acm
The Association for Computing Machinery
Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession
Contact:
Virginia Gold
212-626-0505
vgold@acm.org
CACM REPORTS: PROMISE AND PERIL IN PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEMS
October Issue Reports on Scalability of Adobe Photoshop, How Offshoring
Affects IT Workers, and the Resurgence of Apple
NEW YORK - September 30, 2010 – Although peer-to-peer technology has gone far beyond music sharing,
anonymous data storage, and scientific computing, authors Rodrigo Rodrigues and Peter Druschel of Germany’s
Max Planck Institute for Software Systems contend that its very strengths constitute its weakness. In the cover story
of the October Communications of the ACM (CACM) http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/10 they point to P2P’s
ability to enable innovative new services used by millions of people, citing its independence from dedicated
infrastructure and its centralized control. These characteristics, however, present technical, commercial and legal
challenges, not faced by other types of distributed systems, which must be addressed to allow P2P applications to
thrive. With its ability to significantly lower the barrier to innovation, they conclude that P2P could turn out to be
most valuable as a proving ground for new ideas and services.
Communications, the flagship publication of ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery),
http://www.acm.org offers readers access to this generation’s most significant leaders and innovators in computing
and information technology, and is available online in digital format.
Also in this issue, in an article developed by acmqueue, www.queue.acm.org Adobe Photoshop principal
scientist Russell Williams speaks with Clem Cole, architect of Intel’s Cluster Ready program, about how the
Photoshop team is addressing the challenge of scalability for eight- and 16-core machines. Their discussion will be
familiar to any software engineer who has attempted to achieve parallelism in an application.
Offshoring is most common in high-tech firms and IT functions, report Prasanna B. Tambe of New York
University and Lorin M. Hitt of the University of Pennsylvania. Using data that they collected and analyzed from
two complementary surveys, the researchers describe how offshoring affects IT workers. Their study found that IT
workers reported offshoring-related displacement at a rate more than double that of workers in other occupations.
The study also confirmed that IT jobs requiring interpersonal interaction or physical presence in fixed locations are
less likely to be sent out of the country.
We are living in a world defined by firms that have successfully married new consumer devices and
Internet platforms with a variety of online services and content, says MIT’s Michael A. Cusumano. He tracks the
resurgence of Apple, which in 2010 became the world’s most valuable technology company in terms of stock
market value. He attributes its success to a shift in strategy that takes advantage of the rising importance and value
of an industrywide platform company versus a standalone product company, and the use of automated services that
deliver the digital content and software applications that make these platforms so valuable to users.
In a study of neuroscience research, Thomas Serre of Brown University and Tomaso Poggio of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology assert that computer science techniques are at the heart of brain imaging and
other branches of neuroscience. They review the key computational principles underlying the processing of
information during visual recognition using a model that implements these principles. Their research may suggest
that neuroscience is on the verge of providing novel, useful paradigms to computer vision and perhaps to other
areas of computer science. They note, however, that computational models are not sufficient on their own, and that
a mathematical theory to explain the hierarchical organization of the cortex is necessary.
Other October Communications articles:
 In his President’s letter, ACM President Alain Chesnais recounts his rewarding experiences as an ACM
volunteer and frames this commitment as the core of what makes ACM a success.
 Technology writer Dennis McCafferty examines the pros and cons of releasing software code during the
review process. This issue gained considerable attention following the incident dubbed Climategate, which
involved illegal hacking of researchers’ email accounts. The writer cites efforts at Purdue University to
resolve this issue using unique middleware in a hub format.
 Software engineering does not come close to deserving a place among the traditional engineering disciplines,
declares David L. Parnas, President of Middle Road Software. He recounts a real-world experience that
revealed many careless design errors resulting in unnecessary expense and annoyance, and cites the risk of
undisciplined development. He concludes that much of the fault lies with the way computer science students
are taught indifference to rules and procedures.
 Information architect and writer Alex Wright reports that ccomputer scientists continue to find new
applications of linear logic across a wide range of disciplines. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for
example, are exploring the application of linear logic to distributed security problems. Other research areas
include concurrency theory, quantum computing, game semantics, and implicit computational complexity.
 Blog@CACM blogger Michael Stonebraker discusses the implications of the CAP theorem on database
management system applications that span multiple processing sites. Acknowledging that the CAP theorem
is used as a way to justify giving up consistency and replacing it with “eventual consistency,” he asserts that
this analysis is suspect, and that recovery from errors has more dimensions to consider.
For more information on Communications of the ACM, click on http://cacm.acm.org/
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery www.acm.org, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing
society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the
field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the
highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing
opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
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