It’s not everyday the national news media envisions computing research. But it happened on Sunday, when New York Times‘ writer John Markoff penned a story about the future of computer architecture — picking up on a paper presented at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2011) earlier this year that forecast a 24-fold gap from the expectations of Moore’s Law by the year 2024 and concluded, “Regardless of chip organization and topology, multicore scaling is power limited to a degree not widely appreciated by the computing community.” Markoff writes: For decades, the power of computers has grown at a staggering rate as designers have managed to squeeze ever more and ever […]

The NSF’s Science Nation has a great feature today on the “Science of Shopping,” describing how computer scientists Rajeev Sharma and Satish Mummareddy have developed cameras and software that track our shopping behavior in brick-and-mortar stores, with the goal of showing retailers and manufacturers the best areas to place products within stores. Next time you go to a store, take a minute to look at all the things that are trying to grab your attention. With so many products available and so many stores and websites, how do you decide what to buy and where to shop? Whether it’s convenience, good service or finding the best deals, store owners want […]

A few months ago, we announced a call for short videos describing exciting research and results in computer science — with the goal of communicating to undergraduates what computing research is all about. The first of these videos, titled Exploring PhotoBios, debuted in mid-June. Today I’m pleased to present the second of these videos — about Seattle, a new testbed platform that allows researchers to access computational resources on a wide variety of devices and machines provided by everyday users. Users today are increasingly running applications on devices like cell phones and tablets. Similarly, companies are increasingly moving services to separately managed services like the cloud or content distribution networks (CDNs). However, […]

This fall, our colleagues Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig are offering a free, online version of their popular Stanford University course, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence”: A syllabus and more information about the Stanford course is here…   The class runs from Sept 26 through Dec 16, 2011. While this class is being offered online, it is also taught at Stanford University, where it continues to be a popular intro-level class on AI. For the online version, the instructors aim to offer identical materials, assignments, and exams, and to use the same grading criteria. Both instructors will be available for online discussions.   A high speed internet connection is recommended as most […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) In just a few minutes, Earlier today, during a special session of the National Science Board — and before a large gathering of senior leadership from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), members of the media, and other invited guests — NSF Director Subra Suresh and OSTP Director John Holdren will unveiled the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps), a brand new “public-private partnership aimed at developing a national innovation ecosystem that strategically leverages the output of NSF-funded scientific research to help develop new technologies, products, and processes that benefit society […]

(This post has been updated; please scroll down for the latest.) From today’s New York Times: A coalition of 28 American universities is throwing its weight behind a plan to build ultra-high-speed computer networks — with Internet service several hundred times faster than what is now commercially available — in the communities surrounding the participating colleges.   The project, which is named GigU and will be announced on Wednesday, is meant to draw high-tech startups in fields like health care, energy and telecommunications to the areas near the universities, many of which are in the Midwest or outside of major cities. These zones would ideally function as hubs for building […]