The first edition of the newly revamped Communications of the ACM is out. And I must say, so far I’m greatly impressed. First of all it seems that they’ve gotten rid of the absolutely horrible front pages for all articles that were (a) ugly (I’m not a font nazi, but sheesh that font choice was horrible!), and (b) a waste of space. This issue includes a blurb about quantum computing, an interview with the Donald Knuth, and a paper by David Shaw (yeah, THAT David Shaw) and coworkers on custom hardware for molecular dynamics simulations. Good stuff, I hope they can keep it up!
O brave new quantum world!
Wasn’t the first issue out a while ago ?
http://geomblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/cacm-is-dead-long-live-cacm.html
I reviewed it back in January ! And there was another issue in April. So the issue you’re looking at must be the 3rd in the new format.
I think those are still in the old format…
Communications of the ACM, July 2008 Digital EditionWith this issue, ACM is proud to announce the publication of an entirely redesigned and revitalized Communications of the ACM. In flipping through the pages of this Digital Edition, and of the beautiful print edition many of you will receive in the coming weeks, you will notice that in many ways CACM looks more like an entirely new magazine than a revamped version of its former self. A great deal of effort by a great many people has gone into this redesign, with the ultimate goal of making Communications of the ACM a magazine that is both of higher quality and more relevant for the broader computing community than ever before. It is our hope that you begin to see CACM fulfill both of these important goals with this July issue.
I see. The digital version is the same for all three issues though. The difference is probably in the print version.
The David Shaw group’s article on special-purpose computing hardware was very clearly explained. Our QSE Group thinks that similar special-purpose hardware for quantum simulations (as contrasted with Shaw’s classical simulations) also makes sense.
We think this will come about via multicore processors that include on-chip FPGA-type elements, so that folks can write their own microcode without the expense and trouble of fabricating an ASIC. The GNU Radio project (with which we are having happy experiences) is perhaps an early example.