Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2025
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast character classification with z3
We often need to quickly classify characters. For example, consider how the binary data that you send by email is converted to an ASCII string made of 64 distinct characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, +, /). ASCII characters are storedContinue…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CRA and CCC Respond to OSTP RFI on Developing an AI R&D Strategic Plan
The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have ignited a global race for leadership, and the United States is keen to stay at the forefront. As the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) develops its 2025…
From insideHPC
White House Imposing Export Restrictions on EDA Software to China
The U.S. government’s drive to hobble China’s advanced chip capabilities, mostly focused to date on restricting exports of GPUs used for AI, has spilled over into software used for designing chips – electronic design automation…
From insideHPC
Recogni and DataVolt Partner on Energy-Efficient AI Cloud Infrastructure
San Jose and Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — May 28, 2025 — Generative AI inference systems company Recogni Inc. and sustainable AI cloud company DataVolt announced a partnership to build what they say will be the most energy…
From insideHPC
DOE Announces “Doudna” Dell-NVIDIA Supercomputer at NERSC
The new system, due in 2026, is named after Jennifer Doudna, the Berkeley Lab-based biochemist who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work on gene-editing technology. Powered by NVIDIA’s next-generation Vera Rubin…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: NGC 1068 Is the “Squid Galaxy”
I hadn’t known that the NGC 1068 galaxy is nicknamed the “Squid Galaxy.” It is, and it’s spewing neutrinos without the usual accompanying gamma rays.
From insideHPC
Report: NVIDIA and AMD Devising Export Rules-Compliant Chips for China AI Market
One of the biggest stories this week in the HPC-AI world involves — surprise! — NVIDIA. Actually, make that two or three of the biggest stories. One is NVIDIA’s stellar quarterly earnings announcement in the face of concerns
…
From Schneier on Security
Surveillance Via Smart Toothbrush
The only links are from The Daily Mail and The Mirror, but a marital affair was discovered because the cheater was recorded using his smart toothbrush at home when he was supposed to be at work.
From insideHPC
Aion Silicon Tapped for $12M RISC-V Accelerator Program for HPC and AI
READING, United Kingdom, May 28, 2025 — Aion Silicon (formerly Sondrel), an ASIC and SoC architecture partner, today announced it has secured a $12 million engagement to provide design services for a confidential customer developing…
From insideHPC
AMD Acquires Enosemi for Co-Packaged Optics
AMD announced today the acquisition of Enosemi, a provider of chiplets, design IP and custom silicon for silicon photonics product development. AMD said the two companies have collaborated on photonics development projects, and…
From insideHPC
QuEra Installs Quantum System in Japan
Tsukuba, Japan – May 28, 2025 – QuEra Computing, a neutral-atom quantum computing company, announced it has installed its first quantum computer outside of its own labs – at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science…
From Computational Complexity
The Hilltop Story
From insideHPC
ISC 2025 Kicks Off Online Innovation Showcase
May 27, 2025 — The ISC 2025 conference, scheduled for June 10-13 in Hamburg, announced it has unveiled its ISC 2025 Online Innovation Showcase. As of today, 14 organizations are participating in this showcase, presenting their…
From Schneier on Security
Location Tracking App for Foreigners in Moscow
Russia is proposing a rule that all foreigners in Moscow install a tracking app on their phones.
Using a mobile application that all foreigners will have to install on their smartphones, the Russian state will receive the following…From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
ACM-W on Tour: Highlights from the NUS ACM-W Event
We recently had the pleasure of participating in the ACM Celebration of Women in Computing, organized by the NUS ACM Student Chapter on May 13, 2025, at the National University of Singapore. The event was a heartfelt celebration…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Congratulations to ACM Fellow Susanne Bødker!
We are thrilled to celebrate Professor Susanne Bødker, who has recently been named an ACM Fellow, an honour given to outstanding computing professionals who have made significant contributions to the field. She is a Professor…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Is the job market for software developers collapsing?
Concerns persist that artificial intelligence (AI) could render software developers obsolete, particularly with tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor streamlining certain programming tasks. While these tools undoubtedly boostContinue…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
An Inside Look at ACM-W Professional Chapters
Your Gateway to Local Leadership and Global Connections This blog post is based on Episode 16 of ACM Women’s “Celebrating Technology Leaders” series, where Dr Bushra Anjum discussed the importance of professional chapters and…
From insideHPC
TSMC to Add Chip Design Center in Germany for AI, Other Sectors
TSMC announced today it will open a new chip design center in Munich by the third quarter of this year, something viewed as European Union victory as it pursues self-reliance in chip production. According to an article on the…
From insideHPC
Colocation Company Colovore Taps Infrastructure Veteran Jeffrey Springborn as CEO
SANTA CLARA, Calif.– Colovore, a high-density, liquid cooling colocation company, today announced the appointment of Jeffrey Springborn as chief executive officer. Springborn joins Colovore on the heels of a $925 million financing…
From insideHPC
MiTAC Computing Unveils AI and Cloud Infrastructure Partnership with AMD at COMPUTEX
MiTAC Computing Technology Corporation, a server platform designer and manufacturer, will showcase its strategic collaboration with AMD at COMPUTEX 2025 (Booth M1110). The companies said the partnership highlights their shared…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Thank You, Taneea Agrawaal – For Your Dedication, Voice, and Editorial Excellence
This month, we bid farewell to Taneea Agrawaal, our web editor, with a heartfelt thank you. Taneea has made wonderful contributions to our newsletter and has been the heart and soul behind our most celebrated projects, like the…
From Schneier on Security
Chinese-Owned VPNs
One one my biggest worries about VPNs is the amount of trust users need to place in them, and how opaque most of them are about who owns them and what sorts of data they retain.
A new study found that many commercials VPNS are…From Computational Complexity
Some are Mathematicians, some are Carpenter's Wives, Some are Popes.
(Trivia: What song has the lyric Some are Mathematicians, some are Carpenters's wives ? Its not a parody song, though sometimes its hard to tell a parody song from a so-called real song.)
In my post about Pope Leo XIV I made…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Models and science
The ancient Greeks crafted extraordinary models that continue to resonate. For instance, Ptolemy’s geocentric model, with Earth at the core and planets tracing intricate epicycles, elegantly accounted for celestial motion, much…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: US Naval Ship Attacked by Squid in 1978
Interesting story:
USS Stein was underway when her anti-submarine sonar gear suddenly stopped working. On returning to port and putting the ship in a drydock, engineers observed many deep scratches in the sonar dome’s rubber …From insideHPC
Code Conversion, Reasoning, Visualization and Other LLMs for Science at Argonne
Large language models (LLMs) applications range from text processing to predicting virus variants. As the datasets on which LLM models are trained become increasingly massive — including trillions of parameters ....
The post …
From insideHPC
Lightshift Energy in Battery Storage Project for GlobalFoundries
ARLINGTON, Va. — Lightshift Energy, a developer of energy storage projects, said it will build Vermont’s largest battery energy storage project at GlobalFoundries’ semiconductor manufacturing facility in Essex Junction. The project…
From insideHPC
MiTAC Computing Deploys AMD EPYC 4005 Processors
Newark, California – MiTAC Computing Technology Corp., a subsidiary of MiTAC Holdings Corp. (TSE:3706) and server platform design company, introduced its latest offering with AMD EPYC 4005 Series processors. These servers are…
From Schneier on Security
Signal Blocks Windows Recall
This article gives a good rundown of the security risks of Windows Recall, and the repurposed copyright protection took that Signal used to block the AI feature from scraping Signal data.