerging large-scale autostereoscopic displays and Holographic Materials IX, vol. 5005, Springer, and existing stereoscopic projection screens will let 2003, pp. 266-275. designers scale up this proposed concept. Not only 8. F. Dreesen and G. von Bally, “Color Holography in the display, but also the holograms themselves, can a Single Layer for Documentation and Analysis of be composed from multiple smaller tiles to reach Cultural Heritage,” Optics within Life Sciences large dimensions and high resolutions. (OWLS IV), Springer, 1997, pp. 79-82. 9. F. Dreesen, H. Deleré, and G. von Bally, “High- Resolution Color Holography for Archaeological he foundations of future 3D displays may have and Medical Applications,” Optics within Life been laid in the late 1940s by Dennis Gabor, Sciences (OWLS V), Springer, 2000, pp. 349-352. T who, 20 years later, received the Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of holography. Large Oliver Bimber is a junior professor for augmented interactive electroholographic displays with high reality at Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany. resolution and full color would provide the ulti- His research interests include display technologies, mate displays—realizing what today is only possi- computer graphics, and human-computer interac- ble in science fiction. Technological advances will tion. Bimber received a PhD in engineering from pave the road toward making this fantasy a real- Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. ity. Intermediate solutions, such as merging optical Contact him at [email protected].

January 2004 91 CALL AND CALENDAR

CALLS FOR IEEE CS PUBLICATIONS Saint-Malo, France. Abstracts due 2 Systems & Software, Austin, Texas. Over the past ten years, Internet ser- Apr., submissions due 18 Apr. www. www.ispass.org/ispass2004/ vice providers have built out their net- issre.org/2004/ works to cope with what they perceive 14-17 Mar: PerCom 2004, IEEE Int’l as steadily increasing user demands. ATS 2004, 13th Asian Test Symp., 15- Conf. on Pervasive Computing & Because of that rapid development, 17 Nov., Kenting, Taiwan. Papers due Comm., Kissimmee, Fla. www.percom. network measurement has tended to 15 Apr. http://ats04.ee.nthu.edu.tw/ org have lower priority than immediate ~ats04/ network operations, deployment, and 20-24 Mar: CGO 2004, Int’l Symp. on upgrade concerns. CALENDAR Code Generation & Optimization, San For a 2004 special issue on measur- Jose, Calif. www.cgo.org ing performance, IEEE Internet Com- FEBRUARY 2004 puting invites researchers and practi- 23-25 Mar: WMTE 2004, 2nd IEEE tioners to submit original works on 14-15 Feb: SLIP 2004, 6th Int’l Int’l Workshop on Wireless & Mobile Internet measurement, especially stud- Workshop on System-Level Intercon- Technologies in Education, Taoyuan, ies that involve open source or freely nect Prediction, Paris. www.sliponline. Taiwan. http://lttf.ieee.org/wmte2003/ available tools and data from wide org area networks. Suitable topics include 23-26 Mar: ICDCS 2004, 24th Int’l Internet topology, routing system 14-18 Feb: HPCA-10, 10th Int’l Symp. Conf. on Distributed Computing behavior, understanding protocol on High-Performance Computer Systems, Tokyo. www.cis.ohio-state. behavior, monitoring/management of Architecture, Madrid, Spain. www.ac. edu/icdcs04/ large-scale backbones, and quality of uma.es/hpca10/ service monitoring. 25-26 Mar: HASE 2004, IEEE 8th Int’l Submissions are due 2 Feb. The com- 16-20 Feb: DATE 2004, Design, Symp. on High-Assurance Systems plete call for papers is available at www. Automation & Test in Europe, Paris. Eng., Tampa, Fla. http://hasrc.csee. computer.org/internet/call4ppr.htm#v8n5. www.date-conference.com/ wvu.edu/hase04/

OTHER CALLS 19-20 Feb: ISVLSI 2004, Int’l Symp. 27-31 Mar: VR 2004, IEEE Virtual on VLSI, Lafayette, LA. www.cacs. Reality 2004 Conf. (with Haptics MEMOCODE 2004, 2nd ACM/IEEE louisiana.edu/isvlsi/ 2004), Chicago. www.VR2004.org Conf. on Formal Methods & Programming Models for Codesign, 23-25 Feb: Preclinical Development 28-29 Mar: RIDE WS-ECEG 2004, 23-25 June, San Diego, Calif. Panel Forum, “Designing & Selecting Drug 14th Int’l Workshop on Research and tutorial proposals due 12 Feb. Candidates for Clinical Success,” Issues on Data Eng., Boston. http:// www.irisa.fr/manifestations/2003/ Cambridge, Mass. www.lifesciencesinfo. europa.nvc.cs.vt.edu/ride04/ MEMOCODE/ com/pdft

NATW 2004, IEEE 13th North 24-27 Feb: BAST 2004, 13th CRC- Atlantic Test Workshop, 13-14 May, IEEE BAST Workshop, Santa Rosa, Submission Instructions Essex Junction, Vt. Papers due 7 Feb. Calif. http://crc.stanford.edu/BAST/ www.ee.duke.edu/NATW/ BAST.html The Call and Calendar section lists conferences, symposia, and ICALT 2004, 4th IEEE Int’l Conf. on MARCH 2004 workshops that the IEEE Computer Advanced Learning Technologies, 30 Society sponsors or cooperates in Aug.-1 Sept., Joensuu, Finland. Papers 3-5 Mar: PRDC 2004, 10th Pacific presenting. Complete instructions due 13 Feb. http://lttf.ieee.org/icalt2004 Rim Int’l Symp. on Dependable Com- for submitting conference or call list- puting, Papeete, Tahiti. www.laas.fr/ ings are available at www.computer. SRDS 2004, 23rd Symp. on Reliable PRDC10 org/conferences/submission.htm. Distributed Systems, 18-20 Oct., A more complete listing of up- Florianópolis, Brazil. Submissions due 7-11 Mar: IEEE Infocom 2004, Hong coming computer-related confer- 2 Apr. www.srds2004.ufsc.br/ Kong. www.ieee-infocom.org/ 2004/ ences is available at www.computer. org/conferences/. ISSRE 2004, 15th Int’l Symp. on 10-12 Mar: ISPASS 2004, IEEE Int’l Software Reliability Eng., 2-5 Nov., Symp. on Performance Analysis of

92 Computer 28-30 Mar: SSIAI 2004, IEEE South- Japan. www.takilab.k.dendai.ac.jp/ 5-7 Apr: ITCC 2004, 5th Int’l Conf. west Symp. on Image Analysis & conf/aina/2004/ on IT, Las Vegas. www.itcc.info Interpretation, Lake Tahoe, Nev. www. ee.ttu.edu/Conferences/SSIAI2004 30 Mar.-2 Apr: ICDE 2004, 20th Int’l 14-16 Apr: COOL CHIPS VII, Int’l Conf. on Data Eng., Boston. www. Symp. on Low-Power & High-Speed 29-31 Mar: EEE 2004, IEEE Int’l cse.uconn.edu/icde04/ Chips, Yokohama, Japan. www. Conf. on e-Technology, e-Commerce, coolchips.org/ & e-Service, Taiwan. http://bikmrdc. APRIL 2004 lm.fju.edu.tw/eee04 14-16 Apr: ICECCS 2004, 9th IEEE 29-31 Mar: AINA 2004, 18th Int’l 4-7 Apr: ITSW 2004, 11th IEEE Int’l Int’l Conf. on Eng. Complex Com- Conf. on Advanced Information Net- Test Synthesis Workshop, Santa puter Systems, Florence, Italy. www. working & Applications, Fukuoka, Barbara, Calif. www.tttc-itsw.org dsi.uniﬁ.it/iceccs04/

Call for Articles for Computer

Computer seeks articles for a special issue on sensor Send inquiries to the guest editors at culler@eecs. networks, to appear in August 2004. Guest editors are David berkeley.edu, [email protected], and [email protected]. Culler from the University of California, Berkeley; Mani Computer seeks articles for a special issue on Internet data Srivastava from the University of California, Los Angeles; centers, to appear in November 2004. Guest editors are and Deborah Estrin from the University of California, Los Krishna Kant from Intel and Prasant Mohapatra from the Angeles. University of California, Davis. Distributed systems of embedded smart sensors and actua- Internet data centers form the backbone of most Internet- tors promise unprecedented capabilities for the instrumenta- based services, including e-commerce, IP-based telecom ser- tion and monitoring of the physical world. Sensors can monitor vices, hosting services, and the like. As the reach of the many types of information: temperature, vibration, air pres- Internet widens and more business-critical services are sure, chemicals, even voice and video data. Proponents envi- offered, the demands on IDCs grow along multiple dimen- sion a host of novel applications for sensor networks, from sions, including responsiveness, service differentiation, secu- earthquake structural failure analysis to rainforest habitat rity, and availability. Many other forces are likely to affect research. The small and many characteristics of sensor net- how the data centers of the future are designed, provisioned, works have fostered a wave of research innovation in disci- and operated. plines that have previously been focused on computing and Computer’s special issue will focus on research issues in networking at a much larger scale. This interest is driven by the identifying and implementing new strategies for optimizing vision that, like the Internet, large-scale distributed networks IDCs: application services, protocol enhancements, perfor- of sensors will pervade the world but at a physical, rather than mance evaluations, provisions for adequate security, pro- virtual, level. tection and isolation, and ensuring an adequate quality Computer’s special issue will focus on all aspects of the of service. Computer is soliciting a small number of high- ﬁeld: hardware, architectures, wireless communication, net- quality papers from academia and industry that highlight working, middleware, application development, applications, various problems and solutions and provide a vision for and experience. There are opportunities for short and long future work in this area. papers, providing a forum for reporting on both early and Topics of particular interest include system architecture mature research. Computer also is soliciting descriptions of and converged data centers; symmetric multiprocessors ver- sensor network technology in existing products and services. sus clustered systems; scalability, reliability, and fault toler- Topics of particular interest include sensor network archi- ance; performance evaluation and workload characterization; tectures; sensor node hardware; networking; low-power operations, control, and autonomic management; power protocols and services; distributed algorithms; data query, management issues; exploitation of new hardware/software dissemination, routing, and fusion; novel applications and technologies; and issues of security, protection, and isolation. services; application development tools; and deployment The deadline for papers is 1 April 2004. Submission guide- experiences. lines are available at www.computer.org/computer/ The deadline for papers is 2 February 2004. Submission author.htm. Submit manuscripts at http://cs-ieee. guidelines are available at www.computer.org/computer/ manuscriptcentral.com/. author.htm. Submit manuscripts at http://cs-ieee. Send inquiries to the guest editors at krishna.kant@intel. manuscriptcentral.com/. com and [email protected].

January 2004 93 Call and Calendar

18-21 Apr: DDECS 2004, 7th IEEE 19-22 May: ISMVL 2004, 34th Int’l 27-30 June: ICME 2004, Int’l Conf. on Workshop on Design & Diagnostics of Symp. on Multiple-Valued Logic, Multimedia & Expo, Taipei. www. Electronics Circuits & Systems Work- Toronto. www.eecg.utoronto.ca/ icme2004.org/ shop, Tatranská Lomnica, Slovakia. ~ismvl2004 www.ui.savba.sk/DDECS2004 28 June-1 July: DSN 2004, Int’l Conf. 23-28 May: ICSE 2004, 26th Int’l Conf. on Dependable Systems & Networks, 19-22 Apr: CCGRID 2004, 4th on Software Eng., Edinburgh, UK. Florence, Italy. www.dsn.org IEEE/ACM Int’l Symp. on Cluster http://conferences.iee.org/icse2004/ Computing & the Grid, Chicago. JULY 2004 www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/ccgrid2004 24-27 May: ECBS 2004, 11th IEEE Int’l Conf. & Workshop on the Eng. of 6-9 July: ICWS 2004, IEEE Int’l Conf. 19-22 Apr: CLAG 2004, 1st Int’l Work- Computer-Based Systems, Brno, Czech on Web Services, San Diego, Calif. shop on Collaborative Learning Appli- Republic. www.fit.vutbr.cz/events/ http://conferences.computer.org/icws/ cations of Grid Technology (with ECBS2004/ CCGRID), Chicago. http://research.ac. 6-9 July: CEC 2004, IEEE Conf. on E- upc.es/clag/clag2004cfp.htm JUNE 2004 Commerce, San Diego, Calif. http:// tab.computer.org/tfec/cec04 19-23 Apr: ASYNC 2004, 10th Int’l 2-4 June: PBG 2004, Symp. on Point- Symp. on Asynchronous Circuits & Based Graphics, Zurich, Switzerland. 7-9 July: ICPADS 2004, 10th Int’l Systems, Hersonissos, Crete. www. www.graphics.ethz.ch/PBG/ Conf. on Parallel & Distributed async04.gr Systems, Newport Beach, Calif. www. 7 June: CLADE 2004, Workshop on cacs.louisiana.edu/icpads2004/ 25-27 Apr: EDP 2004, 10th IEEE/ Challenges of Large Applications in AUGUST 2004 DATC Electronics Design Processes Distributed Environments, Honolulu. Workshop, Monterey, Calif. www.eda. www.caip.rutgers.edu/clade2004/ org/edps/edp04/ 9-10 Aug: MTDT 2004, IEEE Int’l Workshop on Memory Technology, 7-9 June: POLICY 2004, IEEE 5th Int’l 26-30 Apr: IPDPS 2004, 18th Int’l Design, and Testing, San Jose, Calif. Workshop on Policies for Distributed Parallel & Distributed Processing Contact Rochit Rajsuman, f.rajsuman@ Systems & Networks, Yorktown Symp., Santa Fe, N.M. www.ipdps.org advantest-ard.com. Heights, N.Y. www.research.ibm.com/ policy2004/index.html MAY 2004 19-20 Aug: ISESE 2004, Int’l Symp. on Experimental Software Eng., Redondo 23-25 June: IMSTW 2004, 10th IEEE 9-12 May: Security and Privacy, Beach, Calif. www.isese.org Oakland, Calif. http://www.ieee- Int’l Mixed Signals Test Workshop, security.org/TC/SP-Index.html Portland, Ore. www.ece.pdx.edu/ 30 Aug.-1 Sept: ICALT 2004, 4th IEEE imstw04/ Int’l Conf. on Advanced Learning 10-13 May: ISEE 2004, Int’l Symp. on Technologies, Joensuu, Finland. http:// Electronics & the Environment, 23-25 June: MEMOCODE 2004, 2nd lttf.ieee.org/icalt2004 Scottsdale, Ariz. www.iseesummit.org ACM/IEEE Conf. on Formal Methods & Programming Models for Codesign, SEPTEMBER 2004 13-14 May: NATW 2004, IEEE 13th San Diego, Calif. www.irisa.fr/ North Atlantic Test Workshop, Essex manifestations/2003/MEMOCODE/ 6-10 Sept: RE 2004, 12th IEEE Int’l Junction, Vt. www.ee.duke.edu/ NATW/ Requirements Eng. Conf., Kyoto, 24-25 June: CBMS 2004, 17th IEEE Japan. www.re04.org 16-19 May: PADS 2004, 18th Symp. on Computer-Based Medical Workshop on Parallel & Distributed Systems, Bethesda, Md. www.cvial.ttu. 20-24 Sept: WI-IAT 2004, IEEE/ WIC/ Simulation, Kufstein, Austria. www. edu/Conferences/cbms2004/cbms2004. ACM Int’l Joint Conf. on Web Intelli- pads-workshop.org/pads2004 html gence, Beijing. http://wi-consortium. org 17-18 May: ICAC 2004, Int’l Conf. on 24-26 June: IWPC 2004, 12th Int’l Autonomic Computing (with WWW Workshop on Program Comprehen- 20-25 Sept: ASE 2004, 19th IEEE Int’l 2004), New York. www.autonomic- sion, Bari, Italy. http://iwpc2004.di. Conf. on Automated Software Eng., conference.org uniba.it Linz, Austria. www.ase-conference.org

94 Computer COMPUTER SOCIETY CONNECTION Paving the Way to the Future: New Programs for 2004

ince 1946, the IEEE Com- issues in biology. The IEEE Neural puter Society has striven to Networks Council, the IEEE Control keep pace with the latest Systems Society, and the IEEE developments in the computer Engineering in Medicine and Biology S engineering field, adding new Society join the Computer Society and professional development resources in the ACM in publishing this journal. response to changing times. Two new Computer Society members can sub- publications, expanded digital library scribe to IEEE/ACM Transactions on access, an online technical bookshelf, Computational Biology and Bioinfor- and enhanced distance learning courses matics by visiting www.computer.org/ are just a few of the enhancements to subscribe/. The professional member membership being offered this year. field have encouraged research biolo- price is $35 per year. gists to further explore areas in which PUBLICATIONS computational power can be applied IEEE Transactions on Dependable This month marks the debut of two to such large volumes of data. and Secure Computing new IEEE Computer Society-sponsored Consequently, participation in con- The Computer Society is producing transactions. In partnership with the ferences on computational biology and a new journal intended to help engi- Association for Computing Machinery, bioinformatics has grown rapidly in neers meet challenges in the creation of the Computer Society is launching recent years. To serve this growing stable, secure systems. IEEE Trans- IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computa- audience, the Computer Society and its actions on Dependable and Secure tional Biology and Bioinformatics, a partners have developed IEEE/ACM Computing will provide an interna- periodical dedicated to understanding Transactions on Computational Biolo- tional forum for original results in and advancing the computational man- gy and Bioinformatics. Articles in this research, design, and development of agement of biological information. A publication will address methodologi- secure computing methodologies. The second new transaction, IEEE Trans- cal, algorithmic, and statistical research journal will serve as a companion pub- actions on Dependable and Secure Computing, established in response to the demand for high-quality research Nominations Open for IEEE Division V Director-Elect results in secure systems, is also available to members for the first time this IEEE Computer Society members are invited to submit nominations for year. candidates to serve as 2005 IEEE Division V director-elect and 2006-2007 Division V director. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Division directors represent the members of IEEE societies on the IEEE Board Computational Biology and of Directors and the Technical Activities Board; Division V and VIII directors Bioinformatics represent the Computer Society membership. Elections for Division V director Mapping out patterns found in are typically held in even-numbered years, and Division VIII elections are held large-scale molecular biological data— in odd-numbered years. The elected representative then serves one year in the particularly DNA sequences—can lead director-elect role before assuming a two-year division director term. to powerful insights into biological sys- IBM’s Gene Hoffnagle currently serves as IEEE Division V director for 2004- tems. Notable recent successes in the 2005. Jim Issak of Southern New Hampshire University serves as IEEE Division VIII director for 2003-2004. Computer Society past president Steve Diamond was elected in November 2003 to serve as IEEE Division VIII director-elect for 2004. Editor: Bob Ward, Computer, 10662 Los Submit nominations by 23 January to Stephen L. Diamond, Chair, Nomina- Vaqueros Circle, PO Box 3014, tions Committee, IEEE Computer Society, 1730 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1314; Washington, DC 20036-1992. [email protected]

January 2004 95 Computer Society Connection

lication to IEEE Security and Privacy IEEE Computer Society Publications Seek Editors in Chief magazine, launched last year. for 2005-2006 Terms Traditionally, outlets that explore topics in reliable computing have focused The IEEE Computer Society seeks applicants for the position of editor in on established areas such as e-com- chief for the following periodicals for terms starting 1 January 2005: IEEE merce, benchmarking, and system archi- Intelligent Systems, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intel- tectures. In addition to these subjects, ligence, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. papers published in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing Qualifications and Requirements will address the development of secure Candidates for any Computer Society editor-in-chief position should pos- systems for emerging technologies. For sess a good understanding of industry, academic, and government aspects of instance, the minute size of components the specific publication’s field. In addition, candidates must demonstrate the used in nanoscale computing systems managerial skills necessary to process manuscripts through the editorial cycle presents a special concern regarding in a timely fashion. An editor in chief must be able to attract respected experts materials reliability. Burgeoning wire- to his or her editorial board. Major responsibilities include less services also present new issues in security and dependability. • actively soliciting high-quality manuscripts from potential authors and, Computer Society members can with support from publication staff, helping these authors to get their subscribe to IEEE Transactions on manuscripts published; Dependable and Secure Computing by • identifying and appointing editorial board members, with the concur- visiting www.computer.org/subscribe/. rence of the Publications Board; The professional member price is $31 • selecting competent manuscript reviewers, with the help of editorial board per year. members, and managing timely reviews of manuscripts; • directing editorial board members to seek special-issue proposals and DISTANCE LEARNING CAMPUS manuscripts in specific areas; The Distance Learning Campus • providing a clear, broad focus through promotion of personal vision and offers valuable learning opportunities guidance where appropriate; and exclusively to members of the IEEE • resolving conflicts or problems as necessary. Computer Society. Members may take any of 100 Web-based training courses, Applicants should possess recognized expertise in the computer science and which are selected based on survey data engineering community, have editorial experience, and be able to lead an active and member profile records. These editorial board and work effectively with technical and publishing profes- courses cover a variety of computing sionals. Applicants must have clear employer support. programs and subjects that include XML, AMA management skills, Java, Search Procedure Cisco, Windows security, Oracle, Unix, Prospective candidates are asked to provide, by 15 March, a complete cur- and Visual C++. Twice a year, the riculum vitae, a brief plan for the publication’s future, and a letter of support Distance Learning Campus course cat- from their institution or employer. Materials should be sent in Portable Doc- alog is reevaluated and updated with ument Format (PDF) to the search committee chair for the appropriate pub- new selections. lication. Contact information for each search committee coordinator follows. Offered in partnership with IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. Contact Alicia KnowledgeNet, courses in the Distance Stickley, Transactions Production Manager, IEEE Computer Society, 10662 Learning catalog offer presentations Los Vaqueros Circle, P. O. Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1264, +1 714 with voiceovers, 3D graphics, flash ani- 821 8380 (voice), +1 714 821 4010 (fax); [email protected]. mations, on-screen text, and visual sen- IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. Contact tences that turn complex concepts into Alicia Stickley, Transactions Production Manager, IEEE Computer Society, easy-to-understand images. Users can 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, P. O. Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1264, take pre-assessment tests, track on- +1 714 821 8380 (voice), +1 714 821 4010 (fax); [email protected]. going progress, and study at a self- IEEE Intelligent Systems. Contact Dennis Taylor, Lead Editor, IEEE Com- directed pace. puter Society, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, P. O. Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA More than 15,000 members used the 90720-1264, +1 714 821 8380 (voice), +1 714 821 4010 (fax); dtaylor@ Distance Learning Campus in 2003. computer.org. Visit the campus at www.computer. org/distancelearning/.

96 Computer IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY technical committees sponsor or part- lated events, the 2004 Workshop on ONLINE BOOKSHELF cipate in more than 130 conferences High-Speed Networking and Open- The IEEE Computer Society has each year. Conferences of special note Arch 2004, will run concurrently with announced a new member benefit for in the next six months are previewed the Infocom conference, set this year in 2004. The Computer Society Online below. Hong Kong. Infocom 2004’s early reg- Bookshelf, a subset of 100 unabridged Proceedings from many conferences istration period ends 6 February. books from Books24x7’s ITPro collec- are available through the Computer For more information regarding tion, is now available for free to all Society Digital Library. Subscribers Infocom, including registration fees as Society members. Books24x7 offers enjoy full access to an online library of they become available, visit www.ieee- content from more than 90 publishers articles, proceedings, and magazine infocom.org/2004/. including Oxford Press, Wiley, Micro- features, available at www.computer. soft, and MIT Press. org/publications/dlib/. Others can 23-26 March: Book topics run the gamut of com- search the collection and purchase ICDCS 2004 puter technology issues: networks and individual items. First presented by the IEEE protocols, programming languages, Computer Society Techni- certification and compliance, business 26-30 January: cal Committee on Distribu- and culture, desktop applications, SAINT 2004 ted Processing (TCDP) in operating systems, ReferencePoint Gathering this year 1979, ICDCS is the oldest conference suites, software engineering, and Web in Tokyo, research- series in the field of distributed com- development. Titles on the Computer ers studying the puting systems. ICDCS provides a Society Online Bookshelf are available Internet and its applications will have forum for engineers and scientists in for viewing through a customizable an opportunity to learn about the latest academia, industry, and government to Referenceware online interface, which developments in IPv6 technology, high- discuss the latest research findings on allows users to organize favorite titles performance grid computing, and topics including agents and mobile and bookmarks. Internet security, among other topics. code, middleware, and ubiquitous All members will have free access to Panels at SAINT are set to address the computing. ICDCS 2004 will take place a rotating set of 100 books that a com- future of Internet architecture, ubiqui- in Tokyo. mittee of Computer Society volunteers tous services, and networking. Advance registration fees are $500 has selected as being of most value to SAINT, cosponsored by the Informa- for members, $690 for nonmembers, their peers. For $89, members can tion Processing Society of Japan, is the and $310 for students. After 31 access a 500-book collection. For $299, flagship conference of the IEEE Com- January, fees are $620 for members, members can access Books24x7’s full puter Society Technical Committee on $820 for nonmembers, and $370 for 2,500-book collection. the Internet. Fees for advance registra- students. Visit www.cis.ohio-state.edu/ Books24x7, a subsidiary of SkillSoft, tion, before 6 January, are $533 for icdcs04/ for program highlights and provides Web-based digital technical members, $670 for nonmembers, and more information. and business reference content to more $370 for students. Late and onsite reg- than a million subscribers. Books24x7’s istration is $650 for members, $820 for 27-31 March: Referenceware platform enables users nonmembers, and $460 for students. IEEE VR 2004 to search, browse, read, and interact Visit www.saint2004.org for more con- Leading experts in vir- with the content of several targeted pro- ference information. tual reality and closely fessional reference libraries. related fields such as Complete title lists, as well as regis- 7-11 March: augmented reality, mixed reality, and tration information, for the Computer IEEE Infocom 2004 3D interaction will share insights and Society’s Books 24x7 collections are Since 1981, the IEEE Info- discoveries at the 2004 IEEE Virtual available at www.computer.org/ com conference series has Reality Conference. The VR confer- bookshelf/. provided a premier venue ence series is the cornerstone of the for the presentation and Computer Society Technical Commit- CONFERENCES exchange of new ideas and research tee on Visualization and Graphics’ Each year, the IEEE Computer Soci- findings in the computer networking annual event calendar. Tutorials and ety sponsors a spectrum of technical field. For 2004, conference organizers workshops share the bill with an meetings in all subfields of the com- have solicited papers on a broad variety extensive exhibition of the latest tools puting profession, ranging from small of topics that include multimedia pro- and products available to the VR com- workshops to large symposia. Society tocols, optical networks, and schedul- munity. Located this year in Chicago, technical councils, task forces, and ing and buffer management. Two re- the conference and exhibition will take

January 2004 97 Computer Society Connection

place in conjunction with the 2004 Seminars on the ICDE 2004 sched- ded systems. Cool Chips VII organiz- Haptics Symposium. ule include XML query processing, ers are also soliciting original works on IEEE Computer Society members data mining for intrusion detection, software solutions, including binary enjoy discounted rates on VR 2004 and metadata management, among translations, compiler issues, and low- conference registration fees. Visit www. others. Visit the ICDE 2004 Web site power techniques. vr2004.org for more details. at www.cse.uconn.edu/icde04/ for in- Visit www.coolchips.org for more formation on conference registration. conference information as it becomes 30 March - 02 April: available. ICDE 2004 14-16 April: The 20th International Cool Chips VII 19-22 April: Conference on Data Since 1998, the CCGrid 2004 Engineering offers an opportunity for annual Cool In its fourth year, the presentation of research results on Chips confer- the 2004 Inter- advanced data-intensive applications ence has presented the research behind national Symposium on Cluster and data and knowledge engineering leading-edge technologies related to all Computing and the Grid, sponsored issues. Conference participants will areas of microprocessors and their by the IEEE Computer Society and the share research solutions and identify applications. This year, in Yokohama, IEEE Task Force on Cluster Com- new directions for future research and Japan, the Cool Chips VII symposium puting in conjunction with the ACM, development. Set for Boston in 2004, will focus on low-power, high-perfor- addresses the role of grid computing in ICDE is sponsored by the IEEE mance processors for multimedia, as the new century. Several workshops, Computer Society Technical Commit- well as novel architectures and schemes addressing topics ranging from grid tee on Data Engineering. for single-core, multicore, and embed- education, to advanced networks, to P2P computing, are scheduled to run concurrently with CCGrid 2004, set Mentor Program Seeks Women Undergraduates by 16 February this year in Chicago. Visit www.ccgrid.org/ccgrid2004/ The CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research for registration and program informa- (CRA-W) is seeking undergraduates and potential mentors for its annual tion as it becomes available. Distributed Mentor Project. Operating under a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Distributed Mentor Project has aimed, since 26-30 April: 1994, to increase the number of women in computer science and engineering IPDPS 2004 graduate school programs. Outstanding women undergraduates are paired In its 18th year, the Inter- with female mentors who shepherd the students through a summer of research national Parallel and Dis- hosted at the mentor’s home institution. tributed Processing Symposium con- The intention of the mentoring and research program is to more actively tinues to provide an international forum engage the undergraduates in the work environment they would encounter in for researchers in all facets of parallel a graduate school or private research setting. The geographically distributed computing. Scheduled workshop top- nature of the project helps to address the deﬁcit of female computer engineer- ics at IPDPS 2004 include advances in ing faculty at many institutions, where students often lack women as role mod- parallel and distributed computing els. The student participants commonly form close ties with their mentors, which models, communication architecture translates into a much higher likelihood of moving on to postgraduate studies. for clusters, and grid benchmarking. Student participants receive a $600 weekly stipend for up to 10 weeks of Beginning this year, IPDPS partici- study at the host institution, plus a travel allowance of up to $500. Mentors can pants will have the opportunity to orga- receive $2,500 for mentoring one student, or $4,000 for mentoring two or more. nize informal birds-of-a-feather ses- Participants create dedicated Web sites as part of their summer research sions. Convening this year in Santa Fe, activities. Web sites from past summers are available at www.cra.org/Activities/ New Mexico, IPDPS 2004 is presented craw/dmp/awards/2003/2003.php. by the Computer Society’s Technical To apply as an undergraduate or potential mentor, visit the CRA-W Distribu- Committee on Parallel Processing. See ted Mentor Project Web site at www.cra.org/Activities/craw/dmp/index.php. www.ipdps.org/ipdps2004/ for more The deadline for applications to the summer 2004 program is 16 February. information regarding IPDPS 2004. The CRA was established to foster leadership development among groups that are underrepresented in the computing profession. The IEEE Computer 9-12 May: Security and Privacy Society is one of the CRA’s six Afﬁliated Professional Society Members. For more than 20 years, the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy

98 Computer has brought together to present and discuss trends in the soft- shop on the Engineering of Computer- researchers and practi- ware engineering field. ICSE 2004, in Based Systems will meet in Brno, Czech tioners to share develop- Edinburgh, Scotland, will include a doc- Republic, to advance research developments in computer se- toral symposium for PhD students in ments in the engineering of computer- curity and electronic privacy. Work- addition to keynote speeches and other based systems. Topics to be addressed shop and tutorial topics for the 2004 presentations. Topics to be addressed at include system modeling, architectures, conference are scheduled to include ICSE 2004 include software engineer- communications, reliability, system intrusion detection, language-based ing principles, theories, techniques, and integration, and project management. security, biometrics, and peer-to-peer tools, as well as other related areas, such An industrial track will provide a forum security. Again this year, the sympo- as programming languages, distributed for companies to present short papers sium will feature a session of five- systems, databases, and networks. on results of industrial research and minute talks, where attendees can Several software engineering-related development. present preliminary research results or conferences and symposia are sched- ECBS 2004 is sponsored by the IEEE summaries of works published else- uled to run concurrently with ICSE, Computer Society Technical Commit- where. including EWSA 2004, the first tee on the Engineering of Computer- This year’s symposium takes place in European Workshop on Software Based Systems. Visit www.fit.vutbr.cz/ Berkeley, California. See www.ieee- Architecture. events/ECBS2004/ for the latest infor- security.org/TC/SP-Index.html for Visit the conference Web site at mation on conference registration. more conference information. http://conferences.iee.org/icse2004/ for more details on ICSE 2004. 23-28 May: ICSE 2004 24-27 May: EEE Computer Society members For 26 years, the Inter- ECBS 2004 enjoy a minimum 25-percent dis- national Conference on Soft- Participants in the I count on registration fees for any ware Engineering has pro- 11th Annual IEEE conference we sponsor. Visit www. vided researchers, practi- International Con- computer.org/conferences/ for a full list tioners, and educators an opportunity ference and Work- of conferences. JOIN A omputeromputer CCWantsWants THINK YouYou TANK Computer is always looking for interesting ooking for a community targeted to your editorial content. In addition to our theme area of expertise? IEEE Computer Society articles, we have other feature sections such as L Technical Committees explore a variety Perspectives, Computing Practices, and Research of computing niches and provide forums for Features as well as numerous columns to which you dialogue among peers. These groups influence our standards development and offer leading can contribute. Check out our author guidelines at conferences in their fields. www.computer.org/computer/author.htm Join a community that targets your discipline. for more information about how to contribute to your magazine. In our Technical Committees, you’re in good company. www.computer.org/TCsignup/

January 2004 99 KUWAIT UNIVERSITY. The Depart- ics, computer vision, database and infor- telecommunications, computer systems, ment of Information Science at the Col- mation systems, mobile systems, multi- semiconductors, defense and space, lege for Women in Kuwait University media computing, networking, novel lasers, simulation and software, and the invites applications for faculty positions forms of computing, operating systems, world renowned entertainment industry. at the ranks of Assistant, Associate, and parallel and distributed computing, and The Orlando metropolitan area enjoys an Professor starting in February 2004 in the security/cryptography. We offer com- exceptional climate with rapid access to following areas: Information Science, petitive salary and start-up packages to the Atlantic seashore and the Gulf of Information Systems and Technology, outstanding individuals, and our faculty Mexico. Because of the presence of Computer Science or Computer Engi- enjoy generous benefits. New faculty major theme parks such as Disney World, neering, Knowledge Management and have graduate student support and sig- Sea World and Universal Studios, we Data Mining, etc. The medium of nificantly reduced teaching loads. Spe- benefit from a major airport with numer- instruction is English. Responsibilities cial senior-level positions are available to ous direct international and national con- include teaching undergraduate courses, exceptionally qualified individuals, and nections. Orlando is also a major center conducting independent scholarly we welcome candidacies from coordi- for national and international technical research, and administrative duties. Both nated groups of faculty. In the past five conferences. Please send applications male and female candidates may apply. years, nine distinguished faculty have electronically (PDF format is preferred) The ideal candidate must have a Ph.D. joined UCF Computer Science, and we to [email protected]. Applications from a reputed western university in the seek to add to the growing strength of should include a cover letter, a detailed area of specialization or related fields. our program. Applicants should have a CV, a Research Statement, a Teaching The candidate must also demonstrate Ph.D. and a strong commitment to the Statement, and five names of references. evidence of quality teaching and academic process, including teaching, Alternatively, though not preferred, research and have full command of Eng- scholarly publications, and sponsored hardcopy applications may be sent to: lish. To be considered for an Associate or research. Candidates at the Associate or Chair, Computer Science Search Com- Professor level, the candidate must have Full Professor level should have demon- mittee, School of Computer Science, a strong publication record in refereed strated leadership in their fields at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL CAREER OPPORTUNITIES international journals. The College for national/international level. Those apply- 32816-2362. Applications received by Women is part of Kuwait University ing for Assistant Professorships should January 31, 2004 will be given priority. which is one of the leading public insti- have a track record of high quality pub- The University of Central Florida is an tutions of higher learning in the Gulf lications, and be recognized for their Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action region. The university emphasizes qual- potential. UCF Computer Science is the employer. Women and minorities are ity in teaching, research, and service. oldest Ph.D. granting CS program in the particularly encouraged to apply. As an Kuwait University offers a generous ben- state of Florida. We have a rapidly grow- agency of the State of Florida, UCF efit package that includes competitive ing educational and research program makes all application materials and selec- tax-free salary that is determined accord- with over $2.8MM in annual expendi- tion procedures available for public ing to rank and experience, annual air tures from grants and contracts, with review. tickets for faculty member and his/her over 250 graduate students and 860 family (spouse and up to three children undergraduate CS majors. In addition, under the age of 20), tuition allowance we offer a B.S. degree in Information THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AR- for children schooling, a one-time set- Technology (IT), with over 400 under- LINGTON, Computer Science and tling-in allowance, housing allowance, graduate majors. We also encourage fac- Engineering Department, Faculty free national health care, paid mid-year ulty candidates for the IT program to Openings for Fall 2004. The Univer- holidays and summer vacation, and end- respond to this ad. The University is sity of Texas at Arlington (UTA), Com- of-contract gratuity. The University also strongly committed to continue the puter Science and Engineering (CSE) offers an excellent academic environ- buildup of strength in CS, with signifi- Department - CSE@UTA invites applica- ment and financial research support. cant special monetary support dedicated tions for multiple tenure-track faculty Interested candidates should submit a to maintain and expand the excellence positions at all levels. However, prefer- current CV with a cover letter indicating of the School of Computer Science. Our ence will be given to positions at assis- their areas of interest. It is preferred that Federal research sponsors include NSF, tant or associate professor levels. All areas candidates send their CV by e-mail at ARO, ONR, NASA, U.S. Army STRICOM, of computer science will be considered, [email protected]. Applications are the Department of Transportation, and including: computer security; bio-infor- accepted until the positions are filled. All other agencies of the Department of matics, software engineering; pervasive communication (application and inquir- Defense. We enjoy the support of numer- computing; multimedia and video pro- ies) should be addressed to: Dean, Col- ous industrial sponsors including estab- cessing; intelligent systems; networks lege for Women, Kuwait University, P.O. lished companies such as Adaptec, ATI, and telecommunications; database and Box 5969, Safat 13060, Kuwait. Phone: Boeing, Harris, Honeywell, Imagesoft, data mining; and applied theory. UTA, +(965) 251-4232, Fax: +(965) 255-1157, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Lucent, Oracle, part of The University of Texas System, is e-mail: [email protected]. Schwartz Electro-Optics, as well as hi- located in the heart of the rapidly grow- tech start-ups such as Aximetric, Giganet ing Dallas/Fort Worth area, one of the Technologies, and Millenium Technolo- nation's largest high-technology regions, UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, gies. UCF has over 42,000 students and with a flourishing industrial base and Orlando, Florida, The School of is among the nation's fastest growing excellent opportunities for industry/uni- Computer Science in the College of universities. We are located in Orlando, versity collaboration. We at CSE@UTA are Engineering & Computer Science. FL at the center of the I-4 High Tech Cor- committed to excellence in research, UCF Computer Science is looking for tal- ridor with a thriving industrial base in teaching, and service. We are in the ented faculty in all areas of specialization. We expect to fill over 10 faculty lines in the next few years, and seek outstanding SUBMISSION DETAILS: Rates are $275.00 per column inch ($300 minimum). candidates for tenured and tenure-track Eight lines per column inch and average five typeset words per line. Send faculty positions at all levels for appoint- copy at least one month prior to publication date to: Marian Anderson, ments in 2004. We are particularly inter- Classified Advertising, Computer Magazine, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, PO ested in candidates with research inter- Box 3014, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-1314; (714) 821-8380; fax (714) 821-4010. ests in bioinformatics, compilers, Email: [email protected]. computer architecture, computer graph-

100 Computer Fourth year of our "Top 25 Initiative" plan Phone: 817-272-3605, FAX: 817-272- graduate students, and many state-of- to reach a national top 25 ranking within 3070, Email: [email protected]; http:// the-art laboratory facilities. The depart- 10 years. The initiative is strongly sup- www.cse.uta. edu. The University of ment offers B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees ported by all CSE@UTA stakeholders Texas at Arlington is an Equal Opportu- in both Electrical Engineering and Com- including the UTA administration, fac- nity/Affirmative Action Employer. puter Engineering. For more information ulty, students and alumni, and industry about the department, please check: partners. Since 2000, we have added 8 http://www.ece.northwestern.edu. new tenure track faculty and 5 new full- NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY. Appli- Northwestern University is an Affirmative time non-tenure track faculty to our ros- cations are invited for tenure-track fac- Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. ter of 38 full-time faculty. The number of ulty positions starting September 1, Applications from women and minorities our PhD students has more than doubled 2004 in the Department of Electrical and are especially encouraged. Hiring is con- since 2000 and the actively funded Computer Engineering of the Robert R. tingent upon eligibility to work in the research awards exceeded $5.8 million McCormick School of Engineering and United States. The deadline for applica- in 2002-03 academic year. Applicants Applied Science at Northwestern Uni- tions is February 1, 2004; however, the must have an earned doctorate in com- versity. We have needs in the following search will continue until the positions puter science, computer engineering, or areas: Solid State and Photonics, with an are filled. Please send a resume and closely related fields and a commitment emphasis on nanotechnology; Systems, names of at least five references to: Pro- to teaching and scholarly research. with an emphasis on networks and com- fessor Prith Banerjee, Chairman, Depart- Applicants are expected to have an munications; Computer Engineering, ment of Electrical and Computer Engi- excellent record of professional accom- with an emphasis on computer architec- neering, Northwestern University, 2145 plishments, commensurate with their ture. The candidates must have a Ph.D. Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208- level of experience. The faculty opening or equivalent in Electrical and Computer 3118. EMAIL: [email protected] is anticipated for September 2004. Engineering or Computer Science, and ern.edu. Phone: (847) 491-3641. Screening of applications will begin will be expected to teach three to four immediately and will continue until all quarter courses per year, perform positions are filled. Interested persons research, and supervise graduate stu- INDIANA UNIVERSITY, Computer should submit a letter of application, a dents. We are primarily looking for can- Science Department, Faculty Posi- resume, and reference letters online at: didates at the Assistant Professor level tion. The Indiana University Computer http://www.cse. uta.edu/application/. (except in the Solid State and Photonics Science Department anticipates filling a Please note that we do not accept hard- area, where we are searching for a senior tenure track, assistant professor position copy submissions. For additional infor- faculty member); however, outstanding beginning in the fall of 2004. Though mation, please contact: Dr. David Kung, candidates at the Associate and Full Pro- applications from all areas of computer Chair of Search Committee, Department fessor levels will also be considered. The science are welcome, we are strongly of Computer Science and Engineering, ECE department has 31 full-time faculty interested in candidates with research The University of Texas at Arlington, members, 250 undergraduate and 120 interests in embedded systems, algo-

Why not Change the World? TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITION Computer Science The Division of Engineering and Science (DOES), Rensselaer at Hartford, invites applications for a tenure-track or tenured position for the 2005 academic year beginning in Fall 2004. Rank will be commensurate with qualifications. The candidate must have a Ph.D. in computer science or closely-related area and have demonstrated sufficient promise or achievement in both research and teaching. Candidates from the general area of User Interface Design are especially encouraged but we welcome strong candidates in any area. The candidate will teach graduate-level courses, supervise Ph.D. students, and be expected to develop an externally funded research program. Rensselaer at Hartford, (www.rh.edu), a branch campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, focuses on education for the working professional. Over 1000 part-time students are seeking MBA or Master of Science degrees in management, computer science, information technology, and engineering. Rensselaer at Hartford’s campus is located in the center of Connecticut, well positioned within a corridor of many of America’s largest corporations and entrepreneurial organizations. The region offers a rich and diverse cross section of industries and financial institutions. Hartford is conveniently located within a short distance to many cultural, recreational, and educational opportunities. This is an exciting opportunity for a strong, dynamic individual to be a leader in the growth of a campus from an almost entirely education orientation to a mixture of education and research, without ever losing focus on the high-end working professional. We offer competitive salaries and an excellent benefits package that includes health, dental, and life insurance, a retirement plan, tuition assistance, and much more. Find out more details at: www.hr.rpi.edu. To apply, send a CV and list of references with a cover letter summarizing your qualifications to: Alan Eckbreth, VP and Dean, Rensselaer at Hartford, 275 Windsor Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06120; or e-mail: [email protected] Applications material received by February 29, 2004 will receive full consideration. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an equal opportunity-affirmative action employer, particularly encourages applications from women and minority candidates.

January 2004 101 rithms and programming languages. The ment. Computer Science applications qualifications of the individuals, appoint- CS department, which is part of the Col- should be sent to: CS Faculty Search ments may be made at the rank of Asso- lege of Arts and Sciences, is working Committee, c/o Debra Zaller, Computer ciate Professor or Professor. We are also closely with our new School of Informat- Science Academic Personnel, 381 Soda seeking non-tenured Research Assistant ics which is also seeking to fill CS related Hall # 1776, UC Berkeley, CA 94720- Professors and Lecturers. Applicants for positions. A Ph.D. in Computer Science is 1776. Electrical Engineering applications the tenure-track and research positions required for all CS faculty positions. should be sent to: EE Faculty Search must have earned a doctorate by the Applicants must have demonstrated Committee, c/o Jean Richter, Electrical date of appointment; those for the lec- potential for excellence and productivity Engineering Academic Personnel, 231 turer position must have earned at least in research. In addition, a strong contri- Cory Hall # 1770, UC Berkeley, CA a Master's degree. Please apply online at bution to the educational mission of the 94720-1770, The University of California http://www.cs.washington.edu/news/jo department is expected. The department is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative bs.html, or if web access is impossible, occupies a spacious limestone building Action Employer. send a letter of application, a resume, with extensive state-of-the-art comput- statement of research and teaching inter- ing facilities. The attractive wooded cam- ests, and the names of four references to: pus of Indiana University is located in UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS Faculty Recruiting Committee, Com- Bloomington, chosen as one of the most ANGELES, DEPARTMENT OF COM- puter Science & Engineering, University cultural and livable small cities in the US, PUTER SCIENCE. The Department of of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, WA and only one hour from the Indianapolis Computer Science in the Henry Samueli 98195-2350. Applications received by airport. To learn more about the depart- School of Engineering and Applied Sci- January 30, 2004 will be given priority ment please visit our web site at www.cs. ence at the University of California, Los consideration. The University of Wash- indiana.edu. Please send a detailed CV Angeles, invites applications for tenure- ington is a recipient of a new National and a list of references to: Faculty Search, track positions in all areas of Computer Science Foundation ADVANCE Institu- Computer Science Department, Indiana Science and Computer Engineering. tional Transformation Award to increase University, Lindley Hall 215, Blooming- Applications are also strongly encour- the participation of women in academic ton, IN 47405-7104. email: search@ aged from distinguished candidates at science and engineering careers. We are cs.indiana.edu. Indiana University is an senior levels. The UCLA Campus admin- building a culturally diverse faculty and Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action istration is committed to significant encourage applications from women Employer. The Computer Science growth in the faculty of the Computer and minority candidates. The University Department strongly encourages appli- Science Department, with a projection of Washington is an affirmative action, cations from women and minorities. of 2-3 new faculty members per year for equal opportunity employer. the next two years. Quality is our key criterion for applicant selection. Applicants THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, should have a strong commitment to DUKE UNIVERSITY, Department of BERKELEY. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALI- both research and teaching and an out- Computer Science. Experimental Sys- FORNIA, BERKELEY invites applications standing record of research for their tems Faculty Position: We invite applica- for tenure-track positions in ELECTRICAL level. We seek applicants in any main- tions and nominations for a tenure-track ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCI- stream area of Computer Science and or tenured faculty position at any rank in ENCES at the Assistant Professor, Associ- Computer Engineering. To apply, please the Department of Computer Science at ate Professor, or Full Professor level, visit http://www.cs.ucla.edu/recruit. Fac- Duke University, to start September beginning in Fall Semester 2004, subject ulty applications received by January 15 2004. Preference will be given to appli- to budgetary approval. Several faculty will be given full consideration. The Uni- cants in the various areas of experimen- searches have been approved. We are versity of California is an Equal Opportu- tal systems and architecture. We are also considering the possibility of joint nity/Affirmative Action Employer. seeking to build upon our strong, highly searches with other UC Berkeley depart- collaborative group in experimental sys- ments. Applicants should have received tems. We are broadly interested in all (or be about to receive) a doctoral UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, areas of experimental systems with degree in Computer Science, Electrical Tenure-Track, Research, and Teach- emphasis on databases, computer archi- Engineering, Computer Engineering, or ing Faculty. The University of Wash- tecture, networking, security, and dis- a related field. A principal requirement is ington's Department of Computer Sci- tributed systems. Computational Biology demonstrated excellence in research. In ence & Engineering has one or more Faculty Position: We invite applications addition, potential for excellence in open positions in a wide variety of tech- and nominations for a tenure-track assis- teaching and leadership are important nical areas in both Computer Science tant professor position in the Depart- requirements. Successful applicants will and Computer Engineering, and at all ment of Computer Science at Duke Uni- be expected to establish a quality professional levels. A moderate teaching versity, effective from September 2004. research program and to teach both load allows time for quality research and We seek applicants with outstanding graduate and undergraduate courses in close involvement with students. Our records in the general area of computa- their general area of specialty. Interested recent move into a beautiful new build- tional biology and bioinformatics. The persons should send an application con- ing, the Paul G. Allen Center for Com- areas of particular interest include but are sisting of a resume, a one- to two-page puter Science & Engineering, allows not limited to sequence analysis, func- statement of their future research and many opportunities for new projects and tional genomics, transcriptomics, struc- teaching interests/plans, a select subset initiatives. Information about the depart- tural genomics, machine learning and of publications, and the names of three ment can be found on the web at data mining, and computational simula- references whom you have asked to send http://www.cs.washington.edu. We wel- tion and mathematical modeling. For in recommendations. Review of com- come applicants in all CSE research areas more information about the faculty, facil- pleted applications will begin December (but especially candidates whose ities and other resources, please refer to 15, 2003. We will not consider applica- research interests include hardware). We www.cs.duke.edu. Applications should tions received after March 1, 2004. Rec- expect candidates to have a strong com- be submitted online at http://www.cs. ommendation writers should send letters mitment both to research and to teach- duke.edu/csnews/facsearch. Applications directly to the same address where appli- ing. The department is primarily seeking should include a curriculum vitae, a list cations are sent, to arrive before January individuals at the Assistant Professor of publications, and copies of the most 1, 2004 if possible. Reference letters will rank; however, under unusual circum- important publications. A Ph.D. in com- NOT be requested directly by the depart- stances and commensurate with the puter science or related area is required.

102 Computer BIOINFORMATICS FACULTY COMPUTER SCIENCES DEPARTMENT The City College of the City University of New York The City College invites applications for a tenure track faculty position in Bioinformatics at the Assistant Professor level, starting with the Fall semester of 2004. We seek applicants with an active research profile in biologically, chemically or medically oriented computer science, design an active collaboration with workers in biomedical engineering, and who can develop ties with the local pharmaceutical and medical industries. Applicants must have a PhD in Computer Science or an allied filed, a demonstrated record of publications and a commitment to research excellence. City College is the oldest college of the City University system; Computer Science resides within the School of Engineering, which also houses the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The Computer Science Department offers the BS and MS in Computer Sciences; the PhD is offered as well, in collaboration with the Graduate School of the City University of New York. The BE in Computer Engineering is offered jointly with the Department of Electrical Engineering. The Department’s active research reflects its position in the School of Engineering, and encompasses diverse areas of Computer Science and Engineering. Our primary research concentrations are in computational geometry and vision, speech recognition, scientific computation, data systems and information retrieval, distributed computing information security and assurance, combinatorial mathematics, web-based human-computer interaction information management and E-commerce, multimedia networks and digital libraries, computational methods for image and speech processing, remote sensing, and computational algebra. Further information can be obtained from the Department’s web site as http://www-cs.engr.ccny.cuny.edu. Information on the City College Department of Biomedical Engineering can be obtained at http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/nycbe; information on the City University PhD program in Computer Science can be obtained at http://web.gc.cuny.edu/Computerscience. Applications with vitae and names of three (3) references, must be postmarked by February 15, 2004, to Professor Douglas Troeger, Chair, Computer Sciences Depart- ment, R8/206, The City College of New York, Convent City College Avenue at 138th St., NY, NY 10031. of NewYork The City College/CUNY is an EEO/AA/IRCA/ADA Employer.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Iowa State University of Science and Technology invites applications for The Palmer Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering: Candidates in any traditional or emerging area of Electrical and Computer Engineering will be considered. Applicants should have credentials appropriate for a distinguished position at the rank of full professor. Applicants must have a) an earned doctorate in electrical or computer engineering or related area, b) effective communication skills and experience working closely with undergraduate and graduate students, c) strong record in research and scholarship, d) national and international acclaim in their areas of expertise, e) demonstrated ability to interact productively with industrial community and/or governmental agencies, and f) demonstrated ability to provide leadership and mentoring to build a strong research and teaching program in their areas of expertise. The responsibilities include: 1) teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, 2) establishing and directing leading edge research program and publishing highly cited research results in leading journals and conferences, 3) guiding graduate students, 4) seeking, establishing, and maintaining external research funding, 5) providing leadership in professional and outreach activities. Full information can be found at the department website www.ece.ias- tate.edu. Application deadline is March 31, 2004 or until position is ﬁlled. Applicants should send a letter of application and a resume including at least three references to Arun K. Somani, Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, 2215 Coover Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011-3060. ISU is an EO/AA employer. Assistant Professor applicants should launch its new Master’s program, in send a letter of interest, current curricu- arrange for at least four letters of refer- spring, 2004. For more information lum vita (statements of research experience to be sent preferably via email (fac- about the university and the department, ence and interests, proposals written and [email protected]) to the Faculty please visit http://www.cs.uca.edu. UCA funded, publications, and teaching expe- Search Chair. Senior candidates should is committed to excellence in under- rience), and the names of three refer- provide the names and contact informa- graduate and graduate education, and ences that the committee may contact, tion of three potential references. To fosters student-centered learning, tech- to: [email protected] or Faculty Search guarantee full consideration, applications nology enhanced pedagogies, and Committee, Dept. of Computer Science, and letters of reference should be research experiences for all students. Utah State University, Logan, UT 84322- received no later than January 15, 2004. UCA is located in Conway, about 25 4205. [email protected]. Faculty Search miles away from Little Rock, and has con- Chair, Department of Computer Science, venient access to numerous recreational Duke University, Durham, NC 27708- sites. To apply, send a curriculum vita, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA 0129. Duke University is an affirmative statements of teaching and research BARBARA, Faculty Position: Depart- action, equal opportunity employer. interests, and contact information for at ment of Computer Science. The Uni- least three references to: Chair, CS versity of California Santa Barbara invites Search Committee, Lewis Science Cen- applications for faculty positions in Com- UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKAN- ter Room 105, College of Natural Sci- puter Science and Computer Engineer- SAS. The Computer Science Depart- ences and Mathematics, University of ing. The Department of Computer Sci- ment at the University of Central Central Arkansas, Conway, AR 72035. ence currently has 25 full-time faculty and Arkansas (UCA) invites applications for a Electronic submissions may be sent to approximately 200 graduate students tenure-track faculty position, with rank [email protected]. Review will be- (including approximately 120 Ph.D. stu- based on qualifications, to be started in gin immediately and continue until the dents) involved in various research areas the fall semester of 2004. Applicants position is filled. UCA is an Equal Oppor- including digital libraries and databases, should have a PhD degree in an area of tunity Affirmative Action Employer. parallel and distributed systems, pro- computer science/engineering. A strong gramming languages, networking, com- commitment to excellence in teaching, puter and network security, theory of and research involving students is UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, Depart- computation, algorithms, computer expected. The department is located in a ment of Computer Science. Assistant vision, human-computer interaction, new building equipped with state-of-the- Professor starting Fall 2004 specializing bioinformatics, and computational sci- art equipment and facilities, and it enjoys in applied computer science (Bio-infor- ence and engineering. The Department strong support from local corporations. matics, Software systems, Multi-agent of Computer Science is part of the The department offers a Bachelor’s systems). See http://personnel.usu.edu/ expanding College of Engineering which degree for about 200 majors, and will for details. Qualified applicants should encompasses over 130 faculty in various

Seattle University University of Massachusetts Boston Tenure-track faculty (rank open) Department of Computer Science, www.cs.umb.edu The Department of Computer Science and Software Engineer- Assistant Professor ing invites applications for one or more tenure-track faculty posi- The Computer Science Department at the University of tions to begin in September of 2004. Applicants are required to Massachusetts Boston invites applications for Fall 2004 for one faculty position at the Assistant Professor level. have a Ph.D. in either Computer Science, Software Engineering, We offer a BS, an MS with an emphasis on software Computer Security or a closely allied field. Candidates should be engineering, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science. We seek capable of teaching a broad range of computer science or soft- to strengthen our research program significantly. Current ware engineering courses. A specialty in computer security or faculty interests include databases, data mining, biodiver- sity informatics, natural language processing, computer information assurance will be a strong plus for candidates because and human vision, system modeling, algorithms, and the- of the department’s intention of strengthening our offerings and oretical computer science. program in that area. Seattle University offers Bachelor of Arts and Strong candidates will be considered from any area of Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science and a Master Computer Science but preference will be given to a of Software Engineering degree (the country’s first MSE degree, candidate who does research in Software Engineering and is interested in assuming a lead role in teaching our graduate now in its 25th year). year-long required sequence in this discipline. Evidence of Applications must include a curriculum vita, statements of teach- significant research potential and a PhD in Computer ing philosophy and research plans and a separate statement Science or a related area are required. We offer a competitive salary and a generous start-up package. Send cover letter, addressing how you could contribute to the Seattle University mis- curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching, and sion. We also require three letters of reference. Please send your the names and email addresses of three references to: application to Faculty Search Committee Chair, Department of [email protected]. Computer Science and Software Engineering, Seattle University, Our campus overlooks Boston harbor; our faculty and students 900 Broadway, Seattle, WA 98122-4340 or by email to CSSE_ enjoy professional life in a center of academia and the software [email protected]. Information about Seattle University, a industry. For more information, visit us at statement of its mission, and an expanded job announcement can http://www.cs.umb.edu. Review of applications has begun and will continue until the be found at www.seattleu.edu/home/about_seattle_univer position is filled. sity/ and www.seattleu.edu/scieng/comsci/. The department UMass Boston is an search committee will begin reviewing applications on January 5, Affirmative Action, 2004. Equal Opportunity, Title University of Seattle University is a Jesuit Catholic university enrolling more IX employer and strongly encourages Massachusetts than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students in eight colleges women, members Boston and schools. The university is an equal opportunity, affirmative of all ethnic groups, action employer. and people with dis- www.umb.edu abilities to apply.

104 Computer engineering disciplines. UCSB is a major research institution, elected member of the Association of American Universities, as well as an integral part of the nine- campus University of California system. Graduate degrees in Computer Science Ira A Fulton School of Engineering are offered at the M.S. and Ph.D. levels. Senior Faculty Position in Information Assurance and Security The Department and the College feature a highly collaborative and stimulating The Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University seeks to fill a position in the area of Information Assurance and Security at the rank of full professor or associate professor. working environment. Department fac- The expected starting date for this position is August 16, 2004. The appointment of the successful ulty lead several NSF ITR projects, and candidate may be in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the Department of have recently been awarded two NSF Industry Engineering, or both. Nominations and applications for this position are invited. IGERT grants for interdisciplinary gradu- Applicants for this position are required to have a Ph.D. in computer science, industrial engi- ate education and research, in computa- neering, information systems, systems engineering or a related field. The applicant must have tional science and engineering and in ability and /or accomplishment in establishing or leading research and teaching activities in the interactive digital multimedia. The total area of Information Assurance and Security (IAS), addressing prevention, detection and/or reac- amount of 2002-03 extramural funding tion mechanisms to assure trustworthy computers and networks and Quality of Service. Excel- lence in research and scholarly activity, teaching, and service in the area of computer science and in the department was approximately 6.8 engineering or industrial engineering appropriate to rank is required. Evidence of scientific, aca- million dollars. Applicants should hold a demic and organizational leadership, educational innovation, and demonstrative effectiveness doctoral degree in Computer Science or in establishing industry partnerships are desired. a related field; appointments are sched- ASU is a major research university widely recognized as a rapidly emerging educational insti- uled to begin in July 2004. Primary con- tution in the US. The main campus is located in the city of Tempe, in the metropolitan Phoenix sideration will be given to candidates who area. This year the Fulton School of Engineering received a $50 million gift, which will provide apply by January 15, 2004, however, funding for scholarships, fellowships, and research programs. Both the Department of Computer positions will remain open until filled. Science and Engineering and the Department of Industrial Engineering provide a stimulating Send resume, research and teaching and fast-growing environment of research and teaching, with ample opportunities for partnerships with high-technology industry and with emphasis on quality, leading-edge graduate and statements, and names and addresses of undergraduate education. at least four referees to: Recruitment For more information about the Arizona State University, you are invited to visit the website Committee, Department of Computer http://www.asu.edu Science, University of California, Santa Initial closing date for applications is February 10, 2004; if not filled, applications will be Barbara, CA 93106-5110. To apply by reviewed on a bi-weekly basis thereafter until the search is closed. electronic mail, send the application to: Application packages must include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, research and teaching [email protected]. Additional informa- statements, copies of the most important publications, and the names and addresses of four ref- tion about the Computer Science Depart- erences. These packages must be sent by post to IAS Faculty Search Committee Chair, P.O. Box 878809, Fulton School of Engineering, Tempe, AZ 85287-8809. ment may be found at http://www. Arizona State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. cs.ucsb.edu. The department is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through University of Kentucky research, teaching, and service. An EO/AA employer. Department of Computer Science The Department of Computer Science invites applications for a tenure-track position UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, to begin in January or August 2004. The new faculty member will play an important role Department of Computer Science in the new Visualization and Vision Science Facility, a research unit with over 9,000 sq. ft., and over 5M in funding from state and federal agencies. The goal of the Facility is to & Engineering. The Department of advance state-of-the-art visualization technologies through basic and applied research Computer Science and Engineering programs. To that end, we are particularly interested in candidates with specialization (http://www.cse.nd.edu) invites faculty in computer vision, computer graphics, geometric modeling, distributed multimedia, applications. Rank and area of speciality scientific computation, or human computer interaction. Applicants with credentials in are open. Our faculty are actively other fields that will support the goals of the Facility will also be considered. engaged in high-quality research in a The Department of Computer Science offers BS, MS, and PhD degrees. Our faculty are variety of areas, supported by NSF, actively involved in research in artificial intelligence, computer vision, geometric mod- DARPA, SRC, Air Force, HP/Compaq, and eling, networking, cryptography, numerical analysis, operating systems and theory. The other organizations. The blend of small Department is funded by a number of external grants including DARPA projects, several class size, low teaching load, and a "PhD NSF ITR awards, and an NSF Research Infrastructure award. only" graduate program allows us to The Department is experiencing a period of dynamic growth, particularly in the areas emphasize true excellence in both teach- of multimedia, computer networking, and distributed systems. In the previous six years, ing and research. Faculty must be com- the Department has hired nine new faculty members, three of which are NSF CAREER mitted to both quali8ty teaching and a awardees. New members of the computer science faculty will have access to significant strong externally-funded research pro- laboratory space, generous start-up research funds, and will actively participate in the gram. Notre Dame is ranked 19th research activities of the Visualization and Vision Science Facility. A new building for among national universities in the 2003 the Department and the Facility is in the planning stage. The University of Kentucky is an equal opportunity employer and especially encour- U.S. News and World Report. Notre ages applications from women and minority candidates. Dame's heritage and values are unique Completed applications consisting of a curriculum vita, statements of teaching and among top-ranked national universities, research interests, and the names of at least three references should be submitted to: resulting in a distinctive character of Chair, CS Search Committee campus life. Screening of applications c/o Ms. Diane Mier, will begin immediately and continue 773 Anderson Hall until the positions are filled. Applicants University of Kentucky should send cover letter, cv, a statement Lexington, KY 40506. of research and teaching interests, and Application review will begin on September 1, 2003 and continue until the positions names and addresses of at least three ref- are filled. erences either to: [email protected].

January 2004 105 edu, or to Faculty Search Committee, widely regarded as the most distin- and research potential. The appoint- Department of Computer Science and guished system of public higher educa- ments will begin from August 2004. Engineering, 384 Fitzpatrick Hall, Uni- tion in the United States. The CSE Review of applications will begin from versity of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN Department has now grown rapidly to February 15, 2004, and will continue 46556. 24 full-time faculties, and expects to until the positions are filled. Salary, fringe grow to about 40 over the next five benefits, and teaching load are compet- years. The Campus- and College-wide itive. Florida Atlantic University, a mem- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVER- expansion programs include a new state- ber of Florida's State University System, is SIDE, MARLAN AND ROSEMARY of-the-art building soon to house the CSE a multi-campus institution with its main BOURNS COLLEGE OF ENGINEER- and EE Departments. Annual research campus located in Boca Raton, on the ING, Faculty Positions in Computer expenditures in the College are close to Atlantic coast, midway between West Science & Engineering. The Univer- $352K/year per faculty. The CSE Depart- Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. The sity of California, Riverside invites appli- ment offers the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. University has over 25,000 students and cations for tenure-track or tenured fac- degrees. More information is available at offers a variety of degree programs at all ulty positions in the Department of http://www.cs.ucr.edu. The city of River- levels. The Department currently has 26 Computer Science and Engineering for side, located about 60 miles away from regular faculty, with other visiting and the 2004-2005 academic year. Appli- Los Angeles, offers easy access to moun- research faculty normally in residence. It cants must have a Ph.D. in Computer tains, Pacific Ocean beaches, cultural offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral Science or in a closely related field. Areas activities, shopping, and other attrac- programs in computer science and in of particular interest include: software tions. Applications and inquiries should computer engineering. The Department engineering/programming languages, be sent to: Chair, Faculty Search Com- also offers our undergraduate computer computational science, and graphics and mittee, Department of Computer Sci- science program at our Davie campus visualization, but applications are wel- ence and Engineering, University of Cal- (25 miles south of Boca Raton) and our come in all areas of Computer Science ifornia, Riverside, CA 92521-0304. (909) Port St. Lucie campus (80 miles north of and Engineering. Senior candidates must 787-5639 or by e-mail to: search@cs. Boca Raton). Over 1600 undergraduate, have an exceptional research and teach- ucr.edu. Applications must include cur- 300 master's, and 50 doctoral students ing record. Junior candidates must show riculum vitae, list of publications, a state- are enrolled in the Department. The outstanding research and teaching ment of research and teaching objec- Department has several well-equipped potential. Salary will be competitive, and tives, and names and addresses of four laboratories. It interacts closely with commensurate with appointment rank references (junior candidates may have many high-tech companies located in and qualifications. UC Riverside is the reference letters mailed directly to the the area (including Motorola, IBM, fastest-growing member of the ten-cam- department). Formal review of applica- Siemens, Citrix, and others), which have pus University of California System, tions begins January 20, 2004. Early helped provide state-of-the-art facilities. applications are encouraged, however, We have an active research program, late applications will be considered until with both federal and industrial spon- ASSISTANT, ASSOCIATE OR FULL PROFESSOR the positions are filled. The University of sors. More information about the DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE California, Riverside is an Equal-Oppor- Department can be accessed through tunity/Affirmative-Action Employer. the Web at http://www.cse.fau.edu. Applicants should send a hardcopy Dept of Computer Science of the University of Texas resume and the names, phone numbers, at El Paso invites applications for two positions CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF PENN- and email addresses of at least three pro- at all ranks for Fall 2004. We seek applicants in high-performance computing (e.g., computer systems SYLVANIA MATHEMATICS AND fessional references, along with a cover design, performance evaluation, parallel/distributed COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT. letter specifying teaching and research computing, programming environments & compilers) Full-time tenure track position in Infor- interests and rank (Assistant, Associate) & theory motivated by applications (e.g., interval computations, soft computing) & security. In mation Technology to begin Fall 2004. sought, to Chair, Department of Com- exceptional cases, we will consider applicants in other Duties will include teaching undergrad- puter Science and Engineering, Florida areas of computer science. We offer BS & MS degrees in Computer Science & have a joint Ph.D. program uate and graduate courses in information Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, with the Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering. technology and related programs, pro- Boca Raton, Florida 33431. Florida Approval of a distinct Ph.D. program in Computer gram and curriculum development, pro- Atlantic University is an equal opportu- Science is expected for fall 2004. Candidates must hold a Ph.D. in Computer Science or a closely related viding assistance in national accredita- nity/equal access institution. field. UTEP recently received an NSF ADVANCE award tion of the Information Technology to further the recruitment, retention & advancement program, advising undergraduate and/ of female faculty in NSF-related disciplines. Applications from dual-career couples are encouraged. UTEP is or graduate students, participating in NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECH- a Carnegie doctoral-intensive university with an departmental/college/university/system- NOLOGY, Faculty Positions: Com- enrollment of 18,500 students, situated where the wide committees, and engaging in puter Science Department. The Rocky Mountains meet the Rio Grande. The campus reflects the beauty of the surrounding high desert. scholarly and professional activities Computer Science Dept. at New Jersey El Paso is a highly livable, bi-cultural community including grant writing. For a complete Institute of Technology invites applica- of 700,000 people that offers affordable homes & description and application requirements tions for tenure track / tenured faculty is a major meeting point for the United States & Latin America. see the Web site www.cup.edu. AA/EEO. positions, beginning spring/fall 2004 in Send curriculum vitae, a statement of teaching & bioinformatics, networking/security, web research interests & contact information for at least technologies & software engineering. 4 professional references to: Faculty Recruiting FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY, System-building experience will be a 2004, Dept of Computer Science, UTEP, El Paso, TX, 79968-0518. Much more information about the Department of Computer Science plus. Applicants must have PhD in com- department, including e-mail contacts for inquiries and Engineering, Faculty Recruit- puter science or related area. Senior & electronic submission of applications is available at http://www.cs.utep.edu. ment Information. The Department applicants must have an outstanding The University of Texas at El Paso does not discriminate on the of Computer Science and Engineering record. Junior applicants should have basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, seeks applications for several tenure-track shown research potential & commitment veteran’s status or sexual orientation in employment or the provision of services. faculty positions at the Assistant and to excellence in teaching. Salaries are Associate Professor levels. The positions competitive. Dept. research interests incl. require a doctorate in computer science, algorithms, computational biology & computer engineering, or a closely bioinformatics, computer vision, data- related field. Applicants must show evi- bases, parallel processing, simulation & dence of demonstrated teaching ability modeling, software engineering & com-

106 Computer puter networking. The dept. has 27 fac- cations will be considered until the posi- teaching plan via email to facapp@cis. ulty members & 1,400 students. The tions are filled. Binghamton University is uab.edu or via regular mail to: Faculty dept. offers BS, MS & PhD degrees. NJIT an equal opportunity/affirmative action Search Committee, Department of Com- is located in Newark's University Heights, employer. puter and Information Sciences, Univer- a multi-institutional campus shared with sity of Alabama at Birmingham, 1300 Rutgers University, the University of Med- University Blvd, Birmingham, AL 35294- icine & Dentistry of New Jersey & Sci- UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT 1170. Interviewing for the position will ence Park. NJIT is close to several other BIRMINGHAM (UAB), Department begin as soon as qualified candidates are universities, numerous pharmaceutical, of Computer and Information Sci- identified, and will continue until the telecommunications & financial compa- ences, Assistant or Associate Pro- position is filled. The University of nies & research labs thus offering excel- fessor Position, http://www.cis. Alabama at Birmingham is an equal lent opportunities for collaboration, con- uab.edu/. The University of Alabama opportunity/affirmative action employer. sulting & industry sponsored research. Birmingham (UAB) Department of Com- NJIT is minutes from New York City & puter and Information Sciences is seek- close to the Jersey Shore which offer a ing highly qualified candidates for a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, Depart- wide range of cultural & leisure activities. tenure track position at the Assistant or ment of Electrical and Computer Applicants can apply by sending their CV Associate Professor rank, beginning as Engineering. The Department of Elec- & a list of at least 3 references to: New early as Fall 2004. Scalable Data Mining, trical and Computer Engineering invites Jersey Institute of Technology, attn: Per- Knowledge Discovery, and Distributed applications for two tenure-track or sonnel Box CS-AAP, University Heights, Database Systems are of particular inter- tenured faculty positions in the general Newark, NJ 07102-1982 by mail, or by est. Highly qualified candidates with a area of Computer Engineering. Strong email to: [email protected]. NJIT is an equal Ph. D. in Computer Science or a closely candidates in all areas of Computer Engi- opportunity, affirmative action, equal related field are encouraged to apply. A neering are encouraged to apply for access employer & especially encourages strong research background, including tenure-track positions at all ranks. The applications from minorities, women & advanced knowledge, demonstrated department is particularly interested in persons with disabilities. research results, refereed publications, candidates with strong backgrounds and potential for research funding in one and interests in one or more of the fol- or more of the focus areas are required. lowing areas: distributed computing, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK Commitment to excellence in teaching computer architecture, hardware/soft- AT BINGHAMTON, Department of and service and interest in multidiscipli- ware systems design, high-performance Computer Science, The Thomas J. nary collaboration with the biotechnol- computing, nanocomputing, adaptive Watson School of Engineering and ogy and medical research programs of computing, mobile computing, biolog- Applied Science, http://www.cs. the UAB campus are also very important. ically-inspired computing and embed- binghamton.edu. Applications are Send four references, a complete CV, a ded systems. Applicants for tenured or invited for two or more anticipated one-page research plan, and a one-page senior positions must have distinguished tenure-track positions at the Assistant/ Associate Professor level beginning in Fall 2004. Salary and startup packages are

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dates applying for Fall 04, first consider- the ation will be given to applications that PU peruryD PHHRF are received by February 27, 2004. Appli-

January 2004 107 records. Candidates should be commit- Computer Science, CS-552, California considered. Teaching responsibilities will ted to excellence in teaching and State University, Fullerton, Fullerton CA include undergraduate courses for the research. All applicants should hold a 92834-6870 or email [email protected] computer science major as well as PhD degree. Salary and support are ton.edu. Cal State Fullerton is an Equal courses for non-majors. Moravian Col- competitive and commensurate with Opportunity/Title IX/ ADA Employer. lege faculty are encouraged to partici- experience and background. Successful pate in interdisciplinary teaching. Appli- candidates will have the opportunity to cations should be received by February work with highly qualified faculty, excel- POHANG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE 20. Send resume, transcripts, a state- lent students and well-equipped labora- AND TECHNOLOGY (POSTECH), Fac- ment of teaching philosophy, and three tories from both the Department of Elec- ulty Positions. The Department of letters of recommendation to Alicia trical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering Sevilla, Chair, Department of Mathe- the Department of Computer and Infor- (CSE), Pohang University of Science and matics and Computer Science, Moravian mation Science and Engineering of the Technology, has several faculty openings College, 1200 Main Street, Bethlehem, University of Florida. More information at all ranks beginning in March 2004. All PA 18018-6650. is available at http://www.ece.ufl.edu areas of computer science and engi- and http://www.cise.ufl.edu. Candidates neering are welcome. A Ph.D. or its should send their resume, research and equivalent is required. Successful candi- VIRGINIA TECH. The Bradley Depart- teaching plan, cover letter stating the dates are expected to conduct out- ment of Electrical and Computer Engi- desired position, and names and standing research and be committed to neering invites applications for a tenure- addresses of at least three references to quality teaching both at undergraduate track full professor position in computer Dr. José Fortes, Professor and BellSouth and graduate levels. Further information engineering. Named professor opportu- Eminent Scholar, C/O Computer Engi- about the CSE program and positions is nities exist for an exceptionally qualified neering Faculty Search Committee, available at www.postech.ac.kr/depart candidate. Some areas of interest are: Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engi- ment/cse. Applicants will be reviewed as software engineering, embedded sys- neering, P.O. Box 116200, 339 Larsen received and will continue until filled. tems, and high-performance computing. Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, Applicants should send a curriculum The ECE Department has outstanding Florida 32611-6200. Email applications vitae, three letters of reference, and any opportunities for faculty to develop are encouraged. They should be sent in supporting documents to Search Com- highly visible research programs. All can- pdf format to [email protected]. The mittee Chair, Department of Computer didates are expected to conduct research committee will begin reviewing appli- Science and Engineering, Pohang Uni- and teach undergraduate and graduate cations on January 28th, 2004 and will versity of Science and Technology, San courses. Positions are also available in continue to receive applications until the 31 HyoJa Dong, Pohang 790-784, other areas, including microelectronics positions are filled. The University of Republic of Korea. and power electronics. For a detailed Florida is an Affirmative Action Employer information, please visit the department and women and minorities are encour- website at www.ece.vt.edu. An equal aged to apply. According to Florida law, CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF PENN- opportunity/affirmative action employer. applications and meetings regarding SYLVANIA MATHEMATICS AND applications are open to the public on COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT. request. Full-time tenure track position in Com- DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR. Imple- puter Science to begin Fall 2004. Duties ment, monitor and revise existing data- will include teaching undergraduate and base. BS in Comp Sci, related field or CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, graduate courses in computer science equiv req. Send ad w/resume to: La FULLERTON. The Department of Com- and related programs, program and cur- Tanya Odom, SunAmerica Inc., 21650 puter Science at CSU Fullerton invites riculum development, providing assis- Oxnard St., Woodland Hills, CA 91367. applications for tenure-track position(s) tance in national accreditation of the for the academic year starting August Computer Science programs, advising 2004. The department's instructional undergraduate and/or graduate stu- LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY, programs lead to bachelors and masters dents, participating in departmental/ ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE/FULL PRO- degrees. CSUF is an urban university college/university/system-wide commit- FESSOR, (Computer Engineering/ located in Orange County, surrounded tees, and engaging in scholarly and pro- Tenure-track/One or more posi- by high technology industry and a fessional activities including grant writ- tions), Electrical and Computer diverse community. Faculty members ing. For a complete description and Engineering. The Department of Elec- regularly teach all levels of computer sci- application requirements see the Web trical and Computer Engineering at ence. The Department values teaching, site www.cup.edu. AA/EEO. Louisiana State University invites appli- research, and publishing. A Ph.D. in cations for one or more tenure-track Computer Science or a related field is positions in Computer Engineering at all required. All candidates must have a MORAVIAN COLLEGE. Moravian Col- levels available August 2004 or until posi- publication record in computer science lege invites applications for a tenurable- tions are filled. Though applicants from or a related field. Candidates with spe- track position at the assistant professor all areas of Computer Engineering will be cialized interest in computer networks, level in computer science to begin Fall considered, of particular interest are pervasive computing, data security, and Term 2004. Applicants should have a applicants with research interests in com- software engineering are preferred, but Ph.D. in computer science and a broad puter architecture (including microar- interest in other areas such as graphics range of expertise and interests. The suc- chitecture, memory systems and special- and e-commerce will also be considered. cessful candidate will have strong inter- purpose architectures), design This is a tenure-track position. Salary is personal skills and a primary commit- automation (including system-on-chip competitive and commensurate to rank ment to undergraduate teaching, design and behavioral synthesis), and and experience. Review of applications scholarship, and curriculum develop- networking (including traffic engineer- will commence immediately and will ment for computer science in a liberal ing and network security). Required continue until the positions are filled. arts context. Particularly desirable areas Qualifications: Ph.D. or equivalent Please send a letter of application, cur- of expertise include graphics and visual- degree in Electrical or Computer Engi- riculum vitae, and list of three references ization, theoretical or applied artificial neering or related field; potential for with contact information to: Dr. Dimitri intelligence, and scientific computing, excellence in teaching and research. The Michalopoulos, Chair, Department of but all areas of computer science will be positions involve teaching graduate and

108 Computer undergraduate courses in electrical or cialized networks and devices. Faculty and the development of scholarly infor- computer engineering and research in members also have network access to mation systems; supporting Academic areas of individual interests. Salary is additional high performance computing and Administrative leaders in the pursuit competitive and commensurate with platforms provided by the general com- of research grants and contracts; repre- qualifications and experience. Release puting facilities of the University as well senting the University in external tech- time and resources are provided in order as by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing nology sharing and standards groups; to enhance the development of a qual- Center (of which the University of Pitts- co-chairing the University Information ity research program. Opportunities for burgh is a founding member). For fur- Services Technology and Operations summer support are available. In addi- ther information about the Department Committee and guiding the Committee tion to the resources in the department, please see http://www.cs.pitt.edu. The through the production of an annual the faculty has access to a 1024-proces- University of Pittsburgh is an Affirmative technology master plan and architecture. sor cluster. Application deadline is March Action, Equal Opportunity Employer. Minimum Qualifications include a Bach- 1, 2004, or until candidate is selected. Women and members of minority elor’s Degree or equivalent with relevant Please send your resume (including e- groups under-represented in academia course work in Computer Science, Infor- mail address), names of at least three ref- are especially encouraged to apply. mation Systems or related field. Gradu- erences, and a statement of teaching and ate degree desirable. Experience also research interest, in electronic form to required in the in the application of com- [email protected] (preferred) or mail MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY, Com- puting technology in support of acade- your application package to: Dr. Kemin puter Science Department. Applica- mics and application of computing tech- Zhou, Interim Chair, Electrical and Com- tions are invited for a tenure track posi- nologies and concepts to scientific basic puter Engineering, Louisiana State Uni- tion, at the Assistant or Associate research. Applicants must have excellent versity, Ref: Log# 0518, Baton Rouge, LA Professor level, starting September, written and verbal skills, proven man- 70803. LSU IS AN EQUAL OPPORTU- 2004. A Ph.D. in Computer Science, or agement skills, demonstrated capacity in NITY/EQUAL ACCESS EMPLOYER. related discipline, is required. Tenure presentation to large groups on complex obligations include a strong commit- subject matter and the ability to develop ment to teaching across the curriculum technical papers, proposals and project UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH, De- in the undergraduate and graduate pro- plans. Please apply online at www. partment of Computer Science. The grams, scholarly contributions, and ser- georgetown.edu/hr/jobs. Job # 2003 Department of Computer Science at the vice to the University at all levels. Prefer- 0566. University of Pittsburgh is initiating a ence will be given to those with teaching search for a tenure track position at the experience and/or prior practice in the Assistant Professor level effective Sep- design and development of software sys- MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEW- tember 2004, pending budgetary tems, distributed computing, client- FOUNDLAND, TIER II CANADA approval. Outstanding candidates are server architecture, and operating sys- RESEARCH CHAIR IN ASIC DESIGN. sought in the area of Computer Systems, tem design. Documentation should The Faculty of Engineering and Applied with particular considerations given to emphasize experience in teaching at all Science invites applications for a Tier II candidates working on Embedded Sys- levels, and cite references to scholarly Canada Research Chair in the area of tems, Computer Architectures, Distrib- activities. The position also requires par- Application-Specific Integrated Circuit uted Systems and System Security. ticipation in departmental course and (ASIC) Design. The appointment will be Responsibilities include research, super- curriculum development efforts. Ques- tenure-track at the Assistant or Associate vision of graduate student research (PhD tions should be directed to frederic@ Professor level. Candidates should and MS), and graduate and undergrad- monmouth.edu. Applicants should send demonstrate exceptional potential to uate teaching. Candidates should have a a cover letter and include a statement of build an internationally reputed research PhD in Computer Science and demon- teaching and research experience and program in ASIC design. The Chair will strate exceptional research potential and interests, a resume, and the names of have opportunities to collaborate with teaching ability. Candidates should send three professional references to: Chair, an anticipated Chair in Photonics. Infor- a curriculum vita, a statement of research Computer Science Search Committee mation on the application procedure, and teaching interests, and names and c/o Francis C. Lutz, Dean-School of Sci- qualifications, and expected activities of addresses of at least three references to ence, Technology and Engineering Mon- the Chair may be found at www.engr. Professor Rami Melhem, Chair, Depart- mouth University, West Long Branch, NJ mun.ca/Jobs/asic.html. Applications will ment of Computer Science, University of 07764. Interviews start after January 15, be reviewed beginning on February 20, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. In 2004, and will continue until the posi- 2004. Memorial University of New- order to expedite the review process, tion is filled. See http://www.mon foundland is committed to employment candidates should also complete the mouth.edu for information about the equity and encourages applications from web-based form at http://www.cs.pitt. university, school, and department. qualified women and men, visible edu/recruiting. Please direct your Monmouth University is an Equal Oppor- minorities, aboriginal people and per- inquiries to [email protected]. tunity Affirmative Action Employer. sons with disabilities. There is no restric- Applications must be received by Febru- tion with regard to nationality or resi- ary 14, 2004 to ensure full consideration. dence. The Department provides a stimulating GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY, Princi- environment for research and teaching pal Technologist. Reporting to the that results in strong graduate and Vice President for Information Services WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY, undergraduate programs. The Depart- and Chief Information Officer, the Prin- Director, School of Electrical Engi- ment already has a strong group in the cipal Technologist (PT) provides institu- neering and Computer Science. The Computer Systems area and is a partner tional leadership in the strategic appli- School of Electrical Engineering and in the Computer Engineering program, cation of information technology to Computer Science at Washington State which is an interdisciplinary program academic, research and administrative University invites applications and nom- between the Computer Science and the computing. The PT supports and offers inations for the position of Director of the Electrical Engineering departments. guidance to the CIO and other leaders in School, to be filled August 16, 2004. A Departmental resources include exten- the use of technology across the Univer- Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering, sive computing facilities of over 400 sity. Responsibilities include: fostering the computer engineering, computer sci- workstations and personal computers innovative and effective application of ence or a related discipline is required. with multimedia capabilities and spe- advanced technologies to basic research Candidates must possess a national

January 2004 109 and/or international reputation for schol- teaching. Rensselaer, under the direction department currently serves approxi- arly activities, a commitment to excel- of its president, plans to double its mately 400 undergraduates and 120 lence in undergraduate and graduate research program in the next five years graduate students. Further information education, a successful record of obtain- (see http://www.rpi.edu/web/President/ about the department is available at ing external funding, proven fiscal profi- Plan/index.html). Major research initia- http://www.cs.pdx.edu. Portland State ciency, and outstanding communication tives in information technology and University is located in downtown Port- and leadership skills. The initial appoint- biotechnology are integral components land, Oregon. Portland’s “Silicon Forest” ment is for a four-year period with the of this plan. The faculty of the Depart- is one of the major software/hardware possibility of reappointment. The posi- ment of Computer Science are strongly development centers in the country. tion is a 12-month position with tenure, encouraged to participate in collabora- Within the Portland metropolitan area and salary is negotiable, commensurate tive research at the forefront of both of are over 200 hardware and software with qualifications and experience. The these initiatives. The department cur- organizations, including the world’s School of Electrical Engineering and rently has 22 full-time faculty members largest campus of Intel, the Open Source Computer Science is the largest of five and offers BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees. It Development Lab, the world headquar- engineering departments in the College has excellent computing facilities that ters of Tektronix, In Focus, and Mentor of Engineering and Architecture at Wash- support a vigorous growing research Graphics, major R&D sites of Oracle and ington State University. Programs are program (approximately $2 million per Informix, a major division of IBM, along offered at all four University campuses: year) that currently includes 6 active NSF with many other companies ranging the main campus at Pullman and three CAREER awards. Applicants should sub- from major corporations to software urban campuses at Tri-Cities, Spokane, mit a vita with a list of publications, a start-ups. The University is approximately and Vancouver. The School has 40 full- statement describing current and one hour from magnificent beaches and time faculty, and student enrollment planned research, and a statement from year-round skiing. Review of appli- consists of 860 undergraduates and 140 describing teaching philosophy to the cations will begin immediately and will graduates. The School awards baccalau- address listed below. Candidates should continue until the positions are filled. reate through doctoral degrees in elec- also arrange to have at least three letters Please send a statement of research and trical engineering, computer engineer- of recommendation sent to the same teaching interests, a vita, and the names ing and computer science. The total address. To ensure full consideration, all of three references to: Faculty Search budget for the School exceeds $8 million application materials must be reviewed Committee, Department of Computer per year. The School has three endowed by the committee by March 15, 2004. Science, Portland State University, PO chairs and four distinguished professor- Faculty Search Committee, Attn: Jacky Box 751, Portland, OR 97207-0751 or e- ships in electrical engineering, computer Carley, Department of Computer Sci- mail [email protected]. Portland engineering and computer science. The ence, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, State University is an Affirmative Action, School participates in two NSF UCRC 110 8th Street, Troy, NY 12180-3590. Equal Opportunity institution and, in centers, one for Design of Analog-Digi- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is an keeping with the President’s diversity ini- tal Integrated Circuits and the other for Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action tiative, welcomes applications from Power Engineering. The School main- Employer. Women and minorities are diverse candidates and candidates who tains active research programs in many strongly encouraged to apply. support diversity. leading edge technologies and has excellent facilities. Additional information may be found at the School’s website PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY, Posi- SYSTEMS ANALYST. Plan & develop http://www.eecs.wsu.edu. Applications tions in Computer Science. Portland new computer systems. MSc in Com- and nominations should be sent to: EECS State University invites applications for puter Engr or related field req. Send ad Director Search Committee, School of two tenure- track, nine-month faculty w/resume to: Celetron, 2125-B Madera Electrical Engineering and Computer Sci- positions at all levels to begin Fall 2004. Rd, Simi Valley, CA 93065. ence, Washington State University, Pull- Applicants for senior positions are man, WA 99164-2752. Screening of expected to have a nationally recognized applications will begin February 15, research program and to have demon- UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUS- 2004. WSU is an EEO/AA Employer. Pro- strated the ability to generate external TRALIA, Lecturer/Senior Lecturer tected group members are encouraged funding; applicants for junior positions (REF:291), Electronics (VLSI and to apply. must show potential for future external Digital Systems), School of Electri- support. The department is looking for cal, Electronic and Computer Engi- faculty in the areas of networking, soft- neering. SALARY RANGE: Lecturer RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTI- ware engineering, computer security and (Level B) $55,479 – $65,883 p.a. Senior TUTE, Computer Science. The databases, but excellent applicants in all Lecturer (Level C) $67,962 – $78,366 Department of Computer Science at areas will be considered. The minimum p.a. Applications are invited for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute invites qualifications for the position include an above tenurable position. Applicants applications for one or more expected earned Ph.D. The faculty member will must play an active role in digital systems tenure-track positions at the Assistant teach undergraduate and graduate research, must have a strong commit- Professor level. Strong candidates at all classes; develop program, course and ment to supervision of postgraduate and professional levels and areas of computer laboratory resources in Computer Sci- undergraduate students and work with science will be considered, however, the ence; maintain scholarly activity in one of the major research groups in the Department has special interest in can- funded research and publications; pro- School. Applicants must have a PhD and didates working in the areas of architec- vide professionally related public service; should be able to demonstrate their ture, bioinformatics, cryptography, data advise students, and support University potential as a lecturer and researcher. mining and visualization, human-com- activities through committee service. The The School has very active research pro- puter interaction, and security. Appli- department currently has nineteen fac- grammes relating to the following areas: cants should hold a Ph.D. in Computer ulty and offers a ABET accredited B.S., an computer systems, networking, micro- Science or in a closely allied field, have M.S., and a Ph.D. in Computer Science. electronics, photonics, communications, substantial research accomplishments for Our teaching loads give faculty time to biomedical engineering, signal process- the professorial level sought, and maintain funded research programs and ing, robotics, control systems and power demonstrate a strong commitment to to collaborate with local industry. The engineering. Information on current

110 Computer research programmes in the School can packages. Prior experience in Number databases; resolve questions of probe found at http://www.ee.uwa.edu. Portability and Broadband systems is gramming, data input/output require- au/research. Applicants for the position desirable. Apply to Recruitment Man- ments, and inclusion of internal checks should have appropriate engineering ager, NE Technologies Inc., 5085 Avalon and controls; convert detailed logical experience in university and/or industry Ridge Pkwy Suite 100, Norcross, GA flowcharts to software code; input test in areas relevant to digital design and 30071. data into computer systems; monitor implementation. Duties include devel- performance aspects such as data prop- opment and delivery of lectures and lab- agation and optimization; develop oratory courses in the relevant topics of TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY. The Depart- acceptance criteria, install software, train the School’s undergraduate courses in ment of Computer Science invites appli- users and monitor results; prepare the area of VLSI and digital systems cations in all areas of Computer Science reports, user and instructional manuals; design and implementation. Candidates for one or more tenure track positions at and analyze, review and rewrite pro- with industrial experience are encour- all levels for the academic year 2004-05. grams to increase operating efficiency or aged to apply. Applicants must address We anticipate having faculty openings at to adapt programming to new require- the selection criteria and applicants with the satellite graduate campus in Abilene, ments. Must have Oracle and Visual Basic teaching experience are requested to Texas. Specific areas of need include soft- experience and be will to travel fre- submit a teaching portfolio as part of ware engineering, formal methods, and quently. Qualified candidates must send their application. For further information high dependability software. Applicants resumes to S. Vishwanathan, VSoft regarding the position please contact must have a Ph.D. degree in computer Corp., 6455 E. Johns Xing, Ste. 450, Maureen Russell, School Manager on science or a closely related field. Faculty Duluth, GA 30097. 9380 3134 or email [email protected]. are expected to teach existing graduate edu.au or access the web link http:// and undergraduate courses, develop www.ee.uwa.edu.au/research. CLOSING new courses, and contribute to the METROPOLITAN COLLEGE OF DATE: Friday, 30 January 2004. Located research mission of the university. Texas BOSTON UNIVERSITY, Chairman, adjacent to the picturesque banks of the Tech University offers a Ph.D. and an Science and Engineering. Boston Swan River, The University of Western M.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. University's Metropolitan College seeks Australia offers an attractive benefits in Software Engineering. We offer com- a Chairman for the Science and Engi- package including generous superannu- petitive salaries, a friendly and coopera- neering Program (SEP) for September ation, fares to Perth (if applicable) for tive environment, and excellent research 2004. SEP is an innovative program that appointee and dependants along with a facilities. State-of-the-art two-way video provides promising students who want removals allowance, generous leave pro- instructional facilities allow the Lubbock to major in science or engineering, with visions and an enviable working envi- and Abilene sites to exchange course an alternative to direct admission into ronment. These and other benefits will offerings and to conduct collaborative the University's four-year programs. See be specified in the offer of employment. faculty and committee meetings. More http://www.bu.edu/met/programs/und APPLICATION DETAILS: For copies of the information on the department is avail- ergraduate/science-engineering/index. selection criteria please access the web- able at http://www.cs.ttu.edu/. Appli- html. The ideal candidate will hold a doc- site below. Applicants must address the cants should send curriculum vitae, torate in a technical or scientific field, be selection criteria. Written applications including a two-page research and familiar with engineering, and appreci- quoting the reference number, personal teaching statement, and the names of at ate the challenges confronting aspiring contact details, qualifications and expe- least three references. Electronic sub- young engineers and scientists. The rience, along with contact details of mission of application materials in the Chairman's duties include: overseeing three referees should be sent to Director, form of postscript or PDF is preferred. admissions, meeting parents, managing Human Resources, The University of Electronic submission should be sent to the curriculum, and working with other Western Australia, M350, 35 Stirling [email protected] or hardcopy University units. The Chairman will hold Highway, Crawley WA 6009 or emailed can be mailed to Dr. Susan A. Mengel, a faculty appointment. Send an applica- to [email protected] by the closing date. Chair Faculty Search Committee, c/o Ms. tion letter, a resume and three references http://jobs.uwa.edu.au/. Prime Minis- Mysti Digby, Department of Computer to Dr. Eric Braude, Chairman, SEP Search ter’s Employer of the Year in Higher Edu- Science, Texas Tech University, Box Committee, Metropolitan College, cation 2002 and 2003. 43104, Lubbock, TX 79409-3104. Boston University, 808 Commonwealth Review of applications will begin as soon Avenue, Boston MA 02215. Deadline: as they are received. Applications will be January 31, 2004. Boston University is an EMBEDDED SOFTWARE ENGINEER- accepted until the positions are filled. Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action ING MANAGER. Leads a team of s/w Candidates must be currently eligible to Employer. engineers in development of real-time work in the United States. Texas Tech embedded systems and Telecommuni- University is an equal opportunity/affir- cation Management Network (TMN) mative action employer and actively SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY, applications; provides technical direc- seeks the candidacy of women and Software Engineering Position. tions in design, development, docu- minorities. The department of Electrical Engineer- mentation and quality of software coming, Computer Science, and Software ponents. Must be knowledgeable in Engineering, South Dakota State Univer- ITU/TMN, Bellcore, ANSI, NMF stan- SYSTEMS ANALYST. Must have B.S. or sity, invites applicants for a tenure-track dards and procedures. Uses TMN tools Foreign equivalent in Engineering, Com- faculty position in Software Engineering to develop element management sys- puter Science or related. Must have 9 to begin August 15, 2004 (www.engi tems, embedded control systems and months of experience in the job offered neering.sdstate.edu/~eeweb/). As part of protocol stacks. Experienced in formal or as a Software Engineer. Duties are to the newest program in the college, the software development lifecycle processes convert data from project specifications successful candidate will provide signifi- and quality management (ISO 9000). and statements of probability and pro- cant direction for the growth and devel- Must be a B.S. with minimum 5 years cedures; develop software applications, opment of the Software Engineering pro- experience in Unix, pSOS, VxWorks, prepare work flowcharts and diagrams gram. Applicants must have an earned C/C++ Cross Compilers, Marben OSIAM using business and engineering analysis, Ph.D. in Software Engineering, Com- stack, DSET's TMN Toolkit Suite and LNP math models, computer languages and puter Engineering, Computer Science, or

January 2004 111 a closely related field and the capability fstm.htm). Alternatively, application apply. Additional information about our to successfully conduct research in soft- materials may be mailed to: Computer Program may be obtained by visiting our ware engineering. Experience with Engineering Search, Baskin School of website at http://www.cs.uwm.edu. embedded systems research/ design, Engineering, University of California, UWM is an equal opportunity institution industry, ABET accreditation, and evi- Santa Cruz, CA 95064. UCSC is an committed to diversity. dence of successful teaching is desired. EEO/AA/IRCA Employer. For a full list of qualifications, visit the website above. To apply, send a cover let- ARCHITECTURE TECHNICAL SUP- ter, curriculum vitae, names of three ref- UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MIL- PORT ANALYST. BSc in Computer Sci- erences with phone numbers, unofficial WAUKEE, Faculty Recruitment in ence related or equiv req. Send ad transcript, and application (available at Computer Science. The Computer Sci- w/resume to: SunAmerica Inc., 1 www.engineering.sdstate. ence Program in the Department of Elec- SunAmerica Center, Los Angeles, CA edu/~eeweb/se_app.pdf) to: SE Search trical Engineering & Computer Science 90067. Committee Chair, EE/CS/SE Department, is continuing its development and South Dakota State University, P.O. Box growth. Our Program has established a 2220, Brookings, SD 57007. Completed very good record in recruiting outstand- RESEARCH STAFF SCIENTIST (mate- application postmarked by March 5, ing junior faculty and in providing them rials science). Full time position. Job 2004 are assured of receiving full con- with a nurturing, as well as stimulating duties include: providing on-site techni- sideration. Continuous recruitment until environment for their career develop- cal expertise to design and assemble a the positions are filled. Inquiries: (605) ment. Several of our faculty have been RF-plasma sputtering system; investigat- 688-4526. SDSU is an AA/EEO employer the recipients of the NSF EARLY CAREER ing materials based on quantum and encourages applications from Awards. The Computer Science faculty is mechanical and optical properties; devel- women and minorities. ADA Accommo- engaged in research in many areas oping growths of semiconductor thin- dations: TTY (605) 688-4394. including Artificial Intelligence, Theory, films on optical substrates; developing Cryptography and Data Security, Dis- domain-specific characteristics of nano- tributed Systems, Networks, Program- scale optical films w/array of microelec- GRAPHICS PROGRAMMER. Out of ming Languages, Software Engineering, tronics structures; developing character- The Blue Design, located in San Fran- and Medical Informatics. The Program is ization of thin-films for shifts of spectral cisco, CA, seeks a graphics programmer also engaged in collaborative efforts with lines and refractive indices under influ- for ad-vanced internet graphics design several academic units at our University ence of applied fields; determining opti- position. Requires exp. with 3D graphics as well as other institutions including the cal characteristics of fabricated nano- design and mathematical modeling. Medical College of Wisconsin. We invite structures w/applied field; assisting in the Must possess 4 years internet applica- applications for tenure faculty positions setup of Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) tions development exp. and B.S. in math from strong candidates in the following Manipulator; haracterizing electrical & or comp. science. Fax resume to 415- areas of Computer Science: Artificial magnetic properties of bio-element, 546-7921, or tel. 415-348-8711, ext. Intelligence, Computer and Data Secu- such as ferritin, for device applications; 203 for info. rity, Data Bases, Computer Networks, developing bio-devices for bio-element and Medical Informatics. We are partic- manipulation and bio-material based ularly interested in recruiting in the areas power generation; preparing and sub- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA of Computer and Data Security, and in mitting quarterly and final reports. CRUZ, Associate or Full Professor, Medical Informatics. Recently our uni- Min.req.: Ph.D. in Materials Science ; Computer Engineering #30. The versity received a major NSF collabora- Master's and Bachelor's Degree in Physics Department of Computer Engineering at tive grant in Cyber Security that involves (or equiv); proven record & publications the University of California, Santa Cruz several university of Wisconsin campuses. of scientific research in atomic layer (UCSC) invites applications for a tenured We are the lead institution in this project. growth; machine design & construction (Associate or Full Professor) faculty posi- All candidates should have a demon- knowledge of Electron Microscopy & E- tion. We seek outstanding applicants in strated promise for excellence in research Beam Lithography; machine design the following areas of Computer Engi- and in teaching. Candidates for senior knowledge & research publications in neering: embedded systems, computer positions should have excellent research Scanning Probe Microscopy; substantial networks, computer system design, and credentials. Our University is located in a coursework in integrated circuit micro robotics. The campus is especially inter- pleasant residential neighborhood of Mil- fabrication; knowledge on established ested in candidates who can contribute waukee close to the shores of Lake Michi- research capability in bio-nano devices to the diversity and excellence of the aca- gan. Our metropolitan location facilitates and with related peer reviewed publica- demic community through their each interactions with many industries tions. For consideration, send resume to: research, teaching and service. UCSC is and affords numerous cultural and recre- STC, 10 Basil Sawyer Dr., Hampton VA the UC campus nearest to Silicon Valley ational activities. Applicants should send 23666. No phone calls. EOE. and has close research ties with the com- a hard copy of a vita by post or Fax, along puter industry. Applicants should submit with a statement of plans for research a CV, a statement of research plans, a and teaching. We also request that at NETWORK/TELECOMMUNICATIONS statement of teaching interests, URLs of least three references be asked to send MANAGER. Qualifications: BS in Comp. selected reprints, and ensure that at least letters to: Faculty Recruitment Coordina- Science or related field, MCSE Certified three confidential letters of recommen- tor for Computer Science, Department preferred, working experience within a dation are sent directly, by the deadline of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sci- complex MS NT Network, Security, MS of February 10, 2004. We strongly ence, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Exchange, SNA, IIS, Great Plains, Cisco encourage electronic submission of your PO Box 784, Milwaukee, WI 53201- and Active Directory. Knowledge of var- materials. Directions are provided at 0784. E-mail: [email protected] (for ious models of Nortel and Meridian http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/ jobs/. All let- inquiries only), Fax: 414-229-6958. Eval- phone switches is required. Mail resume ters will be treated as confidential docu- uation of all candidates will begin in to Attn: Bruce Wantuch YWCA, 1915 N. ments; please direct your references to Spring 2004 and will continue until the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr., Milwaukee, UCSC's confidentiality statement at position is filled. Women and minority WI 53212 or e-mail to jobs@ywcamilw. http://www2.ucsc.edu/ahr/ policies/con candidates are strongly encouraged to org.

112 Computer [email protected] http://computer.org +17148214010 Fax: +17148218380 Phone: USA Los Alamitos, California 90720-1314 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle ComputerSociety IEEE Computer JANUARY 2004 detsr/Pout PageNumber Advertiser /Product ia 114 114 100-112 106 104 Boldface denotesadvertisements inthisissue. 105 114 Classified Advertising 104 Cover 4 Zero GSoftware Xiran 21 University of Texas atElPaso University ofMassachusetts Boston 114 University ofKentucky 107 5 Seattle University 101 103 Seapine Software Rensselaer 101 Parasoft National University ofIreland 114 MASS 2004 103 114 44-46 Inc. John Wiley &Sons, Cover 3 Iowa StateUniversity IMSI IEEE ComputerSocietyMembership Cover 2 iCore 103 114 D.E. Shaw&Company 105 Corrigan Consulting 114 CodeFutures Cluster 2004 The CityCollegeofNew York Carnegie Mellon Arizona StateUniversity Advanced VisualSystems 10x Software Email: +14017397970 Fax: +14017397798 Phone: Barbara Lynch New England(recruitment) Email: Maddock Gregory a: +1440 2482594 Email: [email protected] +14402482456 Fax: Phone: Joe DiNardo +1269 3812556 Email: [email protected] +12693812156 Fax: Phone: Will Hamilton +17084427620 Email: [email protected] +17084425633 Fax: Phone: Dave Jones Midwest (product) Email: [email protected] Fax: +14153984156 Phone: +14154217950 Peter D.Scott Northwest (product) +17327720161 Email: [email protected] +17327720160 Fax: Phone: Dawn Becker Mid Atlantic(product/recruitment) a:+14042557942 +1404 2563800 Fax: Phone: Email: C. WilliamBentzIII Southeast Email: +19782440103 Fax: +1978 2440192 Phone: Jody Estabrook New England(product) Email: Jana Smith a:+17148214010 Email: [email protected] +17148218380 Fax: Phone: Advertising Coordinator +12124197589 Marian Anderson Email: [email protected] +12124197766 Fax: Phone: Media,AdvertisingDirector IEEE Marion Delaney [email protected] [email protected] jsmith@bmmatlanta gm. bb. [email protected] [email protected] (product/recruitment) Advertising SalesRepresentatives Advertising Personnel .com a:+17148214010 Email: [email protected] +17148218380 Fax: Phone: Business DevelopmentManager IEEE ComputerSociety, Sandy Brown a:+12039383211 Email: [email protected] +12039382418 Fax: Phone: Stan Greenfield Connecticut (product) Email: [email protected] +18474985911 Fax: +18474984520 Phone: Darcy Giovingo Midwest/Southwest (recruitment) a:+81425019552 Email: [email protected] +81425019551 Fax: Phone: German Tajiri Japan Email: [email protected] Fax: +13108364067 Phone: +13108364064 Tim Matteson (recruitment) Northwest/Southern CA Email: mr Fax: +18188884907 Phone: +18188882407 Marshall Rubin Southern CA a:+81425019552 Email: [email protected] +81425019551 Fax: Phone: German Tajiri Japan Bill Wageneck Southwest a: +19724236858 Fax: +1972 4235507 Phone: Email: [email protected] Josh Mayer Email: [email protected] [email protected] Email: Fax: +02074057506 Phone: +02074057577 Penny Lee Europe +44(0)1875825701 Email: [email protected] +44(0)1875825700 Fax: Phone: TurnbullHillary Europe (recruitment) (product) [email protected] (product) (product)

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114 Computer BOOKSHELF

guidance for architecting effective system, software, and service-oriented Implementing architectures; using product lines to streamline enterprise software design; architecting presentation tiers and user experience; and driving the technical Verification direction of the entire enterprise. Prentice Hall PTR; www.phptr.com; 0-13-141275-2; 496 pp.; $39.99. Biometrics COMPILER WRITER’S HANDBOOK ngineering a Compiler, Keith D. E Cooper and Linda Torczon. The ractical Biometrics: From Aspi- proliferation of processors, environ- ration to Implementation, Julian ments, and constraints on systems has P Ashbourn. This book concen- cast compiler technology into a wider trates on the implementation of bio- variety of settings, changing the com- metric verification techniques, with piler writer’s role. Today, code might specific regard to wide-scale public be judged on how small it is, how applications. much power it consumes, how well it Written from an operational rather compresses, or how many page faults than purely academic perspective, it it generates. serves as a practical guide, identifying In this evolving environment, the scalability issues in applications that task of building a successful compiler feature biometric verification tech- relies on the compiler writer’s ability niques. Other topics include interop- Adventure and its precursors and exam- to balance and blend algorithms, engi- erability, both from a technical and ines the mainframe text games devel- neering insights, and careful planning. operational perspective; ethnicity and oped in response, focusing on the most Today’s writer must choose a path the associated implications for bio- influential work of that era, Zork. through a design space filled with metric verification checks; and user The book covers the introduction of diverse alternatives, each with distinct psychology. commercial interactive fiction for home costs, advantages, and complexities. The book also explores nondevice- computers, particularly the contribu- This book explores ways these prob- specific issues such as human factors, tions produced by Infocom. The lems have been solved and the con- the environment, privacy, and data author also considers the influence of straints that made each solution protection. interactive fiction on other literary and attractive. By helping readers under- Springer; www.springer-ny.com; 1- gaming forms. stand the problems’ parameters and 85233-774-5; 180 pp.; $49.95. MIT Press; mitpress.mit.edu; 0-262- their impact on compiler design, the 13436-5; 286 pp.; $29.95. authors hope to convey both the depth FROM ADVENTURE TO ZORK of the problems and the breadth of pos- wisty Little Passages, Nick Mont- ARCHITECTING ENTERPRISES sible solutions. They seek to cover a T fort. Interactive fiction—the best- Practical Guide to Enterprise broad enough selection of material to known form of which is the text game A Architecture, James McGovern, show readers that real tradeoffs exist or text adventure—has received little Scott W. Ambler, Michael E. Stevens, and that the impact of those choices critical attention compared to other James Linn, Vikas Sharan, and Elias can be both subtle and far-reaching. forms of electronic literature such as K. Jo. This book helps readers create Morgan Kaufmann; www.mkp. hypertext fiction and chatterbots. The adaptive strategies for successfully com; 1-55860-698-X; 801 pp.; $64.95. book title refers to a maze in the first implementing enterprise architectures. interactive work of fiction, Adventure, Its candid assessments of existing prac- Editor: Michael J. Lutz, Rochester Institute of and the author examines interactive tice draw on detailed examples from Technology, Rochester, NY; mikelutz@mail. fiction from both the gaming and lit- the authors’ experiences building soft- rit.edu. Send press releases and new books erary perspectives. ware infrastructures for leading finan- to Computer, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, This study of interactive fiction begins cial services, telecommunications, Los Alamitos, CA 90720; fax +1 714 821 with its most important literary ances- media, and e-business firms. 4010; [email protected]. tor, the riddle. The author then discusses The authors provide start-to-finish

January 2004 115 WEB TECHNOLOGIES

three conformance levels: minimum, core, and extended. Each higher level Databases provides more fully implemented data deﬁnition and data manipulation language support. After ODBC’s success, Microsoft Deepen the Web introduced OLE DB, an open speciﬁ- cation designed for accessing all kinds Thanaa M. Ghanem and Walid G. Aref, Purdue University of data—not only data stored in DBMSs.

Java Database Connectivity The Java platform subsequently called for a new connectivity standard, and the result was Java Database

he Web has become the preferred medium for many Online databases continually database applications, such generate Web content that T as e-commerce and digital libraries. These applications users can only access through store information in huge databases that users access, query, and update direct database queries. through the Web. Database-driven Web sites have their own interfaces and access forms for creating HTML pages • a common way to connect and log Connectivity. The JDBC interface pro- on the fly. Web database technologies on to a database management sys- vides the same functionalities as define the way that these forms can tem; ODBC. JDBC-ODBC bridges enable connect to and retrieve data from data- • a standardized representation for developers in non-Java environments base servers. data types; and to use JDBC drivers to connect to data- The number of database-driven Web • libraries of ODBC API function bases. sites is increasing exponentially, and calls that let an application con- each site is creating pages dynami- nect to a DBMS, execute SQL DATABASE-TO-WEB CONNECTIVITY cally—pages that are hard for tradi- statements, and retrieve results. A Web database environment con- tional search engines to reach. Such sists mainly of a Web browser (the search engines crawl and index static A program can use ODBC to read client), a Web server that understands HTML pages; they do not send queries data from a database without target- HTTP, and a DBMS that understands to Web databases. ing a specific DBMS. All the program SQL. The information hidden inside Web needs is the vendor-supplied ODBC Database-to-Web connectivity re- databases is called the “deep Web” in driver to link to the required database. quires a layer between HTTP and SQL contrast to the “surface Web” that tra- that can translate between them. ditional search engines access easily. ODBC levels of conformance Several connectivity technologies have To enable applications and drivers emerged that differ primarily in which DATABASE CONNECTIVITY to implement portions of the ODBC part of the architecture sends queries Querying via direct Structured API specific to their needs, the standard to the database. Figure 1 gives a sim- Query Language is one of the most defines conformance levels for drivers ple view of system architectures based common ways to access a database. As in both the API and the SQL grammar. on either two-tier or three-tier tech- the number of database servers and The ODBC API defines three con- nologies. query interfaces increased, application formance levels: A core set of functions developers needed a standard method corresponds to the functions in the Two-tier technologies to access different databases. To this X/Open and SQL Access Group Call A two-tier architecture accomplishes end, Microsoft developed the Open Level Interface specification; level 1 the database-to-Web integration in a Database Connectivity standard. The and level 2 functions extend the core client tier, consisting of a Web browser ODBC interface defines set. The ODBC SQL grammar also has and Web server, and a server tier, con-

116 Computer sisting of the DBMS. Three technologies prevail in this architecture. Common gateway interface. CGI is Two-tier architecture a program that runs on the server tier Client tier Server tier and handles all the transformations Web browser + Web server DBMS between HTTP and SQL. The Web (Applets or SSI) (CGI) SQL database access form includes a link to ODBC the CGI program. When a client references the HTML form, the Web server extracts the query parameters Three-tier architecture and forwards them to the CGI pro- Client tier Middleware tier Server tier gram on the server. Web browser + Web server Application server DBMS HTTP SQL The CGI program reads the para- ODBC ODBC meters, formats them appropriately, and sends a query to the database. When it receives the query result, the CGI program formats it as HTML Figure 1. Database-to-Web connectivity: (a) two-tier technologies and (b) three-tier pages and sends it back to the Web technologies. server. Perl and JavaScript are two among implementations merge the applica- .cs.purdue.edu/edumed/). EduMed many popular languages for writing tion and Web server into one Web helps users ﬁnd and query online med- CGI programs. application server. ical databases uniformly. It is built on Java applets. Applets are Java pro- Examples of application servers top of an extensible prototype multi- grams that Web browsers can load include IBM Websphere, Oracle 9i, media database management system dynamically and execute on the client’s and Sun ONE. called VDBMS (www.cs.purdue.edu/ Web browser. Applets use JDBC to vdbms/). connect directly to the DBMS via sock- DEEP WEB SEARCH ENGINES ets and thus do not require a Web A July 2000 survey by BrightPlanet server. (www.brightplanet.com) showed that e expect deep Web search Server side includes. SSI is code the deep Web includes about 550 bil- engines and technologies to written inside an HTML page and lion pages and that public information W improve rapidly and to dra- processed by the Web server. When a hidden in it is 400 to 500 times larger matically affect how the Web is used client invokes the HTML page, the than what users can access through the by providing easy access to many more Web server executes the scripts, which surface Web. Access to information in information resources. in turn use ODBC or JDBC to read the deep Web comes only through data from the DBMS. The Web server database interfaces and queries. Thanaa M. Ghanem is a graduate then formats the data into HTML Comprehensive information re- research assistant in the Department pages and sends it back to the trieval requires simultaneous search- of Computer Sciences at Purdue Uni- browser. ing of multiple surface and deep Web versity. Contact her at ghanemtm@ Examples of SSI scripting languages resources. Deep Web search engines cs.purdue.edu. are ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP and Cold- aim to identify, retrieve, and classify Fusion. such content. They work by rephras- Walid G. Aref is an associate profes- ing the query and sending it simulta- sor in the Department of Computer Three-tier technologies neously to multiple databases in real Sciences at Purdue University. Contact Three-tier architectures add a mid- time. him at [email protected]. dleware tier—the application server— Current commercial products in this between the client and server tiers. The area include BrightPlanet’s Deep Query middleware handles all application Manager (DQM2), Quigo Techno- operations and connections for the logies’ Intellisonar (www.quigo.com/ Editor: Sumi Helal, Computer and Informa- clients, including data transfer between intellisonar.htm), and Deep Web tion Science and Engineering Dept., Univer- the Web server and DBMS. Technologies’ Distributed Explorit sity of Florida, P.O. Box 116125, Gainesville, Application servers offer other (www.deepwebtech.com/dexpl.shtml). FL 32611-6120; [email protected]ﬂ.edu functions such as transaction man- In the research community, EduMed agement and load balancing. Some is a project at Purdue University (www

January 2004 117 EMBEDDED COMPUTING

FPGA COMPONENT SPECIFICATION Tapping the full potential of these Programming hybrid chips presents an interesting challenge. System developers can replace current COTS board designs with a single hybrid chip, but specifying cus- Models for Hybrid tom components within the FPGA requires knowledge of hardware design methods and tools that most system programmers do not have. CPU/FPGA Chips Researchers are seeking solutions to this problem by investigating new David Andrews and Douglas Niehaus, University of Kansas design languages, hardware/software speciﬁcation environments, and devel- Peter Ashenden, Ashenden Designs opment tools. Projects such as Ptolemy (ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/), Rosetta

esigners of embedded and real-time systems are contin- Components that combine a ually challenged to meet CPU and reconfigurable logic D tighter system requirements at better price-performance gates need a programming ratios. Best-practice methods have model that abstracts the long promoted the use of commercial- off-the-shelf components to reduce computational hardware. design costs and time to market, but creating COTS components that are reusable in a wide range of applica- cores with up to approximately 4 mil- (sldl.org), and System-C (systemc.org) tions remains difficult. lion free gates, while the Excalibur from are exploring system-level specification In part, the challenge lies in satisfy- Altera (www.altera. com) combines an capabilities that can drive software ing the contradictory design forces of ARM 922 core with about the same compilation and hardware synthesis. generalization and specialization. Sys- number of free gates. Other projects such as Streams-C tems designers are all too familiar with Designers can configure the free (rcc.lanl.gov/Tools/Streams-C/index. the tension these opposing forces cause FPGA gates with a widening range php) and Handel C (www.celoxica. in trying to balance cost versus perfor- of standard FPGA system library com- com) focus on raising the abstraction mance. Adopting COTS components ponents. This intellectual property level for programming FPGAs from reduces costs and time to market but includes serial and parallel I/O inter- gate-level parallelism to modified and often fails to meet the most demand- faces, bus arbiters, priority interrupt augmented C syntax. System Verilog ing performance requirements; custom- controllers, and dynamic RAM con- (eda.org/sv-cc/) and a newly evolving designed components can achieve sig- trollers. The IP components let design- VHDL standard (eda.org/vhdl-200x/) nificantly higher performance but at ers select an FPGA IP set to create a attempt to abstract away the distinction greater development costs and longer specialized system-on-chip. SoC solu- between the two sides of the traditional times to market. tions can achieve COTS economies of low-level hardware/software interface scale with IP selected to meet specific into a system-level perspective. HYBRID CPU/FPGA CHIPS system requirements. Although these approaches differ in Emerging hybrid chips containing The free FPGA gates can also sup- the scope of their objectives, they all both CPU and field-programmable gate port customized application-specific share the goal of raising the abstrac- array (FPGA) components are an excit- components for performance-critical tion level required to design and inte- ing new development. They promise functions. While FPGA-based imple- grate hardware and software com- COTS economies of scale while also mentations do not perform as well as ponents. supporting significant hardware cus- equivalent ASICs, they can often pro- tomization. For example, the Virtex II vide acceptable performance with a sig- Crossing the boundary Pro from Xilinx (www.xilinx.com) nificantly better price-performance A question remains as to whether combines up to four Power PC 405 ratio. high-level FPGA programming lan-

118 Computer guages will mature to a point that lets threads distributed flexibly across the semaphore control and thread context. software engineers apply their skills system CPU and FPGA assets. At the In addition, most microprocessors pro- across the CPU/FPGA boundaries. highest abstraction level, the compu- vide the minimum hardware support Unfortunately, current hybrid pro- tational structure of hybrid applica- required to implement atomic sema- gramming models are still immature. tions remains familiar. Whether the phore operations—for example, test- They generally treat FPGAs as inde- threads implementing a computation and-set or compare-and-swap support. pendent accelerators with computations are CPU- or FPGA-based becomes just The FPGA computational model is outside the scope of the programs run- another design and implementation expressed at an abstraction level dif- ning on the CPU. They generally use parameter with resource use and appli- ferent enough from that of the CPU to simple I/O queues for communications cation performance implications. leave no immediately obvious equiva- between the FPGA-based and CPU- lent to the CPU thread context of reg- based computations, and this hybrid ister set, program counter, and stack model is not mature enough for syn- The programming pointer. Additionally, current FPGA chronizing the execution of component model suports technology synthesizes the data paths computations—a critical capability in iterative application and operations that represent the distributed and parallel computation. development. thread computations and maps them A mature high-level programming into the FPGA before runtime. model would abstract the CPU/FPGA These differences require new mech- components, bus structure, memory, anisms for achieving the basic multi- and low-level peripheral protocols into How to perform this partitioning to threaded model policy relative to a transparent system platform. In gen- best support application or system threads running within the FPGA and eral, programming models provide the requirements is yet another challeng- threads interacting across the CPU/ definition of software components as ing problem. However, the model sup- FPGA boundary. Although the lack of well as the interactions between these ports iterative application development an existing computational model components, as Edward Lee described that begins with an exclusively CPU- seems to be a liability at first glance, it in a discussion of embedded systems’ based multithreaded implementation actually presents an opportunity to cre- software frameworks (“What’s Ahead and gradually transfers specific threads ate efficient mechanisms for imple- for Embedded Software?,” Computer, to FPGA support. menting FPGA threads and for sup- Sept. 2000, pp. 18-20). All of these attributes speed the time porting thread synchronization. Message passing and shared-mem- to market. They also let designers focus ory synchronization protocols are two FPGA support on those portions of the OPERATING SYSTEM CODESIGN familiar component interaction mech- application that performance mea- A key challenge in giving program- anisms. Practitioners have successfully surements indicate will benefit most mers access to these new hybrid com- used both in embedded systems and from it. putations is extending the operating enjoy debating the relative merits of system across the CPU/FPGA boundary their personal choice. We describe the Policy and mechanisms in a form that abstracts the differences multithreaded shared-memory model We can draw a useful distinction between the computational models here, though many aspects of the dis- between policy and mechanism. The used within the CPU and FPGA com- cussion are equally appropriate for the multithreaded model policy is fairly ponents. message-passing model. simple: to allow the specification of Operating systems provide the concurrent execution threads and pro- underlying synchronization and con- MULTITHREADING MODEL tocols for accessing common data and trol mechanisms for higher-level pro- The multithreaded programming synchronizing the execution of inde- gramming models as well as a generic model is convenient for describing pendent threads. The mechanisms that set of interfaces through which appli- embedded applications composed of a general-purpose processor uses to cation programs can access system concurrently executing components achieve this policy include the defini- functions. These OS functions relieve that synchronize and exchange data. tion of data structures that store thread application programmers from need- Its popularity is apparent in the wide- execution state information and the ing to know the low-level protocols spread use of the Posix threads stan- semantics of thread synchronization and device-specific requirements. For dard. interactions with the operating system hybrid systems, this functionality will thread scheduler. require hardware/software codesign High-level abstraction Both the synchronization and the across the CPU/FGPA boundary. The multithreaded programming thread-scheduling portions of the sys- System developers have always model specifies applications as sets of tem software access data structures for regarded OS codesign as a means to

January 2004 119 Embedded Computing

increase system performance through FPGA codesign can also reduce OS performance and reducing design parallelism and to improve the pre- scheduling jitter, or variable delays of times and development costs. dictability of system behavior. Thus, the scheduling decision. Jitter can orig- the codesign work required to enable inate from several sources, including a hybrid programming model can also variable execution time of system soft- Acknowledgment enhance general OS performance. ware, existing mechanisms used to The work is partially sponsored by implement interrupt-handling meth- NSF EHS contract # CCR-0311599. Function migration ods, task scheduling, and concurrency to FPGA domain control. FPGA-based implementation David Andrews is an associate profes- A wide range of OS functions will of some of these OS functions will sig- sor of electrical engineering and com- certainly benefit from either a partial nificantly reduce system overhead by puter science at the University of or a complete migration into the FPGA transferring computational loads from Kansas. Contact him at dandrews@ domain. Examples include receiving the CPU into FPGA-based concurrent ittc.ku.edu. and evaluating interrupts, time keep- state machine components. ing, event queue management, task These and many other possibilities Douglas Niehaus is an associate pro- scheduling, clock synchronization, make codesign of OS functions an fessor of electrical engineering and support for distributed computation, exciting area of current research. computer science at the University of and concurrency control. FPGA sup- Kansas. Contact him at niehaus@ittc. port can increase accuracy, perfor- ku.edu. mance, and predictability. ystem-level multithreaded programming requires new hardware/ Peter Ashenden is director of Ashen- System benefits S software codesign approaches that den Designs. Contact him at peter@ In this context, FPGAs provide a support operating system and applica- ashenden.com.au. means to refine system properties such tion functions. Current efforts to as the resolution and precision of the develop this capability will make hybrid Editor: Wayne Wolf, Dept. of Electrical Engi- system time standard. This translates CPU/FPGA computational components neering, Princeton University, Princeton, to finer event scheduling, a fundamen- accessible to a much broader commu- NJ, 08544-5263; [email protected] tal aspect of any real-time system. nity of system programmers, increasing Get access to individual IEEE Computer Society documents online.

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120 Computer IT SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVES

is supplemented with direct synchronous and asynchronous links between Distributed Learning each student and the instructor to facilitate communication of feedback and questions. Environments Online Online distributed learning uses Maryam Alavi, Emory University information technologies to provide students with Web-based access to content and resources such as assignments, software simulations, and tests and

istributed learning is an instructional model that gives students access to a wide range DLEs must balance technology D of resources—teachers, peers, and content such as readings with student attributes and and exercises—independently of place instructional strategies. and time. It leverages computing, communication, and multimedia technologies to create learning environments that can be richer and more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective than the DLE APPROACHES exercises. This approach lets students standard classroom or lecture hall. Information technologies give DLE choose the time, pace, and frequency of Over the past several years, the pop- designers the flexibility to customize their learning activities. ularity of distributed learning envi- learning environments for diverse stu- ronments (DLEs) in both professional dent communities. For example, con- Collaborative and academic settings has steadily tent navigation can be predetermined Learning occurs most effectively when increased due to by the instructor or left to student con- students can interact in small task-ori- trol. A simple DLE might consist of ented groups. Information technologies • the rising demand from traditional sequential access to static material, now make it possible to extend collabo- students as well as working adults while a more complex offering can rative interactions to distributed envi- for postsecondary and profes- involve high-level interactions among ronments. These interactions can be sional education, students as well as between students synchronous—for example, through • advances in information tech- and instructors. videoconferencing and online chat— nologies, Distributed learning may be gener- or asynchronous—for example, through • the Internet’s ubiquity, ally categorized as broadcast, online, e-mail and computerized bulletin boards. • the emergence of high-capacity or collaborative. However, specific wire and wireless networks, and DLEs usually include features of more DISTRIBUTED LEARNING • the pervasiveness of networked than one of these approaches. For MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS personal computers in both busi- example, a designer might combine The Internet has played a key role in nesses and homes. broadcast for the efficient delivery of the development of DLEs by providing lectures with collaborative learning for scalable connectivity to bridge geo- Many universities and colleges, for- student team projects. graphic distance and establishing the profit organizations, and corporate browser as a ubiquitous user interface training departments now offer DLE Broadcast for various distributed learning soft- courses and programs. For example, The broadcast approach replicates a ware applications. Emory University’s Goizueta Business lecture-style pedagogy. In a typical con- Learning management systems School and Duke University’s Fuqua figuration, lectures and presentation build upon these and other technical School offer executive MBA programs material are transmitted from the features to provide instructors and stu- in a distributed learning format, while teacher’s site via cable or satellite to the dents with high-level, easy-to-use tech- the for-profit University of Phoenix has students’ locations. In some cases, the nical tools for support of learning online degree programs in various fields. one-way broadcast of learning content activities, including

January 2004 121 IT Systems Perspectives

pline—staying on schedule, logging on Distributed Learning Resources frequently, and so on—combined with mindful engagement in learning activ- The following resources provide more information about distributed learn- ities generally result in better outcomes. ing environments: Other positively correlated attributes include levels of academic ability, moti- • M. Alavi and D. Leidner, “Technology-Mediated Learning: A Call for vation, degree of effort, and maturity. Greater Depth and Breadth of Research,” Information Systems Research, In addition to student characteristics, vol. 12, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1-10. a major factor in DLE success is the • M. Alavi, Y. Yoo, and D.R. Vogel, “Using Information Technology to instructional strategy with respect to Add Value to Management Education,” Academy of Management J., vol. 40, no. 5, 1997, pp. 1310-1333. • presentation—the selection, dis- • S.R. Hiltz and R. Goldman, eds., Asynchronous Learning Networks: The play mode, and format of infor- Research Frontier, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, to appear in 2004. mation; • G. Piccoli, R. Ahmed, and B. Ives, “Web-Based Virtual Learning • sequencing—the order in which Environments: A Research Framework and a Preliminary Assessment of different topics are presented to Effectiveness in Basic IT Skills Training,” MIS Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 4, learners; 2001, pp. 401-426. • delivery—the media used as the • G.C. Van Dusen, The Virtual Campus: Technology and Reform in Higher presentation channels; and Education, Jossey-Bass, 2000. • synthesis—the establishment of relationships among various topics.

• multimedia information and doc- Current tools embedded in most Technology can greatly enhance ument management for storing, learning management systems focus on DLE instructional strategies. For retrieving, and organizing content electronically warehousing course con- example, using digitized multimedia and discussions; tent and disseminating static lectures such as photographs, video clips, ani- • advanced e-mail with spell check, and material. Beyond e-mail, live chat, mated graphics, and sound can help multiple views for sorting mes- and electronic bulletin boards, tech- retain students’ attention, while inter- sages, and extensive editing capa- nology that supports case-based and active activities such as live chat can bilities; collaborative pedagogies tends to be stimulate discussion and collaboration. • threaded discussions for asyn- scarce. Future learning management chronous interactions; and systems must therefore provide sup- ontinuing IT improvements will • instant messaging to support syn- port for a wider range of instructional make distributed learning an chronous exchanges. strategies, such as software templates C increasingly viable alternative to for structured group interactions. traditional face-to-face approaches. At Most DLEs feature a simple inter- the same time, technology per se does face that lets students easily navigate DLE EFFECTIVENESS not produce desired learning outcomes. the various components and reduces Numerous research studies have Failure to consider students’ attributes the need to learn new interface styles revealed no signiﬁcant differences and instructional strategies can lead to and commands. They also usually between distributed and traditional technologically advanced but ineffec- include software support for student learning environments in terms of their tive DLEs that waste resources and dis- registration, testing, grading, and other learning outcomes. A DLE’s advantages satisfy learners. administrative activities. include convenience, ﬂexibility, cur- Some systems—including Blackboard rency of material, possibilities for low- Maryam Alavi is the John M. and (http://blackboard.net), the IBM Lotus ering costs, and individualized learning. Lucy Cook Chair of Information Strat- Learning Management System (www. However, other studies indicate higher egy at Emory University’s Goizueta lotus.com/lotus/offering6.nsf/wdocs/ student dropout and course withdrawal Business School. Contact her at homepage), and WebCT (www.webct. rates in DLEs and, in some cases, less [email protected]. com)—are developed commercially, satisfaction with the learning process. and can be licensed or “rented” from DLE effectiveness depends as much Editor: Richard G. Mathieu, Dept. of vendors. Other systems, such as the on student attributes and instructional Decision Sciences and MIS, St. Louis Virtual Classroom developed at the strategies as it does on inherent features University, St. Louis, MO 63108; New Jersey Institute of Technology, are of the distributed learning model. For [email protected] designed for in-house use. example, self-regulation and self-disci-

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get is $677,000. More than half of these firms have been in business since Best Business before 1990, many for decades. Associations managed by AMCs are free from employer obligations and the many business risks generally asso- Practices for ciated with their organizations’ operations. Association management companies bear many of these operational obligations as a result of the Standards Groups very nature of their service agree- ments. Michael LoBue, LoBue & Majdalany Management Group AMC STANDARD Several years ago, the IAAMC

n highly competitive industries such as computing and communications, standards serve many pur- A new standard raises poses: They ensure equal access to I the bar for association primary technology, increase competition, help grow markets, and spark management companies. innovation. To guarantee fairness and accessibility, the originators of new standards often form trade associations to manage the technology and oversee the work of developing future ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT membership decided that it should technologies. COMPANIES establish a standard for AMCs to use However, this begs the question of Three basic options are available for as a benchmark for identifying and who is setting the business practice association management and adminis- providing quality services. After exam- standards for these standards groups. tration: member volunteers, employed ining various methods, it determined No member of a trade association staff, and an association management that creating an American National wants to wake up one morning and company. Table 1 provides a brief Standard was the best approach learn that its critical standards group overview of the relative strengths and because is facing bankruptcy or a major law- weaknesses of each option. Of these, suit from a conflict of interest, or some only AMCs can deliver an accredited • ANSI procedures ensure that the other business risk that is easily avoid- association management solution. most impartial processes are used able with knowledgeable and compe- AMCs are for-profit firms that pro- to create the standard and that no tent professional management. vide management and operational sup- small group of interested parties The Standard of Good Practices for port services for nonprofit organiza- dominates the standard; and Association Management Companies tions, freeing members to focus on gov- • given ANSI’s worldwide recogni- (ANSI/IAAMC A100.1-2002) is the ernance, strategy, and direction. In a tion, there is a higher likelihood basis of a new accreditation program survey conducted in 2003, the AMC that the standard will be accepted sponsored by the International Associ- Institute (www.amcinstitute.org) iden- as an independent measure of high ation of Association Management tified 527 association management quality. Companies (IAAMC; www.iaamc.org). companies from 47 US states and five This program offers trade associations other countries. These AMCs manage The new AMC standard establishes and professional societies previously more than 3,000 client organizations, detailed performance requirements unavailable management choices. Ap- serving more than 3.1 million members. representing the best practices for asso- proved by the American National The AMC business segment is estab- ciation management in 10 key areas: Standards Institute, the criteria are lished and mature. Operating budgets client contracts, servicing the client, based on specific expertise and docu- of AMC-managed organizations range project completion, financial manage- mented best practices defined through from $50,000 to more than $16 mil- ment and internal controls, insurance, the ANSI consensus process. lion annually; the average annual bud- employee recruitment and selection,

124 Computer Table1. Association management options. Option Strengths Weaknesses Member volunteers • High commitment to and understanding • Time conflicts with volunteers’ employers of the organization’s mission • No expertise at running an association • Low direct cost (initially) • Turnover creates inconsistencies • No neutral party; open to conflicts of interest Employed staff • Dedicated staff • High overhead (office space, equipment) • Specialized knowledge about the association • Not able to staff key positions or areas of expertise • Continuity unless they can justify a full-time employee • Higher burden and risk associated with being an employer Association management • Expertise in association management • Possible mismatch between the association’s needs and company • Lower overhead the AMC’s expertise • Expertise in multiple disciplines • Absence of many typical legal risks associated with operations • Continuity employee training and professional external auditor, usually a certified Second, representatives of organiza- development, subcontracting and pur- public accountant trained in the prac- tions managed to the standard have chasing, record keeping, and internal tice of accounting-firm peer reviews, more time to focus on advancing their and external audit requirements. whose qualifications the IAAMC has goals rather than questioning how well Why is such a standard necessary? accepted. The auditor conducts an their organization is managed. After all, how difficult can it be for any onsite investigation of the AMC’s poli- Third, standards organizations that professional service firm, which man- cies and practices, interviews staff, and an accredited AMC manages can be ages its own business, to manage a non- inspects records to verify that the firm assured that their management deeply profit trade association? The answer is meets or exceeds the standard. understands the standards process, the “not very,” but neither is designing a Associations shopping for manage- value of standards, and what is next-generation circuit board or oper- ment services are already beginning to involved in achieving and maintaining ating system, if you know what you are specify that only accredited firms are them. Accredited AMCs face many of doing. eligible to submit proposals for new the same types of compliance require- The same applies to managing indus- business. IAAMC accreditation is thus ments that their client organizations do try associations; knowledge, training, a powerful tool for associations to in standardizing the technical specifi- and experience all make a difference. ensure that their management services cations that their members generate. Association management also carries are the most qualified the market has an implied fiduciary role—as a fidu- to offer. Currently, 21 AMCs have ciary, you are held to a higher standard earned IAAMC accreditation to the echnology markets have been of performance and care when acting new standard and another 11 have well served by standards. Now on behalf of another’s affairs than on applications on file. T leaders of critical standards asso- your own. ciations can use a rigorous standard BENEFITS OF THE STANDARD based on the industry-accepted ANSI IAAMC ACCREDITATION Those who represent their compa- consensus process to choose how their Accreditation, the process that as- nies’ interests in trade associations and own organization’s business needs are sures compliance with a standard, is standards bodies face two major chal- met. By adhering to a set of best prac- common in the marketplace. For exam- lenges: their time is extremely scarce, tices identified by a broad spectrum of ple, motor oil manufacturers demon- and they are industry and technology service providers and associations, strate their adherence to the practices experts, not association experts. accredited AMCs offer associations endorsed by the Society of Automobile Beyond the usual economies of scale something they have never had before Engineers by placing the acronym SAE associated with management by an —world-class management. on their products. Likewise, common AMC, associations managed by household appliances bearing the UL accredited AMCs enjoy three impor- Michael LoBue, CAE, is president of mark have been accredited by the inde- tant benefits. LoBue & Majdalany Management pendent Underwriters Laboratories. First, the leaders and membership of Group. Contact him at LoBue@ In the case of the Standard of Good organizations managed by an accred- LM-Mgmt.com. Practices for Association Management ited AMC do not have to spend time Companies, AMCs wishing to demon- learning about best practices or defin- Editor: Gary Robinson, 85 East India Row, strate a commitment to excellence ing them for their needs. Accredited Apt. 18C, Boston, MA 02110; apply to the IAAMC for accreditation. AMCs bring this best-practices frame- [email protected] The AMC shoulders the cost of an work to their client organizations.

January 2004 125 THE PROFESSION

For nearly half a century after the book appeared, the organization man From Organization typified the professional. In most parts of the world, huge corporations—private, public, and government-owned— employed hundreds of thousands of Man to Free Agent organization men. That era also saw the rise of the computing professional, Mohan Babu, Infosys Technologies Limited personified by legions of IBM employees clad in white shirt and tie. Endless movies idolized devoted company men in gray flannel suits and the stable life they enjoyed. Most white-collar pro-

ojciech Cellary brought out a key point in his To thrive in a rapidly column on “The Profes- changing world, sion’s Role in the Global W computing professionals Information Society” (Sept. 2003, pp. 124, 122-123): Com- must become free puting professionals continually face exclusion from their work because agents. digital technology advances so swiftly. Along with this risk, changes in the global information society have led to William H. Whyte wrote his much fessionals across the world sought and a shift in the computing professional’s acclaimed book, The Organization could aspire to this American Dream role from “organization man” to free Man (University of Pennsylvania Press, of a good education that led to a good agent. Renowned management guru 2002), and the term soon caught the job, a house in the suburbs, and a wife Peter Drucker outlined this trend in fancy of an entire generation of work- and kids. During this age the public “Managing Oneself” (Harvard Busi- ing professionals. Whyte deﬁnes orga- regarded corporations with reverence ness Journal, March-April 1999, pp. nization men as and deference, a topic analyzed by 65-74). Drucker advises professionals, authors like Fred Harmon and Garry “... and we will have to stay mentally ... the ones of our middle class who Jacobs, who note in their book The alert and engaged during a 50-year have left home, spiritually as well as Vital Difference (Amacom, 1985) that working life, which means knowing physically, to take the vows of orga- “Ma Bell [AT&T] became the ultimate how and when to change the work we nization life, and it is they who are symbol of a benevolent corporation do.” the mind and soul of our great self- working in and for the public interest.” perpetuating institutions. In a sys- THE ORGANIZATION MAN tem that makes such hazy DEATH OF THE ORGANIZATION MAN The traditional concept of the com- terminology as “junior executive” The corporate world experienced a puting profession originated just after psychologically necessary, they are radical transformation in the late 1980s World War II, when most Western of the staff as much as the line, and and early 1990s, when cost cutting, nations enjoyed a long growth spell. most are destined to live poised in a downsizing, and rightsizing became the To cater to the emerging needs of the middle area that still awaits a satis- new mantra. Corporations across the postwar market, corporations built factory euphemism. But they are the globe transformed from benevolent gigantic factories to manufacture prod- dominant members of our society entities to proﬁt centers driven by the ucts and serve consumer needs. To nonetheless.... interests of their stockholders. manage these operations, organiza- This left the concept of the organi- tions also started automating their sys- Note that Whyte wrote his book dur- zation man dying if not completely tems with computers. Spurred by this ing an age when men constituted the dead. The most visible cornerstone of growth in manufacturing productivity, bulk of the white-collar workforce, the organization man’s existence—life- governments, financial institutions, and I will not attempt to be politically time employment—eroded as well. and retailers began to automate their correct by using the term organization Globalization of business and manage- systems as well. During this period, people here. Continued on page 126

128 Computer The Profession Continued from page 128

Table 1. Organization man versus free agent. BECOMING FREE AGENTS Table 1 shows how careers in IT Organization man Free agent consulting have evolved from lifelong Works with the HR department to plan Manages own career path single-employer jobs to a free-agent a career path model. Y2K, the Internet, and the dot- Career progression assumed to be well Career is typically a mix of entrepreneurship and com boom brought a whole legion of defined; top performers promoted projects, with no clear path to the top professionals from varied backgrounds Thinks of a career as a hierarchical path Will go wherever opportunity and money are into the computing field. Some joined in the organization traditional companies’ IT departments, Perceived to be loyal and enjoys job Considers the notion of a job-for-life passé; but many decided to explore careers in security constantly competes for jobs, assignments, or consulting. The industry also saw the projects appearance of a whole array of con- Identified with single employers; for Now only loosely associated with employers; sulting companies, ranging from small example, business school graduates in the even those working for blue-chip computing shops with a handful of consultants to 1960s and 1970s vied for careers at IBM companies often explore newer opportunities large system integrators like IBM and EDS. The industry afforded a gamut of ment practices also meant the global- and performance-oriented groups and vocational choices, from short-term ization of cost cutting, downsizing, and structures, ushering in the era of gold- projects spanning a few weeks to long- layoffs. Significantly, even Japanese collar workers. These free agents are term maintenance projects lasting a companies—leading proponents of life- highly skilled professionals who owe a few years. Along the way, computing time employment until recently—have greater allegiance to their profession professionals also realized that the revisited their ideals in light of their than to the organizations for which industry was becoming increasingly economy’s decade-long downturn. In they work. market driven. Thus, getting certified India, the wave of privatization sweep- Daniel Pink first extended the term in vendor technologies, being associ- ing through public companies has led free agent—borrowed from profes- ated with professional bodies—includ- to many so-called voluntary retire- sional sports—to corporate profes- ing the IEEE and ACM—and building ments. Asian and European companies sionals in his book Free Agent Nation expertise in current skills gave them have followed in their American coun- (Warner Books, 2002). Pink sees the more leverage than being associated terparts’ footsteps and now use layoffs emergence of moonlighting as one way with a blue-chip employer. as a regular cost-cutting measure. professionals can hedge their bets in a Individual computing professionals Individuals have thus begun to real- changing world: have also shown their market savvy by ize that even if they wanted to, they selling themselves as experts in Cobol, could not entrust their career to a sin- Diversification—that is, an indepen- ERP, Java, .NET, the Web, and other gle company: Corporations themselves dent worker spreading her risks technologies the market demands, are regularly evolving, transforming, across a portfolio of projects, clients, sometimes juggling multiple hats at acquiring other businesses or being skills and customers is the best hedg- once. The career trajectory of many acquired by them, and sometimes going ing strategy…. In the Organization computing professionals has begun to bankrupt. Professionals are experienc- Man era, moonlighting was a big resemble that of free agents who take ing what Intel cofounder Andy Grove no-no, the very name implied that on a series of projects or assignments calls a strategic inflexion point (Only you were doing something illicit con- that help them market their skills to the The Paranoid Survive, Time Warner, cealing your behavior under the highest bidder. 1999), with the traditional notions of cover of darkness. No more. Today, The computing professional may be work and career giving way to a new anybody who holds a job and isn’t taking a page from a trend already model in which individuals are looking for a side gig—or crafting a established by other professionals in expected to take responsibility for their business plan, writing a screenplay, vocations such as law, medicine, own career moves. or setting up shop on eBay—is out finance, and academia. Lawyers and of touch. Moonlighting is a way to financial analysts have long known that TRANSITION TO FREE AGENT diversify your human capital invest- their real allegiance is to the profession Faced with this new reality, comput- ments—and hedge against the risk rather than to individual organizations ing professionals have made a funda- of your company collapsing or your or companies where they work. Being mental shift in how they view their job disappearing. In some sense, a corporate attorney or a corporate careers. Traditional organizational we’re all moonlighters, because in financial analyst is perceived to be less hierarchies are giving way to project- every sense, we’re all risk managers. glamorous and financially rewarding

126 Computer NEW than working for a high-profile part- edge worker think and behave like a for 2004! nership or, better still, founding one’s chief executive officer.... Every exist- own firm. Academicians and professors ing society, even the most individual- IEEE/ACM TRANSACTIONS have refined moonlighting into an art— istic one, takes two things for ON COMPUTATIONAL consulting for large corporations, help- granted, if only subconsciously: that BIOLOGY AND BIOINFOR- ing their clients understand and organizations outlive workers, and MATICS incorporate the latest academic and that most people stay put.... But Stay on top of the exploding research ideas, and raking in huge today the opposite is true. Knowledge fields of computational biol- fees—even while continuing their day workers outlive organizations, and ogy and bioinformatics with job of teaching and spearheading uni- they are mobile. The need to manage the latest peer-reviewed versity research. oneself is therefore creating a revolu- research. By building and maintaining a brand tion in human affairs. This new journal will empha- and attracting a steady stream of size the algorithmic, mathe- clients, free-agent professionals can Academia pays close attention to matical, statistical and com- thrive by following the models estab- these industry trends. Engineering putational methods that are lished by those in the following fields: schools and universities, especially in central in bioinformatics and the West, have begun introducing tech- computational biology • lawyers and legal professionals; nologists to entrepreneurship and busi- including… • chartered accountants and finan- ness fundamentals. Further, the students cial professionals; graduating into the field of computing • Computer programs in • doctors and medical specialists; are beginning to realize that courses in bioinformatics • management consultants; entrepreneurship will play an essential • Biological databases • architects, builders, masons, and role in helping them manage their lives • Proteomics craftsmen; and careers. • Functional genomics • artists, performers, singers, and • Computational problems musicians; in genetics • freelance writers and columnists; s professionals in a workforce • athletes and sports stars; and with evolving expectations of the Publishing quarterly in 2004 • academicians and professors who A employer-employee relationship, Member rate: moonlight as consultants. most of us will need to acquire and $35 print issues apply entrepreneurial and business $28 online access Computing professionals now real- management skills to manage our $46 print and online ize that they need to take active charge careers. Our career trajectories will thus Institutional rate: $345 of the direction in which their careers depend on constant marketing and net- are headed. Whether they view a career working rather than climbing the lad- Subscribe today! as a series of assignments or as a mix of der of a predefined career track. http://computer.org/tcbb traditional jobs and moonlighting, all computing professionals must actively take control of their career. Today’s companies value people based on what Although Mohan Babu is a manager they bring to the project, assignment, with Infosys Technologies Limited’s or work task rather than how many SETLabs Group, the views expressed years these professionals have spent at in this column are his personally. Con- one job. Quoting Drucker again: tact him at [email protected].

The challenges of managing oneself may seem obvious, if not elementary. And the answers may seem self-evi- dent to the point of appearing naive. Editor: Neville Holmes, School of But managing oneself requires new Computing, University of Tasmania, and unprecedented things from the Locked Bag 1-359, Launceston 7250; individual, and especially from the [email protected] knowledge worker. In effect, managing oneself demands that each knowl-