Association for Computing Machinery
The
Association for Computing Machinery, or
ACM, was founded in
1947 as the world's first scientific and educational
computing society. Its membership is currently around 78,000. Its headquarters are in
New York City.
ACM is organized into over 170 local chapters and 34
special interest groups (
SIGs), through which it conducts most of its activities. Additionally, there are over 500 college and university
chapters. The first student chapter was founded in 1961 at the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Many of the SIGs, like
SIGGRAPH,
SIGPLAN and
SIGCOMM, sponsor regular conferences which have become famous as the dominant venue for presenting new innovations in certain fields. The groups also publish a large number of specialized journals, magazines, and newsletters.
ACM also sponsors other computer science related events such as the worldwide
ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), and has sponsored some other events such as the chess match between Garry Kasparov and the
IBM Deep Blue computer.
ACM Press publishes a prestigious academic journal,
Journal of the ACM, and general magazines for computer professionals,
Communications of the ACM (also known as
Communications or
CACM) and
Queue. Other publications of the ACM include:
*
ACM Crossroads, the most popular student computing journal in USA
*A number of journals, specific to subfields of computer science, titled
ACM Transactions. Some of the more prominent transactions include:
*
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
*
ACM Transactions on Database Systems (TODS)
*
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG)
*
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
Although
Communications no longer publishes primary research, and is not considered a prestigious venue, many of the great debates and results in computing history have been published in its pages. Examples include:
*
Edsger W. Dijkstra's famous letter inveighing against the use of
GOTO ("Go To statement considered harmful",
CACM 11(3):147-148, March 1968).
*Dijkstra's original paper on the
THE operating system. This paper's appendix, arguably even more influential than its main body, introduced
semaphore-based synchronization ("Structure of the 'THE'-Multiprogramming System",
CACM 11(5):341-346, May 1968).
*The "Revised report on the algorithm language ALGOL 60": A landmark paper in
programming language design describing the result of the international
Algol committee (
CACM 6(1):1-17, January 1963).
*
Kristen Nygaard and
Ole-Johan Dahl's original paper on
Simula-68 ("Simula: An ALGOL-based simulation language",
CACM 9(9):671-678).
*the issue of what to call the then-fledgling field of
computer science.
*the issue of changing ACM's name, since the "machinery" in question is no longer the size of a house and is now measured in micrometres (all three attempts at changing ACM's name have failed).
ACM has made almost all of its publications available online at its
Digital Library and also has a
Guide to Computing Literature. It also offers insurance and other services to its members.
ACM has created a
digital library (
ACM Digital Library) where it has made all of its publications available. ACM's digital library is the world's largest collection of information on computing machinery and contains an archive of journals, magazines, conference proceedings online, and the recent issues of ACM's publications. Online services include a forum called Ubiquity and Tech News digest, both containing the latest information about the IT world.
ACM's primary competitor is the
IEEE Computer Society. It is difficult to generalize accurately about the distinction between the two, but ACM focuses on theoretical
computer science and end-user applications while IEEE focuses more on hardware and standardization issues. Another blunt way to state the difference is that ACM is for
computer scientists and IEEE is for
electrical engineers, although the largest IEEE subgroup is its Computer Society. Of course, there is significant overlap between the two organizations, and they occasionally cooperate on projects like developing computer science curricula.
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SIGACCESS: Accessibility and Computing
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SIGACT: Algorithms and Computation Theory
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SIGAda:
Ada Programming Language
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SIGAPL:
APL Programming Language
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SIGAPP: Applied Computing
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SIGARCH: Computer Architecture
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SIGART: Artificial Intelligence
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SIGBED: Embedded Systems
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SIGBOOZE: Social Interaction
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SIGCAS: Computers and Society
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SIGCHI: Computer-Human Interaction
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SIGCOMM: Data Communication
*
SIGCSE: Computer Science Education
*
SIGDA: Design Automation
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SIGDOC: Design of Communication
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SIGecom: Electronic Commerce
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SIGEVO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
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SIGGRAPH: Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
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SIGIR: Information Retrievel
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SIGITE: Information Technology Education
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SIGKDD: Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
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SIGMETRICS: Measurement and Evaluation
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SIGMICRO: Microarchitecture
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SIGMIS: Management Information Systems
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SIGMM: Multimedia
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SIGMOBILE: Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing
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SIGMOD: Management of Data
*
SIGOPS: Operating Systems
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SIGPLAN: Programming Languages
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SIGSAC: Security, Audit, and Control
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SIGSAM: Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation
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SIGSIM: Simulation and Modeling
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SIGSOFT: Software Engineering
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SIGUCCS: University and College Computing Services
*
SIGWEB: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web
The ACM sponsors numerous conferences listed below. Most of the special interest groups also have an annual conference. ACM conferences are often very popular publishing venues and are therefore very competitive. For example, the 2006 WWW conference only accepted 14% of the long papers that were submitted, and CIKM only accepted 15% in 2005.
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CIKM: Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
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DAC: Digital Automation Conference
*
FCRC: Federated Computing Research Conference
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GECCO: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
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Graphics Hardware*
Hypertext: Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
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JCDL: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
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OOPSLA: International conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications
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WWW: International conference on World Wide Web
The President of the ACM for 2004–2006 is
David A. Patterson of the
University of California, Berkeley.
ACM is led by a Council consisting of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Past President, SIG Governing Board Chair, Publications Board Chair, three representatives of the SIG Governing Board, and seven Members-At-Large. This institution is often referred to simply as "Council" in
Communications of the ACM.
ACM has five "Boards" that make up various committees and subgroups, to help Headquarters staff maintain quality services and products. These boards are as follows:
# Publications Board# SIG Governing Board# Education Board# Membership Services Board# Professions Board
ACM's committee on women in computing is set up to support, inform, celebrate, and work with women in computing. Dr.
Anita Borg was a great supporter of ACM-W. ACM-W provides various resources for women in computing as well as high school girls interested in the field. ACM-W also reaches out internationally to those women who are involved and interested in computing.
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Timeline of computing (750 BC â€" 1949)*
ACM Classification Scheme /
CR Classification*
Grace Murray Hopper Award, awarded by the ACM
*
Turing Award*
Artificial Intelligence*
Dr. Franz Alt, former president.
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ACM Crossroads, one of its magazines
*
ACM Transactions on Graphics, one of the journals its publishes.
*
ACM Computers in Entertainment, one of the magazines its publishes.
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ACM official website*
ACM portal for publications
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ACM Special Interest Groups
