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Providing guidelines and best 

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NOVEMBER 2012 1

Editorial Staff

Judith Prow

Managing Editor

jprow@computer.org

Chris Nelson

Senior Editor

Contributing Editors

Camber Agrelius

Christine Anthony

Lee Garber

Bob Ward

Staff Multimedia 

Editors

Brian Brannon

Ben Jones

Design and Production

Larry Bauer

Design

Olga D’Astoli

Cover Design

Kate Wojogbe

Jennie Zhu

Administrative 

Staff

Products and 

Services Director

Evan Butterfield

Senior Manager, 

Editorial Services 

Lars Jentsch

Manager, 

Editorial Services

Jennifer Stout

Senior Business 

Development Manager

Sandy Brown

Senior Advertising 

Coordinator

Marian Anderson

Editor in Chief

Ron Vetter

University of North Carolina 

Wilmington

vetterr@uncw.edu 

Associate Editor 

in Chief

Sumi Helal 

University of Florida

helal@cise.ufl.edu

Associate Editor in Chief,

Research Features

Kathleen Swigger 

University of North Texas

kathy@cs.unt.edu

Associate Editor in Chief,

Special Issues

Bill N. Schilit

Google

schilit@computer.org

Computing Practices

Rohit Kapur

Synopsys

rohit.kapur@synopsys.com

Perspectives

Bob Colwell

bob.colwell@comcast.net

Multimedia Editor

Charles R. Severance 

csev@umich.edu

2012 IEEE Computer 

Society President

John W. Walz

johnwalz@ameritech.net

Area Editors

Computer Architectures

David H. Albonesi

Cornell University

Tom Conte

Georgia Tech

Steven K. Reinhardt

AMD

Greg Byrd

North Carolina State University

Graphics and Multimedia

Oliver Bimber

Johannes Kepler University Linz

High-Performance Computing

Vladimir Getov

University of Westminster

Information and

Data Management

Naren Ramakrishnan

Virginia Tech 

Internet Computing

Simon Shim

San Jose State University 

Multimedia

Savitha Srinivasan

IBM Almaden Research Center 

Networking 

Ahmed Helmy

University of Florida 

Ying-Dar Lin

National Chiao Tung University

Security and Privacy

Rolf Oppliger

eSECURITY Technologies

Software

Renée Bryce

University of North Texas

Robert B. France

Colorado State University

Jean-Marc Jézéquel

University of Rennes

David M. Weiss

Iowa State University

Column Editors

Computing Conversations

Charles R. Severance

University of Michigan

Discovery Analytics

Naren Ramakrishnan

Virginia Tech

Education

Ann E.K. Sobel

Miami University

Entertainment Computing

Kelvin Sung

University of Washington, Bothell

Forward Slash

David A. Grier

George Washington University

Green IT

Kirk W. Cameron

Virginia Tech

Identity Sciences

Karl Ricanek

University of North Carolina, 

Wilmington

In Development

Chris Huntley

Fairfield University

Invisible Computing

Albrecht Schmidt

University of Stuttgart

Out of Band

Hal Berghel

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Security

Jeffrey M. Voas

NIST

Social Computing

John Riedl

University of Minnesota

Software Technologies

Mike Hinchey

Lero—the Irish Software 

Engineering Research Centre

32 & 16 Years Ago

Neville Holmes

University of Tasmania

Advisory Panel

Carl K. Chang

Editor in Chief Emeritus

Iowa State University

Jean Bacon

University of Cambridge

Hal Berghel

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Doris L. Carver

Louisiana State University

Rick Mathieu

James Madison University

Naren Ramakrishnan

Virginia Tech

Theresa-Marie Rhyne

Consultant

Alf Weaver

University of Virginia

Publications Board

Thomas M. Conte (chair), 

Alain April, David Bader, 

Angela R. Burgess, Greg 

Byrd, Jim Cortada, 

Koen De Bosschere, Hakan 

Erdogmus, Frank E. Ferrante,

Jean-Luc Gaudiot, Linda I. 

Shafer, Per Stenström, 

George Thiruvathukal

Magazine Operations 

Committee

Jean-Luc Gaudiot (chair), 

Erik R. Altman, Isabel Beichl, 

Nigel Davies, Lars Heide, 

Simon Liu, Dejan Milojicic, 

Michael Rabinovich, 

Forrest Shull, John Smith, 

Gabriel Taubin, Ron Vetter, 

John Viega, Fei-Yue Wang

Circulation: Computer (ISSN 0018-9162) is published monthly by the IEEE Computer Society. IEEE Headquarters, Three Park Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, NY 

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CONTENTS

COVER FEATURES

GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

22 The Move Toward Electronic 

 Health Records

Ann E.K. Sobel

A multitude of projects are under way that 

support the transition to electronic health 

records, which enable the exchange of health 

information among healthcare-related parties 

while maintaining patient privacy and offering 

security protections.

24 Electronic Health Records: 

 The HHS Perspective

Doug Fridsma

Electronic health records can deliver complete 

and accurate health information to patients and 

their providers, allowing better access to that 

information and, ultimately, empowering 

patients to take an active role in their healthcare.

27 Personal Health Records: 

 New Means to Safely Handle 

 Health Data?

Inmaculada Carrión Señor, José Luis 

Fernández Alemán, and Ambrosio Toval

Personal health records offer a way to manage 

health data while lessening healthcare costs, 

improving patient data quality, and fostering 

healthcare efficiency, but privacy and security 

issues are particularly important considerations 

for PHR designers.

34 Electronic Case Records in a 

 Box: Integrating Patient Data in 

 Healthcare Networks

Raik Kuhlisch, Ben Kraufmann, 

and Hannes Restel

An innovative deployment concept decouples 

document sources and electronic health records 

ABOUT THIS ISSUE

The cover features in this issue describe projects 

that are under way to support the mandatory 

transition to electronic health records, an ambitious 

endeavor with an aggressive timeline of milestones 

that poses new and interesting problems pertaining 

to the sharing of private healthcare information 

among physicians, institutions, and individuals.

to provide an easy to use, seamless, yet secure 

platform for use in the cumbersome task of 

integrating an EHR platform into a regional 

healthcare network

42 Fusion: Managing Healthcare 

 Records at Cloud Scale

Sujoy Basu, Alan H. Karp, Jun Li, 

James Pruyne, Jerry Rolia, Sharad Singhal, 

Jaap Suermondt, and Ram Swaminathan

An experimental open, cloud-based platform 

for large-scale, low-cost delivery of healthcare 

applications enables broader use of patientcentric management of electronic health 

records and facilitates the secure and seamless sharing of EHRs among stakeholders 

within a healthcare system.

50 Testing the Nation’s Health-

 care Information Infra-

 structure: NIST Perspective

Kevin Brady, Ram D. Sriram, Bettijoyce 

Lide, and Kathleen Roberts

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is enabling the development of an integrated healthcare information infrastructure 

by developing test tools and techniques that 

will facilitate seamless exchange of information across the healthcare enterprise.

PERSPECTIVES

59 Debugging on the Shoulders 

 of Giants: Von Neumann’s 

 Programs 65 Years Later

Barry Fagin and Dale Skrien

A study that examined and executed the 

programs John von Neumann wrote for the 

IAS machine reveals time-tested truths about 

computer architecture, side effects, instruction set design, and automatic programming

—truths all foreseen by von Neumann and his 

team more than 50 years ago.

w w w.computer.org/computer

For more information on computing topics, visit the Computer Society 

Digital Library at www.computer.org/csdl.

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We welcome your letters. Send them to letters@computer.org. Letters are 

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IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit www.ieee.org/

web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

RESEARCH FEATURE

70 China’s Indigenous Innova-

 tion Policy: Impact on 

 Multinational R&D

Jason Dedrick, Jian Tang, and 

Kenneth L. Kraemer

Multinational corporations seeking access to 

China’s burgeoning consumer markets and 

human resources are establishing R&D 

centers in the country and developing ways 

to thread a path through its complex 

innovation policies.

COLUMNS

6 Computing Conversations

Inventing PHP: Rasmus Lerdorf

Charles Severance

8 Computing and the Law

A Brief Overview of the America Invents Act

Brian M. Gaff, Ralph A. Loren, 

and Amy M. DeCloux

12 32 & 16 Years Ago

Computer, November 1980 and 1996

Neville Holmes

79 Green IT

Sustainable IT: Challenges, Postures, 

and Outcomes

Edward Curry, Bill Guyon, Charles 

Sheridan, and Brian Donnellan

82 Out of Band

Strafor or Stratagainst

Hal Berghel

November 2012, Volume 45, Number 11

IEEE Computer Society: http://computer.org

Computer: http://computer.org/computer

computer@computer.org 

IEEE Computer Society Publications Office: +1 714 821 8380

Flagship Publication of the IEEE

 Computer Society

87 Identity Sciences

Biometric Authentication: System Security and User 

Privacy

Anil K. Jain and Karthik Nandakumar

93 Social Computing

Customer Service 2.0: Where Social Computing Meets 

Customer Relations

Frank Bi and Joseph A. Konstan

120 Forward Slash

Love the Show!

David Alan Grier and Erin Dian Dumbacher

NEWS

14 Technology News

Big Iron Moves Toward Exascale Computing

Neal Leavitt

18 News Briefs

Lee Garber

MEMBERSHIP NEWS

96 IEEE Computer Society Connection

99 Call and Calendar

DEPARTMENTS 

4 Elsewhere in the CS

69 Computer Society Information

102 Career Opportunities

See www.computer.org/computermultimedia for multimedia content 

related to the features in this issue.

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4 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

The IEEE Computer Society’s lineup of 

12 peer-reviewed technical magazines cover 

cutting-edge topics in computing, including 

scientific applications, Internet computing, 

machine intelligence, pervasive computing, security and 

privacy, digital graphics, and computer history. Select articles from recent issues of Computer Society magazines are 

highlighted below.

Hewlett-Packard introduced its HP-65 programmable 

pocket calculator in January 1974, advertising it as a 

“personal computer,” in what computing historian Paul 

Ceruzzi thought might be the first use of the term in 

print. A feature article in Annals’ July-September issue, 

“Once upon a Pocket: Programmable Calculators from 

the Late 1970s and Early 1980s and the Social Networks 

around Them,” traces the evolution of these devices as 

well as the user communities that grew up around them 

and their influences on later PC markets and software 

development.

CG&A introduces a new department, “Spatial Interfaces,” 

in its September/October issue. In the first installment, 

researchers from the MIT Media Lab and University 

of British Columbia review emerging technologies 

that significantly enhance glasses-free 3D display. In 

“Compressive Light Field Displays,” the researchers 

describe their work on a 3D output device that emits 

compressed representations of light fields, which are 

then decoded by integration in the human eye. “We’re 

inspired by the promise that future generations of 

compressive displays will approach the realism of the 

physical world with technology that’s available today,” 

they conclude.

“Understanding Long-Term Earthquake Behavior through 

Earthquake Simulation” is the lead article in CiSE’s

September/October special issue on computational 

earthquake science. Authors Eric M. Heien and Michael 

Sachs of the University of California, Davis, describe the 

Virtual California simulation code, which consists of 

three major components: a fault model (the only part of 

the system that’s California-specific), a set of quasistatic 

interactions, and an event model. It’s one of several 

topologically realistic, system-level fault code collections 

that researchers using to construct ensemble earthquake 

forecasts similar to those used in weather and climate 

studies.

In the July/August issue of IS, “High-Frequency Trading: 

The Faster, the Better?” looks at computerized HFT as a 

culprit in the 998-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial 

Average of major US stock prices that occurred between 

2:31 and 2:51 p.m. on 6 May 2010. “This drop, subsequently 

known as the Flash Crash,” writes author Rahul Savani of 

the University of Liverpool, “caused a temporary loss of 

more than US$1 trillion in market value, with some major 

stocks briefly falling to $.01 per share.” Although prices 

quickly rebounded in the following days, Savani reviews 

new evidence that HFT trades not only caused the Flash 

Crash but might also be disrupting genuine economic 

trading. He also considers options for regulating them and 

the role of agent-based modeling. 

“Priming for Better Performance in Microtask Crowdsourcing Environments” is the lead article in IC’s September/

October theme on crowdsourcing. Authors Robert R. Morris 

Computer Highlights Society Magazines

COMPUTER

ELSEWHERE IN THE CS

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NOVEMBER 2012 5

of MIT, Mira Dontcheva of Adobe Advanced Technology 

Labs, and Elizabeth M. Gerber of Northwestern University 

describe two experiments in which they used the 

psychological technique of affective priming to improve 

quality in paid crowdsourcing tasks. “We have the power 

to build on many years of cognitive science research,” they 

conclude, “and make interfaces and systems that leverage 

our innate human abilities and empower us to be more 

creative, productive, and successful.”

IT Pro’s September/October issue is a special theme on 

mobile and wireless technologies. “Analysts predict that by 

2016, there will be 10 billion connected mobile devices in 

use globally, and smartphone traffi c will be 50 times what 

it is today,” write the guest editors, led by Irena Bojanova 

of the University of Maryland University College, in their 

introduction. They present fi ve articles addressing issues 

that this connectivity raises, including mobile data service 

deployments, mobile data security and privacy, and 

upcoming 4G networks.

“Helix: Making the Extraction of Thread-Level Parallelism 

Mainstream” is the lead article in Micro’s July/August 

theme issue on parallelizing sequential code. Researchers 

from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge 

describe their work on the Helix prototype compiler, 

which extracts thread-level parallelism automatically from 

sequential programs by transforming select loops into 

parallel form. In evaluations using benchmarks from the 

SPEC CPU2000 suite on a real processor, Helix compared 

favorably to Doacross, the most similar historical approach 

to loop parallelization.

MultiMedia’s July-September theme issue on largescale multimedia data collections opens with “The 

Community and the Cloud: Multimedia Benchmark 

Dataset Development.” On the basis of experience with 

the MediaEval Multimedia Benchmark, the authors present 

a specifi c example of crowdsourcing as a viable method for 

developing multimedia ground truth. 

An article in PvC’s July-September issue, “GroupEnergyTable: 

An Interactive Tabletop for Energy Conservation,” describes 

a tool for supporting group exploration of home electricity 

and transportation data. Researchers from Microsoft, 

AccuSpec Electronics, and the University of Washington 

present results from a two-month user study that achieved 

3 to 20 percent reductions in home energy use among 

participants who were already low-consuming energy users.

S&P’s September/October issue is a special theme on 

e-voting security, guest edited by Michael Shamos of 

Carnegie Mellon University and Alec Yasinsac of the 

University of South Alabama. They introduce two articles 

that focus on algorithms that can provide inherent voting 

integrity and two that look at post-voting period audits. The 

issue also includes a roundtable discussion, “Electronic 

Voting Security 10 Years after the Help America Vote Act,” 

featuring Merle S. King, executive director of the Center for 

Election Systems at Kennesaw State University, and Brian 

Hancock, director of voting system testing and certifi cation 

at the US Election Assistance Commission.

Software’s November/December issue is a special theme, 

“Technical Debt: From Metaphor to Theory and Practice.” 

Guest editors Philippe Krichten of the University of British 

Columbia and Robert L. Nord and Ipek Ozkaya of the 

Software Engineering Institute introduce the concept of 

technical debt and its original description—“not quite 

right code which we postpone making it right”—through 

its place in leading software development schema to its 

eventual dilution to “anything that adds to the friction 

from which software development endeavors suffer.” After 

defining the term more precisely, they introduce four 

articles to illustrate different perspectives on technical 

debt as well as a point/counterpoint column debating its 

merits in practice.

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6 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

COMPUTING CONVERSATIONS

Inventing PHP: 

Rasmus Lerdorf

O

riginally conceived as an 

HTML templating language, 

Hypertext Preprocessor 

didn’t start its life as a pure 

programming language. Instead, 

Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP in 1994 

by collecting the code and utilities 

written in C that he was using to build 

websites for various clients:

I was living in Toronto and doing Web 

application consulting for a number 

of companies. I wrote the same code 

over and over—basically, CGI [Common 

Gateway Interface] scripts written in C. I 

wrote code to handle forms, POST data, 

filtering, and other common Web things 

that you have to write in C when you’re 

writing CGI programs. It was kind of 

tedious and boring, so if I could reduce 

the amount of time I had to spend programming, maximize the output, and 

get to the solution quicker, then that was 

my goal with PHP. I put all my common 

stuff into a C library, hacked it into the 

NCSA [National Center for Computing Applications] webserver, and then 

added a templating system on top of it 

to let me easily call into it. 

The first version of PHP was simply 

a productivity tool that enabled Lerdorf to accelerate his development 

across his multiple clients who needed 

Web applications. PHP was quickly 

interested in the Web and solving the 

Web problem from all around the 

world. We all faced similar issues and 

collaboratively we could build a tool 

that solved our problem. That was 

really how PHP got off the ground. 

Because PHP was initially conceived as a collection of library 

utilities rather than as a new programming language, Lerdorf never 

felt the need to shape its future direction. He felt PHP would thrive if he 

opened the code base to other people 

and approaches:

I learned a bit along the way that, 

for this to grow, I had to give up control of PHP—I had to let other people 

have some control. I couldn’t rewrite 

patches, both because I’m lazy and it’s 

a lot of work and also to give people 

some ownership. Once they have full 

control over their part of it, then they 

become much more invested in it and 

passionate. It’s not just them contributing to my project—it becomes our 

project, and that really changed the 

nature of PHP. This happened around 

1997 or so, when I really delegated it 

out and gave people full access to the 

source code repository that I was using. 

Once Lerdorf allowed other people 

to become involved in PHP’s evolution, 

Unique among most of its peers, PHP wasn’t conceived as a pure 

programming language.

Charles Severance

University of Michigan

embraced by other Web developers, 

who continue to build on and improve 

it. To watch the full interview with 

Lerdorf, visit www.computer.org/

computingconversations.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

In the Web’s early days, the developer community was small, so it 

didn’t take long for Lerdorf’s colleagues to find out about his software 

and start asking for copies for their 

own clients:

Other people started asking me how I 

built these applications, and I said I was 

using this little tool I built. They asked 

if they could have it, and I said, “Sure, 

why not?” My toolkit wasn’t what I was 

selling—I was selling my services of 

solving problems, and the tool itself is 

irrelevant, really. It’s just my hammer. 

After other programmers started 

using it seriously, they found bugs, 

fixed them, and sent him patches. 

Using these patches, he modified his 

utility library and templating engine 

and improved the applications he was 

building for his customers:

That’s when open source really hit me. 

This was in 1994-1995 before the term 

“open source” existed. I got together 

with a group of my peers, other people 

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VIDEO AUDIO
NOVEMBER 2012 7

Author guidelines: 

www.computer.org/software/author.htm

Further details: software@computer.org

www.computer.org/software

IEEE Software seeks practical, 

readable articles that will appeal to 

experts and nonexperts alike. The 

magazine aims to deliver reliable, 

useful, leading-edge information 

to software developers, engineers, 

and managers to help them stay 

on top of rapid technology change. 

Topics include requirements, 

design, construction, tools, project 

management, process improvement, 

maintenance, testing, education and 

training, quality, standards, and more. 

Call

Articles for

the product. Lerdorf even leaves 

architectural decisions about PHP to 

the community:

It’s a meritocracy. Code speaks. If you 

write a patch or a piece of code to 

implement a feature, that says a lot. If 

someone wants to disagree with that 

way of doing things, or if they can offer 

an alternative implementation, that’s 

a really good argument. If all they 

do is whine about it, that’s a really 

bad argument, and chances are, the 

implementation will win even though 

it might not be the best way of doing 

things. If there’s code and it sort of 

works, that’s what we go with, and 

that has always been the default. It 

doesn’t always lead to consistency, but 

it does lead to getting new features and 

actually being able to do something. 

Being able to connect to this type of 

database even though it might not be 

the best way of doing it, at least it gets 

you there. That’s what PHP has always 

been about—solving a problem. We 

would rather have an ugly feature than 

not have a feature at all.

When I asked Lerdorf about 

PHP’s future roadmap, his 

answer was that it would 

match the Web’s evolution. As the 

Web moves into new areas and 

uses new technologies, PHP needs 

to make those new technologies 

and approaches available to PHP 

developers. There’s no master 

plan except to be useful to people 

developing Web applications. 

Charles Severance, Computing 

Conversations column editor and 

Computer’s multimedia editor, is 

a clinical associate professor and 

teaches in the School of Information 

at the University of Michigan. You can 

follow him on Twitter @drchuck or 

contact him at csev@umich.edu.

he quickly built a large following 

around the product:

The Web grew, and PHP was at the 

right place at the right time. But also, 

it was very, very easy to get in and get 

started using PHP and contributing to 

it. Even today, it doesn’t take much to 

get a source code repository account 

in the PHP project. We have close to 

1,400 people with accounts, which 

means those people can all commit to 

some part of the repository. Slightly 

more than half the people have committed something in the last year and 

a half. 

The only way to manage all those 

volunteers is to let them manage 

themselves. Within the PHP community, many small, dedicated groups 

work closely together and focus on 

one aspect of PHP and collectively 

own it. Lerdorf prefers to let passionate volunteers move forward, even if 

they make little mistakes that need to 

be fixed later after their contributions 

are reviewed by more experienced 

members of the community.

CROWDSOURCING

Through the PHP Extensions 

Community Library (PECL), interested 

groups of volunteers can incubate 

an idea and then build interest in 

their feature. Once a feature is in 

broad use, it can become part of the 

core distribution, such as the JSON 

extension in PHP 5.1:

That’s how new features eventually 

creep in—they live outside of the 

core tree, get enough penetration 

and enough people to install them, 

and then we see Linux distributions 

pulling them into their core version of 

PHP. We look at what’s happening out 

there, but there’s no real management 

of that either. 

In many open source projects, an 

individual or small group controls 

the project’s architectural direction 

to ensure consistency across 

Selected CS articles and columns 

are available for free at 

http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

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COMPUTING AND THE LAW

8 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

A Brief Overview 

of the America 

Invents Act

S

igned into law on 16 September 2011, the America 

Invents Act (AIA) made many 

significant changes to US 

patent law, including a transition to 

a first-inventor-to-file system and the 

institution of post-grant review, which 

allows challenging a patent on any 

grounds related to patentability within 

nine months of a patent’s issuance.

In our September 2012 column, we 

discussed the post-grant review procedure and other methods the AIA 

provides to challenge patents (“Patent 

Reform: New Tools for Challenging 

Patent Validity as of September 2012,” 

pp. 9-11). In this month’s installment, 

we provide a brief overview of other 

aspects of the AIA. 

Be sure to check the IEEE Computer Society’s website for the podcast 

that accompanies this article (www.

computer.org/portal/web/computing 

now/computing-and-the-law).

a patent. If others independently conceived the invention and filed their 

patent applications after the person 

who filed first, they will lose their 

ability to get a patent. 

While there are some very narrow 

exceptions to this, it’s important 

to realize that this rule also holds 

even when a later filer conceived 

the invention before the first filer. In 

other words, if a person who is first 

to conceive an invention delays filing 

a patent application, and a second 

person later independently conceives 

the same invention and files an application right away, the first inventor 

will likely be ineligible for a patent; 

the second inventor will win. 

One aspect of US patent law limits 

this rule’s rigidity: the one-year grace 

period after public disclosure for an 

inventor to file an application. This 

allows an inventor to make a public 

disclosure about the invention and 

The eleventh in a series of articles providing basic information 

on legal issues facing people and businesses that operate in 

computing-related markets discusses the America Invents Act.

Brian M. Gaff, Ralph A. Loren, 

and Amy M. DeCloux

Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP

FIRST TO FILE

Most parts of the AIA took effect 

one year after signing—on 16 September 2012. However, the first-to-file 

system will become effective on 16 

March 2013. 

Traditionally, US patents were 

granted to those persons who 

were the first to invent the subject 

matter that the patent covered. 

That meant that even if multiple 

people independently conceived the 

invention, and each person applied 

for a patent, the person who invented 

first was the one eligible to receive the 

patent. The US Patent Office used an 

administrative procedure—known as 

an interference—to resolve disputes 

over who was the first to invent.

That will all change for many 

patent applications filed on or after 

16 March 2013. For those applications, 

the inventor who was the first to file is 

deemed the true inventor eligible for 

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___________________

____

AUDIO
NOVEMBER 2012 9

Their goal is to provide individuals 

or businesses accused of infringing 

a patent with an avenue to challenge 

that patent more quickly and at less 

cost compared to litigation in federal 

court. Our September 2012 column in 

Computer and the associated podcast 

provide a full discussion of post-grant 

and inter partes review.

Parties accused of patent infringement now have a new defense that 

they can raise in court: prior commercial use. If an accused infringer 

can show that he commercially used 

what the patent covers at least one 

year before the earlier of the patent 

application filing date or the date the 

invention was disclosed, he might 

prevail. Before the AIA, this defense 

was limited to patents that cover business methods. The AIA expanded the 

defense to allow its use with patents that cover “any subject matter 

consisting of a process, machine, 

manufacture or composition of 

matter used in a manufacturing or 

other commercial process.” However, an accused infringer can’t use 

this defense if an institute of higher 

education owns the patent.

A typical occurrence before the 

AIA was the filing of patent infringement lawsuits that had one plaintiff 

(the patent owner) and multiple—

sometimes dozens of—defendants 

(the accused infringers). Usually, 

there were no business or corporate 

connections between the defendants; 

the only commonality was that the 

plaintiff was accusing all of them 

of infringement of the same patent, 

Because the focus is 

now on the patent 

application filing date 

instead of the date 

of the invention, the 

definition of prior art 

has changed.

delay filing an application for up to 

one year from the date of the disclosure. If that disclosure occurs and 

then someone else files a patent application on the same invention before 

the inventor has filed an application, 

the inventor might be able to rely on 

the date of his earlier disclosure. This 

could allow the second filer to be eligible for a patent. Be careful, though, 

because the scope of the disclosure is 

important to the scope of the patent.

Because the focus is now on the 

patent application filing date instead 

of the date of the invention, the definition of prior art has changed. Prior 

art is preexisting information, such 

as that disclosed in a printed publication, that describes the invention. 

Public use or sale of the invention is 

prior art as well.

Before the AIA, prior art that predated the date of the invention could 

prevent an inventor from obtaining a 

patent. Now, the prior art need only 

be earlier than the application filing 

date. The public use or sale of the 

invention used to be limited to acts in 

the US; these acts in another country 

are now considered prior art as well. 

This makes more prior art available 

as roadblocks to getting a patent.

This first-to-file system is how 

most patent offices outside the US 

have operated. This change makes 

the US patent system more similar to 

systems in other countries. However, 

inventors—and their employers—

need to recognize how important it 

is to get their patent applications on 

file quickly, or at least consider the 

merits of making strategic disclosures 

to preserve their patent rights.

EFFECTS ON PATENT 

LITIGATION

The AIA will change how patent 

litigation is conducted. In particular, 

the AIA provides two new mechanisms for challenging the validity of 

patents: post-grant review and inter 

partes review. These procedures are 

administrative, not judicial, and are 

conducted in the US Patent Office. 

which complicated litigation. The 

AIA now prohibits joining unrelated 

defendants in a single action for 

patent infringement unless there 

are common facts and the defendants were involved together in the 

same acts that caused the alleged 

infringement. The fact that separate 

defendants are accused of infringing 

the same patent isn’t a basis for bringing the defendants together in a single 

lawsuit.

When a court determines that 

a party has infringed a patent, it 

will typically consider whether 

that infringement was willful. Willfully infringing a patent essentially 

requires that the infringer knew or 

should have known that there was 

a high likelihood that its actions 

constituted infringement of a valid 

patent. If a court determines that the 

infringement was willful, then the 

penalty that the infringer pays to 

the patent owner could be doubled 

or tripled.

Usually, an accused infringer will 

get advice from a patent lawyer about 

whether it is infringing a patent. The 

lawyer typically gives the advice in 

the form of an opinion—a written 

document that analyzes the patent 

at issue and the potentially infringing item. Before the AIA, the failure 

to get such an opinion could be used 

to prove willful infringement. The AIA 

prevents patent owners from raising 

the lack of an opinion as a basis to 

prove willful infringement.

Other AIA-inspired changes to litigation include ending challenges to 

patent validity based on a failure to 

satisfy the Best Mode requirement, 

which obligates an inventor to, at the 

time of filing a patent application, disclose the best way that he knows to 

use, or practice, the invention. Also, 

the AIA modified the patent marking requirements to allow virtual 

marking of products with the patent 

numbers that cover those products, 

and bars litigation based on marking 

products with the numbers of patents 

that have expired. The latter issue 

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COMPUTING AND THE LAW

10 COMPUTER

Tax strategies

Inventions that relate to strategies 

for reducing, avoiding, or deferring 

taxes aren’t patentable. However, 

inventions that relate to preparing 

and filing tax returns or are used 

solely for financial management 

aren’t covered by this prohibition. 

T

here are other parts of the AIA 

that, as they come into force, 

will become clearer and for 

which the effects will be better understood. There are usually unintended 

consequences that result when largescale legislation is enacted. Time will 

tell the scope and severity of these 

consequences, if any, that relate 

to the AIA. Until then, inventors, 

patent applicants, and patent owners 

should stay in close contact with their 

patent attorneys to keep abreast of 

AIA-related matters and to consider 

whether changes to their patent strategies are warranted. 

Brian M. Gaff is a senior member 

of IEEE and a partner at the Edwards 

Wildman Palmer LLP law firm. Contact him at bgaff@edwardswildman.

com.

Ralph A. Loren is a partner at 

the Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP

law firm. Contact him at rloren@

edwardswildman.com.

Amy M. DeCloux is an associate at 

the Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP

law firm. Contact her at adecloux@

edwardswildman.com.

ations in which multiple inventors 

independently conceived the same 

invention. Finding evidence of transmission and use may be difficult in 

practice.

Preissuance submissions 

Third parties can submit any reference, such as a patent, published 

patent application, or other printed 

publication, during the examination 

of a patent application for the patent 

examiner to consider. The patent 

office will include the reference in 

the record of the examination. In 

contrast to the pre-AIA practice that 

limited the time for submitting references to two months following the 

publication of patent application, the 

AIA extends the time to the earlier of 

(i) the date a notice of allowance is 

given or mailed in the application, 

or (ii) the later of either six months 

after publication, or the date of the 

first rejection during the examination 

of the application.

Fees

The AIA reduced certain fees for 

qualified small entities and introduced a new class called micro 

entities. A micro entity is an applicant that qualifies as a small entity, 

hasn’t been named as an inventor 

on more than four previously filed 

patent applications, doesn’t have a 

gross income exceeding three times 

the median household income for the 

preceding calendar year, and hasn’t 

transferred ownership interest in the 

application to another entity exceeding the income limit. Institutes of 

higher education are included in the 

definition of micro entities, but this 

definition is subject to further regulations to be prescribed.

Filing by assignee

The AIA allows assignees of inventions such as employers of inventors 

to file patent applications. This will 

facilitate filing when the inventor 

won’t cooperate, can’t be found, or is 

incapacitated.

was a source of hundreds of lawsuits 

from 2009 to 2011.

Additional effects that the AIA will 

have on litigation will likely become 

apparent over time. The law has been 

in force for only a short time. As lawsuits are filed and progress through 

the courts, the law will become more 

fully defined and provide additional 

guidance to patent owners and others 

impacted by the changes to the law.

OTHER ASPECTS OF THE AIA

The AIA has some other provisions, 

including the following.

Derivation proceedings 

Derivation proceedings, a mechanism that counterbalances the 

first-to-file system, are designed so 

that the first (true) inventor can challenge the first applicant’s right to 

a patent by demonstrating that the 

first applicant is claiming an invention derived from the true inventor. 

With many limitations, derivation 

proceedings can be conducted administratively either in the US Patent 

Office or litigated conventionally in 

federal court.

The derivation proceedings concept isn’t new—only the procedure is 

new. It’s triggered when both involved 

parties file patent applications and 

at least one of the involved parties 

charges that the other party derived 

the invention from it. However, only 

the party having the later effective 

filing date can initiate derivation proceedings. Further, the claims in the 

competing patents or patent applications must not be patentably distinct.

It could be challenging for the first 

inventor to prevail over the first applicant in derivation proceedings. As the 

term implies, the focus is on whether 

the first applicant derived the invention from the first inventor. Therefore, 

the first inventor might need to provide evidence that important details 

of his invention were transmitted to 

the first applicant and that the first 

applicant used them to file a patent 

application. This contrasts with situThe content of this article is 

intended to provide accurate 

and authoritative information 

with regard to the subject matter 

covered. It is offered with the 

understanding that neither IEEE 

nor the IEEE Computer Society 

is engaged in rendering legal, 

accounting, or other professional 

services or advice. If legal advice or 

other expert assistance is required, 

the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

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________________

___

______

_______
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“IEEE is the umbrella that

allows us all to stay current

with technology trends.” 

Dr. Mathukumalli Vidyasagar

Head, Bioengineering Dept. 

University of Texas, Dallas

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________________
32 & 16 YEARS AGO

12 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

NOVEMBER 1980

www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/1980/11/index.html

SPECIAL MESSAGE (p. 7) “... With the advent of computer 

engineering departments at the universities and the growth 

of software engineering, the institute should encourage 

maximum participation in this exciting new area. Now 

might be the time to consider changing the name of the 

institute from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics 

Engineers to the Institute of Electrical and Computer 

Engineers. In my opinion this would encourage increased 

participation of the computer professional in both the 

Computer Society and the IEEE.”

BALLISTIC COMPUTING (p. 37) “One of the world’s most 

complex undertakings in the past two decades has been 

the US Army Ballistic Missile Defense Program. A critical 

part of the large research and development investment 

in this program has been the effort to develop data 

processing hardware and software technologies to meet 

the computational challenges of this incredibly complex 

problem. The demands for a computing system that will 

deliver a throughput of hundreds of millions of instructions 

per second at some undetermined point in its life cycle, 

with a high confidence that correct execution will occur, 

challenge even the most advanced technologists.”

SUPER DATA FLOW (pp. 48-49) “Data flow architectures 

offer a possible solution to the problem of efficiently 

exploiting concurrency of computation on a large scale, 

and they are compatible with modern concepts of program 

structure. Therefore, they should not suffer so much from 

the difficulties of programming that have hampered other 

approaches to highly parallel computation.”

DISTRIBUTED TASKS (p. 57) “... Distributed processing 

applications range from large data base installations 

where processing load is distributed for organizational 

efficiency to high-speed signal processing systems where 

extremely fast processing must be performed in a realtime environment. But, like any new concept, distributed 

processing has problems which must be solved before it 

can become part of the accepted processing repertoire of 

system designers.”

VECTOR COMPUTERS (p. 82) “Improvements in the second 

generation of vector supercomputers include such hardware 

features as extensive use of LSI memory chip technology, 

improved memory management to enhance throughput 

performance, better designs to link and chain execution 

strings within the CPU, and much higher effective-speed 

I/O operations integrated into the architecture. Improved 

software items are a result of both better-working hardware 

and better compilers. ...”

B U S I N E S S 

COMPUTING

(p. 84) “In 

spite of the 

a d v a n c e s 

made in the 

past 33 years, 

b u s i n e s s 

computing is 

far from being 

a mature technology. 

The advances to come in the next 33 years at the technical, 

business, and social levels can reasonably be expected to 

match those achieved so far.”

SYSTEM PACKAGING (p. 100) “... As semiconductors in 

electronic equipment go to VLSI ... a greater percentage 

of total system cost will be in packaging, a greater 

percentage of total design and manufacturing delay will 

be in packaging, and a greater percentage of the cost of 

testing solutions will be affected by packaging technology. 

For these reasons, the system packaging engineer will 

most certainly be needed to ensure system manufacture 

at reasonable cost.”

WHISTLE BLOWING (p. 104) “I am occasionally consulted 

by junior employees concerning ‘whistle blowing’—

whether the employee, or ‘a friend of his,’ should tell 

management about another employee’s illegal, unethical, 

or dishonest action. Responding to such an inquiry is 

not easy—a company’s high principles are not always 

universally respected by management in practice and 

often the farther down in the management chain one 

goes, the greater the divergence between principles and 

practice. Consequently, I was delighted to discover an 

article on the dangers of whistle blowing to which I now 

can refer inquirers ...”

COMPUTERS AND GOVERNMENT (p. 121) “Definition of 

government’s role is the key to the effective implementation 

of information technology, but [Simon] Ramo sees five 

obstacles to the crystallization of that definition: (1) the 

government is fragmented, (2) it is subject to short-range 

pressures, (3) bureaucracy is not well-suited to solving 

complex problems, (4) government tends to be equivocal 

and unclear, and (5) it has trouble attracting and retaining 

experts in this difficult-to-comprehend technology.”

OFFICE COMPUTERS (p. 122) “Office procedures will 

change considerably through the 1980s in response 

to technological evolution. Four new market research 

reports measure the impact of voice-activated typewriters, 

advanced imager/processors, falling disk drive costs, and 

shifting DP maintenance cost policies.”

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Editor: Neville Holmes; holmeswn@yahoo.com.au

NOVEMBER 2012 13

NOVEMBER 1996

www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/1996/11/index.html

TIME SHARING (p. 6) “One programming language, JOSS 

(Johnniac Open Shop System), does have a specific birth 

date—November 7, 1960. JOSS was developed by J.C. 

(Cliff) Shaw at Rand Corporation to give users a hands-on 

connection to a computer at a time when operating systems 

had become the major management tool of computing 

center directors to speed up program turnaround and 

eliminate programmers’ direct use of the console. JOSS 

allowed 12 (apparently) simultaneous users on a machine, 

preceding by a year Fernando Corbató’s invention of 

time-sharing.”

SECURITY (p. 8) “The CERT Coordination Center’s collection 

of software vulnerability data provides empirical evidence 

that vendors continue to release software containing 

essentially the same classes of security flaws, repeatedly, 

year after year. ...”

SURVIVAL (p. 10) “Tools that solve general problems 

efficiently live forever. We still compute with transistorized 

binary logic circuits, and we will be doing so 20 years 

hence. Consequently, back-end software will be written in 

C 20 years hence because C can efficiently map a general 

class of procedural algebraic problems onto transistorized 

binary logic circuits.”

THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT (p. 16) “... it is unclear 

what the Telecommunications Act’s long-term effects will 

be and whether the law will fulfill its promise. And under 

any circumstances, it looks as though consumers should 

not look for the large-scale development, introduction, and 

deployment of new technologies in the near future.

“This will be the case partially because many 

telecommunications companies will be busy in the 

near future pursuing lawsuits, looking for partners, 

and figuring out what they need to do to cope with the 

Telecommunications Act.”

PROGRAM ERROR (p. 20) “An inquiry has revealed that 

a software design error and insufficient software testing 

caused an explosion that ended the maiden flight of the 

European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 rocket less than 40 

seconds after liftoff on June 4, 1996.”

Y2K (p. 21) “The US government says it may have to spend 

up to $30 billion to make sure its computers can cope with 

the Year 2000 problem. Others think the cost could run 

even higher.”

THE PENTIUM PRO (p. 47) “Intel designed the Pentium Pro 

processor to be used gluelessly (without extra chips) in 

shared-memory multiprocessor systems. Our task was 

to validate that multiple Pentium Pro processors and the 

82450GX chipset would function correctly and perform as 

specified in such systems.”

ENGINEERED TESTING (p. 61) “Software-reliabilityengineered testing combines the use of quantitative 

reliability objectives and operational profiles (profiles of 

system use). The operational profiles guide developers in 

testing more realistically, which makes it possible to track 

the reliability actually being achieved.”

RELIABILITY PREDICTION (p. 69) “Critical business 

applications require reliable software, but developing 

reliable software is one of the most difficult problems 

facing the software industry. After the software is shipped, 

software vendors receive customer feedback about 

software reliability. However, by then it is too late; software 

vendors need to know whether their products are reliable 

before they are delivered to customers. Software reliability 

growth models help provide that information. ...”

MEASURING QUALITY (pp. 78-79) “... The traditional 

algorithms and metrics from the hard engineering 

disciplines either come up short when applied to software 

or are easily misapplied. Software engineering is a 

discipline that is largely nonparametric and resistant to 

traditional modes of analysis. Unquestionably, we need 

common methods of determining the business value of 

software. We must also generate and promote the human 

factors and activity statistics necessary to manage and 

steer software development.”

ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS (p. 92) “Possibly in reaction 

to the Netscape-MasterCard alliance, Microsoft and Visa 

began to develop a competing electronic transaction 

standard, the Secure Transaction Technology. Later, 

Netscape and MasterCard accused Visa and Microsoft of 

planning to charge a royalty for each use of their standard. 

Eventually the differences were resolved, and in February 

MasterCard and Visa agreed to support a royalty-free 

standard called Secure Electronic Transactions.”

THE VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY (p. 95) “Following the Monterey 

conference, a group of higher education network leaders 

reviewed the technical requirements for the virtual 

university and for today’s research community. They 

determined that by the year 2000, higher education will 

require an advanced, open, internetworking fabric ...”

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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

14 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

Big Iron Moves 

Toward Exascale 

Computing

Neal Leavitt

S

upercomputing is entering a 

new frontier: the exaflops era, 

in which high-performance 

machines could run a thousand times faster than today’s 

petaflops systems.

Some experts say that someone could build a n exa f lops 

machine—capable of performing 

1018 floating-point operations per 

second—by the end of this decade.

More speed would be welcome, 

as supercomputing is used in many 

areas—including nuclear-weapon 

testing simulations, analyzing the 

geologies of various areas for possible 

oil deposits, astronomy, astrophysics, 

financial services, life sciences, and 

climate modeling—that could benefit 

from higher performance.

“This will necessitate new hardware and software paradigms,” said 

Arend Dittmer, director of product 

marketing for Penguin Computing, a 

high-performance computing (HPC) 

services provider.

But for the first time in decades, 

computing-technology advances 

might be threatened, said John Shalf, 

Computer Science Department head 

in the US Lawrence Berkeley National 

Laboratory’s Computing Research 

Division. 

“While transistor density on silicon 

is projected to increase with Moore’s 

law, the energy efficiency of silicon 

is not,” he noted. “Power [consumption] has rapidly become the leading 

design constraint for future highperformance systems.” 

Thus, said Dittmer, software developers will have to optimize code for 

power efficiency rather than just 

performance.

Researchers are also looking into 

a number of disruptive hardware 

technologies that could dramatically 

increase efficiency, including new 

types of memory, silicon photonics, 

stacked-chip architectures, and computational accelerators, explained 

Dimitrios S. Nikolopoulos, professor 

and director of research at Queen’s 

University Belfast.

The US, China, Japan, the European 

Union, and Russia are each investing 

billions of dollars in supercomputer 

research. 

Achieving HPC improvements 

could even help those who don’t 

use supercomputers. “As always,” 

explained Intel Labs Fellow Shekhar 

Borkar, “the technology will trickle 

down to mainstream computing.”

However, building exascale 

machines faces some significant 

challenges.

BACKGROUND

University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign researchers started 

building supercomputers in the early 

1950s and parallel supercomputers in 

the early 1960s. 

Seymour Cray, who founded 

Cray Research—the forerunner of 

today’s Cray Inc.—in the 1970s, is 

considered the father of commercial 

supercomputing. 

Early supercomputers were 

designed like mainframes but adapted 

for higher speed. 

In the 1980s, the next wave of HPC 

machines used custom processors. 

During the 1990s, general-purpose 

commercial processors began offering good performance, low prices, and 

reduced development costs, which 

made them attractive for use in supercomputers, said Stanford University 

Developers and researchers face many challenges in trying 

to produce exascale supercomputers, which would perform a 

thousand times faster than today’s most powerful systems.

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NOVEMBER 2012 15

BlueGene/Q HPC line and performs 

16.3 Pflops.

The Top500 project, in which several academic and research experts 

rank the world’s nondistributed supercomputer systems, placed Sequoia at 

the top of its list in its recent semiannual report, as Table 1 shows. 

Ranking second was Fujitsu’s K computer, which performs 10.5 Pflops.

Sequoia, which runs Linux and is 

primarily water cooled, consists of 

96 racks, 98,304 16-core compute 

nodes, 1.6 million total cores, and 1.6 

petabytes of RAM. 

Despite being so powerful, the 

system at peak speeds is 90 times 

more energy efficient than ASC 

Purple and eight times more than 

Blue Gene/L, two other very fast IBM 

supercomputers.

Power consumption

Sequoia uses 7.89 megawatts at 

peak performance. At that rate, a oneexaflops machine would consume 

400 MW, about one-fifth of Hoover 

Dam’s entire generation capacity, said 

Nathan Brookwood, research fellow 

with semiconductor consultancy 

Insight 64.

professor William Dally, who is also 

chief scientist and senior vice president of research at GPU maker Nvidia. 

The first machine to break the 

petaflops barrier was IBM’s Roadrunner in 2008.

Getting to exascale computing is 

critical for numerous reasons. Faster 

supercomputers could conduct calculations that have been beyond reach 

because of insufficient performance, 

noted IBM Research director of computing systems Michael Rosenfield. 

Another issue is that many complex problems have a large number 

of parameters. The only way to deal 

with such problems is to simultaneously run multiple sets of calculations 

using different combinations of 

parameters, which requires tremendous computational resources.

Bill Kramer, deputy director for 

the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ (NCSA’s) Blue 

Waters petascale computing project, 

said research teams are working on 

difficult problems in areas such as 

solar science, astrophysics, astronomy, chemistry, material science, 

medicine, social networks, and neutron physics. 

“All are far more complex to solve 

than what has been done in the past, 

and it’s only now, with petascale 

going to exascale, that we can begin 

to solve these in less than a lifetime,” 

he explained.

TOMORROW’S BIG IRON

W h i l e s o m e a s p e c t s o f 

supercomputing—such as the 

traditional forms of security it uses—

are unlikely to change to enable 

exascale computing, others will.

For example, developers are 

placing processing engines inside 

memory, rather than outside, 

to overcome the bottlenecks of 

today’s memory-to-processor 

connections. They are also working 

with a lternate progra mming 

languages that optimize, enhance, 

a nd simplif y pa ra llelism, a s 

well as communications and 

control approaches that improve 

performance.

Fastest Supercomputer: 

IBM’s Sequoia

Sequoia, an IBM supercomputer at 

the US Lawrence Livermore National 

Laboratory, is part of the company’s 

Table 1. World’s fastest supercomputers as ranked by Top500 (www.top500.org), June 2012.

Rank Site Manufacturer Computer Country Cores

Maximum 

throughput 

(petaflops)

Power 

(megawatts)

1 US Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory

IBM Sequoia USA 1,572,864 16.30 7.89

2 RIKEN Advanced Institute for 

Computational Science

Fujitsu K computer Japan 795,024 10.50 12.66

3 US Argonne National 

Laboratory

IBM Mira USA 786,432 8.16 3.95

4 Leibniz Rechenzentrum IBM SuperMUC Germany 147,456 2.90 3.52

5 National Supercomputer 

Center in Tianjin

National University of 

Defense Technology

Tianhe-1A China 186,368 2.57 4.04

6 US Oak Ridge National 

Laboratory

Cray Jaguar USA 298,592 1.94 5.14

7 CINECA IBM Fermi Italy 163,840 1.73 0.82

8 Forschungszentrum Juelich IBM JuQUEEN Germany 131,072 1.38 0.66

9 Commissariat a l’Energie 

Atomique

Bull Curie thin 

nodes

France 77,184 1.36 2.25

10 National Supercomputing 

Center in Shenzhen

Dawning Nebulae China 120,640 1.27 2.58

Source: Professor Jack Dongarra, University of Tennessee, Top500 project

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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

16 COMPUTER

teristics can be complex and time 

consuming.

Investigating such matters is the 

Heterogeneous System Architecture 

(HSA) Foundation consortium of chipmakers, academics, equipment manufacturers, software companies, and 

operating-system vendors.

According to King-Smith, supercomputer developers will face a 

challenge in balancing performance, 

power, and chip size.

Moreover, noted Dally, an exascale machine will have to run over 

a billion parallel threads at any time 

to keep busy—many times more 

than today’s fastest computers—and 

this will require new programming 

approaches.

Designers of exascale computers 

could turn to 3D processors with 

various layers of circuitry stacked on 

top of one another. Integrating a large 

processing system this way improves 

memory access and performance, 

added Dally.

However, this also creates challenges for cooling and power 

supply. For example, noted Georgia 

Institute of Technology assistant professor Richard Vuduc, heat builds up 

between layers, making them harder 

to cool. In addition, he said, the interlayer connections are difficult to 

design, and there are few tools for 

developing and testing 3D circuits.

Memory and interchip 

communications

Two crucial limitations that 

exascale computing faces are the 

increasing speed disparity between 

a CPU and external memory, and the 

relative slowdown in interconnect 

support. 

Processing speeds have increased 

exponentially, but the connecting 

fabric and memory controllers are 

still working to keep up. 

Introducing solutions such as data 

compression, as well as optimizing 

memory organization and usage by 

adding localized caches and thereby 

keeping more of the processing on 

Processing

Processor performance will be a 

key factor in exascale computing. And 

parallelism, created via multiple cores 

on a chip working on different tasks 

simultaneously, is driving processorperformance improvements. 

Future supercomputers will 

have more cores per chip and each 

core will run many threads to hide 

latency, according to Stanford’s Dally.

There is an emerging consensus 

that future supercomputers will be 

heterogeneous multicore computers, 

with each processing chip having different types of cores specialized for 

different tasks, he said. 

For example, Dally explained, 

the majority of the cores would be 

throughput-optimized to execute 

parallelized work quickly and with 

minimum energy consumption, as is 

the case with GPUs.

A small number of cores would be 

latency-optimized, like those in CPUs, 

for use in critical serial tasks. 

For parallel tasks, said AMD’s 

Lee, GPUs are more energy efficient 

than CPUs because they use a single 

instruction to perform many operations and because they run at lower 

voltages and frequencies.

Each type of processor provides 

distinct advantages, said Tony KingSmith, vice president of marketing 

for Imagination Technologies, which 

designs and licenses multimedia and 

communications semiconductor 

cores.

However, using different kinds of 

cores would not come without challenges. For example, programming 

multiple types of processors to take 

advantage of their distinct characWithout improvements, an exascale computer “might need its own 

nuclear power plant or large hydroelectric dam,” said Carl Claunch, vice 

president and distinguished analyst 

with market research firm Gartner 

Inc.

When an early Univac powered 

up in the 1950s, the lights dimmed 

in the surrounding neighborhood, 

Brookwood noted. “Imagine the 

impact of powering up a 400-MW 

supercomputer and watching the 

lights dim in the Southwest,” he 

continued. “Future systems must 

improve their performance per watt 

by a factor of 40 or more to deliver 

exascale results within reasonable 

power envelopes.”

The US Department of Energy 

has set a goal that supercomputers 

use no more than 20 MW of power, 

which would require radical redesigns of processors, interconnects, 

and memory, noted Alan Lee, vice 

president of research and advanced 

development for chipmaker AMD.

Supercomputer designers now 

routinely incorporate energyconserving features that turn off 

idle elements within their chips 

when possible. Modern chips, noted 

Stanford’s Dally, use both power 

gating—in which power to parts of 

a chip is shut off—and clock gating—

in which the power is left on but the 

clock is turned off.

Stacked DRAM placed close to the 

processor increases memory bandwidth while requiring significantly 

less power to transfer data than current designs, he noted. 

Supercomputers could become 

more energy efficient by using lowpower memory and also components 

that run at lower frequencies, as well 

as reducing the amount of data movement, added Lee.

In the future, said University of 

California, San Diego (UCSD) professor Michael Taylor, using highly 

specialized, low-speed applicationspecific coprocessors could help 

decrease energy consumption.

There could be an 

exascale computer 

by the end of this 

decade.

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Learn about computing history 

and the people who shaped it.

COMPUTING

THEN

http://computingnow.

computer.org/ct

NOVEMBER 2012 17

If exascale systems aren’t built 

and computing performance stalls 

at today’s levels, said the Lawrence 

Berkeley National Laboratory’s Shalf, 

the information-technology industry 

will shift from a growth industry to 

a replacement industry, and future 

societal impacts of computing will be 

limited. 

Neal Leavitt is president of Leavitt 

Communications (www.leavcom.

com), a Fallbrook, California-based 

international marketing communications company with affiliate offices 

in Brazil, France, Germany, Hong 

Kong, India, and the UK. He writes 

frequently on technology topics and 

can be reached at neal@leavcom.com. 

Thus, exascale systems might 

implement hybrid cooling systems 

using both liquid and air cooling, said 

Cray’s Blake. 

A current trend, noted IBM’s 

Rosenfield, is to use roomtemperature water to efficiently 

conduct heat away from sensitive 

components without requiring water 

chillers, which would increase energy 

consumption. 

A

ccording to Dally, the individual components of an exascale 

machine could be reliable and 

have low failure rates, but combining so many into one large computer 

increases the chance a failure will 

occur somewhere.

“Concerted government and industry investment and collaboration are 

needed to overcome the challenges 

[of exascale computing]. Leadership 

is necessary ... as evidenced by sovereign strategic commitments to HPC 

in Japan, China, Russia, and Europe,” 

said IBM’s Rosenfield.

Added King-Smith, industry consortiums such as the Khronos Group 

and the HSA Foundation should continue pushing mainstream adoption 

of technologies like heterogeneous 

processing and GPU computation.

In the past 20 years, US expenditures on HPC have steadily grown, 

but it’s not certain that the country 

will have the first practical exascale 

system, noted the NCSA’s Kramer. 

The technical challenges and uncertainties; the complexity of industrial, 

government, and national laboratory 

partnerships; and budget problems 

might mean there won’t be the 

focused US effort necessary for such 

an expensive and technically challenging undertaking.

Current plans for a US system 

by 2018 are no longer likely to bear 

fruit, and the country may not have 

an exascale machine until between 

2023 and 2025, Kramer said. “China, 

Europe, even Russia may arrive at 

some type of exascale system first,” 

he added.

chip, would improve some memoryand interconnect-related issues, said 

King-Smith. 

Optical links and 3D chip stacking 

could improve interchip communications and lower power consumption, 

but further research in this area is 

necessary, said the UCSD’s Taylor. 

He predicted that optical connections will be built onto chips during 

the next few years.

However, Stanford’s Dally noted, 

some major technical hurdles must 

be cleared for this to happen, such as 

reducing the cost and power dissipation of optical links.

Internode networking

Many supercomputers use highspeed Ethernet for communication 

between processing nodes. However, the technology’s deep router 

queues and tendency to occasionally 

drop packets could create high and 

unpredictable latencies unsuitable for 

exascale computing. 

Proprietary networking technologies like those used in Cray machines 

and other supercomputers have 

lower-latency routers, topologies 

with fewer hops, and more efficient 

buffer management, said Bill Blake, 

Cray’s senior vice president and chief 

technology officer. This approach 

provides low internode latency and 

high bandwidth. 

However, proprietary technologies 

are expensive.

Cooling

Supercomputers generate huge 

amounts of heat. If the heat is 

not either cooled or moved away 

from chips, connectors, and the 

machine’s many other heat-sensitive 

components, they—and the entire 

system—will fail.

In the past, supercomputers 

have used liquid cooling and/or 

air cooling via fans and heat sinks. 

Liquid cooling is highly effective, 

but it can be expensive and would 

become much more so in exascale 

systems.

 Selected CS articles and columns 

 are available for free at http://

 ComputingNow.computer.org.

Editor: Lee Garber, Computer;

l.garber@computer.org

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____________

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____
NEWS BRIEFS

18 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

Rice University researchers have designed a technology for spraying batteries onto 

almost any surface. In one experiment, they connected nine batteries sprayed onto 

bathroom tiles. When fully charged, the batteries produced 2.4 volts and powered 40 

LEDs that spelled out “Rice” for six hours. 

Gaming Industry Threatened 

by Financial Problems

For years, gaming has been seen as 

a growth industry with a bright financial future. Things have looked good 

for developers of both games and consoles. However, the industry has now 

fallen upon hard times.

In the lucrative US market, 

computer-game sales dropped 8 percent in 2011 to about $17 billion, and 

have fallen another 20 percent through 

August of 2012. According to the 

Gamasutra website (www.gamasutra.

com), which covers the gaming industry, US sales have declined each year 

since reaching a record $22 billion in 

2008. Gamasutra said totals in 2012 

could reach about $18 billion if there 

is a “miracle” turnaround the rest of 

this year, $15 billion if sales don’t pick 

up, and about $12.5 billion in a “worst 

case” scenario.

Video-game console sales have 

also declined steadily since 2008. 

As a result of these problems, 

gaming-company stock values have 

plummeted.

Numerous industry observers say 

the worldwide economic problems 

have contributed to the downturn. 

They also cite the increasing availability of cheap games that can be 

accessed via downloads, largely to 

smartphones, as opposed to morecostly games accessed via discs that 

must be played on relatively expensive consoles.

Experts also say that developers 

have made creative mistakes in their 

designs and that the big gaming companies have failed to come up with 

enough blockbuster products.

In addition, there hasn’t been a 

new console on the market for about 

six years, which has limited the buzz 

surrounding gaming. Nintendo plans 

to release its Wii U controller in midNovember, in time for the holiday 

shopping season.

However, some observers predict 

that the traditional sale of games on 

discs for use in consoles may be on 

its way out. 

They say the key to gaming’s 

future will depend on the creativity 

of smaller developers of downloadable games.

Need a Battery? 

Just Spray It on

Rice University scientists have 

developed a spray-on battery that, 

they say, could be applied to almost 

any surface. This technology could 

provide portable power to many 

devices that have trouble accommodating a traditional battery. 

The new spray-on lithium-ion battery is applied via layers of paint. Each 

layer contains a necessary element 

of a conventional battery, including 

current collectors, a cathode, an 

anode, and a polymer separator. The 

separator keeps the positive and negative electrodes apart to avoid short 

circuits while permitting the transport of ionic charge carriers that 

complete the circuit.

Rice graduate student Neelam 

Singh led the research team that 

developed the spray-on battery.

To test their invention, the scientists 

performed an experiment in which 

they connected nine batteries sprayed 

onto bathroom tiles. One included a 

solar cell that converted power from a 

light. When fully charged by both the 

solar cell and standard building electricity, the batteries produced 2.4 volts 

and powered 40 LEDs that spelled out 

“Rice” for six hours.

The research team has also 

painted batteries onto surfaces such 

as stainless steel, flexible polymers, 

and glass.

Singh said spray painting is already 

a process used in many industries, 

so the technique will be easy for companies to implement. 

The Rice team is continuing its 

research and hopes to develop versions of the battery that could include 

painted tiles that could be fitted 

together and configured in multiple 

ways to meet the needs of individual 

products and projects.

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NOVEMBER 2012 19

IPv4 Shortage Causes 

Address Trading, Hoarding

Some strange things are happening 

in the normally routine world of IP 

addresses, thanks to the growing 

shortage of IPv4 addresses. 

For example, companies have 

begun participating in informal 

secondary markets in which they 

sell the addresses they don’t need to 

organizations that don’t have enough.

These developments are important 

because the vast majority of Internet 

traffic is still based on IPv4, despite 

growing calls over the last few years 

for IPv6 adoption in light of the 

shrinking number of available IPv4 

addresses. 

Within North America, about 25 

percent of all new IPv4 address blocks 

that new users have obtained have 

been traded between organizations, 

according to a recent study by Syracuse University and Delft University 

of Technology researchers.

This trading has occurred even 

though the regional internet registry 

for North America, called the American Registry for Internet Numbers, 

still reportedly has millions of IPv4 

addresses available for ISPs and users. 

Among other activities, the five RIRs 

manage the allocation and registration of IP addresses.

Traditionally, organizations return 

unneeded addresses to their area’s 

RIR, which then gives them to organizations that want them.

However, that’s not possible now 

in some regions. For example, two 

RIRs—the Asia-Pacific Network 

Information Centre and Réseaux IP 

Européens (European IP networks) 

Network Coordination Centre—are 

running out of IPv4 addresses.

Thus, organizations are trading 

addresses among themselves where 

such activity is permitted. They 

reportedly are trading for about $10 

each.

Meanwhile, the UK Department for 

Work and Pensions recently found a 

block of 16.8 million IPv4 addresses 

that are not connected to the Internet. 

However, the agency has decided to 

hold onto these addresses.

Sponsors of a public campaign 

are trying to fight this by convincing 

the UK government to auction off the 

block to users who want to use the 

addresses to link to the Internet.

Some observers say the addresses 

could be worth $1.5 billion on the 

open market, given that they comprise the last unused block of its size 

in the European-Middle East region.

Researcher Cracks Encrypted 

Password for Flame-Botnet 

Server

A researcher with security vendor 

Kaspersky Lab cracked the encrypUK TEAM BUILDS SUPERCOMPUTER FOR $4,050

U niversity of Southampton researchers, with the help of a professor’s 6-year-old son, have built a supercomputer with a group of $35, credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi computers stacked in racks built with Lego toy blocks.

The team—led by Professor Simon Cox—used 64 Raspberry Pi computers, each with a 

16-gigabyte SD card, yielding a terabyte of memory—to construct their Iridis-Pi cluster. 

The machine was named after the University of Southampton’s Iridis supercomputer. 

Cox said one of his project’s goals is to make supercomputing—typically the domain 

only of well-funded, highly trained scientists—accessible to hobbyists.

Raspberry Pi is a Linux-based, single-board computer with a 700-MHz ARMarchitecture CPU, 256 Mbytes of RAM, two USB ports, and a 10/100 Ethernet controller. 

The 45-gram machine measures 85.6 × 53.98 × 17 millimeters, not including the SD card 

and connectors. The Raspberry Pi Foundation started work in 2009 to produce an 

inexpensive computer that young people could use to learn programming.

Cox and his team installed and built all of their supercomputer’s software, including an 

implementation of the Message Passing Interface, a language-independent communications protocol used to program parallel computers. They also created code written in 

Python to distribute parallel-computing tasks.

Cox’s 6-year-old son, James, lent his Lego-related expertise to the building of the racks 

that held the Raspberry Pi units.

The supercomputer cost about $4,050, not including the Ethernet switches that 

connected the nodes.

The researchers have released an online guide (www.southampton.ac.uk/~sjc/

raspberrypi/pi_supercomputer_southampton.htm) for building a Raspberry Pi-based 

supercomputer.

UK researchers have built an inexpensive supercomputer from a number of $35, 

credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi computers. The team was led by Professor Simon Cox, 

whose 6-year-old son, James, designed the Lego racks that held the Raspberry Pi 

units.

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_____________________________
NEWS BRIEFS

Editor: Lee Garber, Computer;

l.garber@computer.org

The attackers utilized multiple 

approaches—such as targeting routers, servers, and applications—to 

bring down the banks’ websites. They 

switched the techniques around regularly depending on the results they 

were achieving and the defenses that 

targets deployed. In the past, security 

experts say, hackers have tended to 

use just one DDoS approach.

The assaults were particularly 

effective because by law, US banks 

must provide encryption, protected 

login systems, and other types of 

security. These applications are 

prone to bottlenecks, which make 

them especially susceptible to DDoS 

attacks.

The itsoknoproblembro tool can 

run on compromised servers even if 

the hackers can’t acquire administrative or root access. This gives hackers 

more machines to work with.

Before most of the assaults, online 

posts correctly named the targets and 

the days they would be hit. However, 

experts say, they can’t find information that supports claims in the posts 

that the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military branch, were 

responsible.

And as intricate as the attacks 

were, security investigators add, there 

was nothing sophisticated enough 

to indicate that a country had to be 

behind them. They note that criminal organizations sometimes launch 

DDoS attacks on banks as a distraction while they steal money from 

account holders.

According to experts, administrators must better secure their 

webservers to keep attackers from 

being able to use their machines in 

DDoS attacks.

They also warn that the hackers could launch more of the same 

attacks.

in May and eventually executed a 

suicide command that wiped it off 

of infected machines. Many victims had already cleaned up their 

computers. 

Nonetheless, security researchers 

say, information on command-andcontrol servers indicates the malware 

could strike again. 

Cyberattack on US Banks 

One of Biggest Ever

Recent distributed denial-ofservice assaults on several major US 

banks represented one of the biggest 

such cyberattacks ever, according to 

security experts.

The DDoS attacks shut down websites belonging to Bank of America, 

Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, US Bank, 

Citibank, and PNC Bank after flooding them with huge amounts of 

traffic. The hackers didn’t steal any 

data from the banks or damage their 

transactional systems.

To set up their attacks, the hackers 

compromised thousands of highbandwidth webservers—not the PCs 

usually used in such assaults—via 

several DDoS tools, including a new 

one called itsoknoproblembro (It’s 

OK, no problem, bro.). They used 

the resulting botnet to create traffic 

storms—based on the User Datagram Protocol, TCP, HTTP, and HTTP 

Secure—of up to 60 gigabits per 

second.

tion protecting the password for a 

command-and-control server used 

by the Flame cyberespionage botnet, 

which infected and then compromised thousands of computers in the 

Middle East. 

Having the password allowed security officials to access the server and 

learn more about Flame, as well as 

possibly identify its operators.

Kaspersky analyst Dmitry Bestuzhev broke the hash after security 

vendor Symantec failed to do so 

with brute-force attacks and asked 

for help. Symantec, the International 

Telecommunication Union’s International Multilateral Partnership against 

Cyber Threats (ITU-IMPACT), and the 

German Federal Office for Information Technology Security’s Computer 

Emergency Response Team for federal agencies (CERT-Bund/BSI) have 

been conducting an investigation into 

Flame.

Flame infected Windows computers and gave the resulting botnet’s 

operators access to the machines. 

The software encrypted information on the computers and sent it to 

command-and-control servers for 

subsequent decryption offline.

Experts say Flame was highly 

sophisticated and was behind an 

April 2012 attack that caused Iranian 

officials to disconnect their oilindustry computers from the Internet. 

The malware was discovered 

20 COMPUTER

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_______________________ ____________
Proposals should consist of a title, an extended abstract (up to 3 pages) describing the product or 

topic to be presented and the name, job title, address, phone number, FAX number, and e-mail 

address of the presenter. The status of the product or topic should precisely be described. If this 

is a not-yet-announced product, and you would like to keep the submission confidential, please 

indicate it. We will do our best to maintain confidentiality. Proposals will be selected by the 

program committee's evaluation of interest to the audience. Submission should be made by email, (Author’s kit can be obtained from http://www.coolchips.org/)

to: M. Ikeda, Program Chair e-mail: submit_xvi@coolchips.org

 Author Schedule: February 5, 2013 

 March 11, 2013 

 March 26, 2013

You are also invited to submit proposals for poster sessions by e-mail, 

to: K. Hashimoto, Poster Chair e-mail: poster_xvi@coolchips.org

Author Schedule: March 18, 2013 Poster Abstract Submission (by e-mail) 

 March 26, 2013 Poster Acceptance Notified (by e-mail) 

For more information, please visit <http://www.coolchips.org/>.

For any questions, please contact the Secretariat <cool_xvi@coolchips.org>.

IEEE Symposium on Low-Power and High-Speed Chips

COOL Chips XVI 

Yokohama Joho Bunka Center, Yokohama, Japan 

(Yokohama Media & Communications Center, Yokohama, Japan) 

April 17 - 19, 2013

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

COOL Chips is an International Symposium initiated in 1998 to present advancement of lowpower and high-speed chips. The symposium covers leading-edge technologies in all areas of 

microprocessors and their applications. The COOL Chips XVI is to be held in Yokohama on 

April 17-19, 2013, and is targeted at the architecture, design and implementation of chips with 

special emphasis on the areas listed below. All papers will be published online via IEEE Xplore. 

Authors of best papers will be recommended to submit an extended version to a COOL Chips 

special issue of IEEE Micro. 

Contributions are solicited in the following areas: 

Extended Abstract Submission (by e-mail) 

Acceptance Notified (by e-mail) 

Final Manuscript Submission

D Low Power-High Performance Processors for - 

 Multimedia, Digital Consumer Electronics, Mobile, Graphics, Encryption, Robotics, 

 Automotive, Networking, Medical, Healthcare, and Biometrics. 

D Novel Architectures and Schemes for - 

 Single Core, Multi/Many-Core, Embedded Systems, Reconfigurable Computing, Grid, 

 Ubiquitous, Dependable Computing, GALS and Wireless. 

D Cool Software including - Parallel Schedulers, Embedded Real-time Operating System, 

 Binary Translations, Compiler Issues and Low Power Techniques.

Organizing Committee

Chair:

 H. Kobayashi Tohoku Univ. 

Vice Chairs: 

J. Torrellas Univ. of Illinois, 

Urbana-Champaign

 K. Uchiyama Hitachi 

 C. -M. Kyung KAIST 

 H. Amano Keio Univ. 

Advisory Chair:

 T. Nakamura Keio Univ. 

Secretaries: 

K. Suzuki Renesas

H. Igura NEC

Treasurers:

 R. Egawa Tohoku Univ. 

K. Nitta NTT

Program Chairs: 

 M. Ikeda Univ. of Tokyo 

 F. Arakawa Renesas

Publicity Chair: 

M. Suzuki Panasonic

Publication Chairs: 

Y. Unekawa Toshiba

Y. Hirose Fujitsu Labs.

Registration Chair:

 K. Takano IBM 

Local Arrangement Chairs: 

Y. Nitta Renesas 

A. Hashiguchi Sony 

Web Manager: 

 Y. Sato JAIST 

Advisory Committee 

Chair:

 T. Nakamura Keio Univ. 

Chair Emeritus: 

 M. J. Flynn Stanford Univ. 

Advisory Emeritus: 

 T. L. Kunii Univ. of Tokyo 

Members:

 D. Allison Stanford Univ. 

 D. B. Alpert Camelback

 Computer Architecture 

 A. J. Baum Intel 

D. A. Draper True Circuits 

 (TCMCOMP Chair) 

 M. A. Franklin Washington Univ. 

 Y. Hagiwara Sojo Univ./AIPS 

S. Iwade Osaka Inst. of Tech. 

 L. Jow Hewlett-Packard 

 R. Kasai NTT Electronics 

S. Kohyama Covalent Materials 

T. Kunio NEC 

K. Kushima NTT 

 T. Makimoto TechnoVision

 Consulting 

O. Mencer Imperial College 

H. Mochida Rohm

 Y. Mori CM Engineering

J. Naganuma Shikoku Univ. 

 M. Nishihara AIPS 

 T. Nukii Sharp 

 T. Ogura Ritsumeikan Univ. 

Y. Okamoto Panasonic

A. Omondi Yonsei Univ. 

T. Shimizu Renesas 

 T. Tabata ON Semiconductor 

 T. Watanabe Riken

 N. Woo Samsung 

H. -J. Yoo KAIST 

H. Yoshizawa Fujitsu Labs. 

 (in alphabetical order) 

Program Committee

Chairs: M. Ikeda (Univ. of Tokyo), F. Arakawa (Renesas)

Vice Chairs: J. Yao (NAIST), H. Shimada (NAIST)

Poster Chair: K. Hashimoto (Fukuoka Univ.) 

Special Session Chair: H. Tomiyama (Ritsumeikan Univ.) 

 Members: 

A. Ben-Abdallah (Aizu Univ.) K. -R. Cho (Chungbuk National Univ.)

A. Gupta (Freescale) Y. Han (Chinese Academy of Science)

T. Harada (Yamagata Univ.) N. Higaki (Panasonic) Y. Inoguchi (JAIST)

S. Izumi (Kobe Univ.) K. Kimura (Waseda Univ.) T. Kobori (NEC)

T. Kodaka (Toshiba) Y. Kodama (Univ. of Tsukuba) M. Kuga (Kumamoto Univ.)

G. Lee (Korea Univ.) S. -J. Lee (Qualcomm) K. Morioka (Fujitsu Labs.)

M. Muroyama (Tohoku Univ.) B. -G. Nam (Chungnam National Univ.)

S. Otani (Renesas) Y. Shibata (Nagasaki Univ.) K. Shimamura (Hitachi)

H. Takizawa (Tohoku Univ.) N. Togawa (Waseda Univ.) T. -H. Tsai (NCU Taiwan)

T. Tsutsumi (Meiji Univ.) Y. Wada (UEC) H. Yamauchi (Samsung)

K. S. Yeo (NTU Singapore) (in alphabetical order) 

(As of October 9, 2012)

Sponsored by the Technical Committees on Microprocessors and Microcomputers and Computer Architecture of the IEEE Computer 

Society. In cooperation with the IEICE Electronics Society and IPSJ. 

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_________________

_________________
GUEST EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

22 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

IN THIS ISSUE

In his introduction to this special issue titled “Electronic 

Health Records: The HHS Perspective,” Doug Fridsma, 

chief science officer and director of the Office of Science 

& Technology in the US Department of Health and Human 

Services, gives an overview of current efforts to foster the 

meaningful use of EHRs. These efforts focus on developing 

a consensus for building standards and EHR certification, 

providing support to implementers, and focusing on 

patients’ needs to ensure ongoing success with the 

adoption of EHRs in the US.

In “Personal Health Records: New Means to Safely 

Handle Health Data?,” Inmaculada Carrión Señor and 

her colleagues at the University of Murcia, Spain, discuss 

concerns about the security and privacy of personal health 

information and explore the larger issue of segregating 

patient data in related health contexts. The authors 

describe the potential for addressing these concerns by 

combining a reliable certification entity that accredits 

data protection with the use of internationally established 

privacy and security standards and regulations to help 

increase the numbers of patients and medical professionals 

who are willing to use PHR systems. 

“Electronic Case Records in a Box: Integrating Patient 

Data in Healthcare Networks” by researchers at Fraunhofer 

FOKUS, Germany, describes an interoperable solution to 

the efficient exchange of medical data between institutions. 

ECR in a Box, a concept deployed by Germany’s Electronic 

Case Record Association, hides the security and privacy 

T

he US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act 

of 2010 embraces the notion that electronic health 

information is the bedrock of modern healthcare. 

To this end, a multitude of projects are under way 

that support the transition to electronic health records 

(EHRs), which enable the exchange of information among 

various healthcare-related parties while maintaining 

patient privacy and offering security protections. 

This ambitious endeavor with an aggressive timeline 

of milestones poses new and interesting problems 

pertaining to the sharing of private information among 

physicians, institutions, and individuals. Both the US 

Department of Health and Human Services and the 

National Institute of Standards and Technology have been 

actively supporting health IT projects and the creation of 

standards and certification. 

Other countries have a head start on the US in this 

regard, as they began adopting related strategies years 

ago. Thus, some of the contributions to this special issue 

come from outside the US. 

A multitude of projects are under way 

that support the transition to electronic 

health records, which enable the exchange 

of health information among healthcarerelated parties while maintaining patient 

privacy and offering security protections.

Ann E.K. Sobel, Miami University

The Move 

Toward 

Electronic 

Health 

Records

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NOVEMBER 2012 23

aspects so that healthcare providers and system vendors 

can focus on the business aspects of ECRs, thus providing 

an off-the-shelf approach that dramatically reduces entry 

barriers for healthcare providers and makes it easier to set 

up and participate in regional healthcare networks. 

“Fusion: Managing Healthcare Records at Cloud Scale” 

by researchers from HP Labs proposes a cloud-based 

platform for low-cost delivery of healthcare applications 

that enables broader use of patient-centric management of 

EHRs while supporting the strict guidelines and technical 

safeguards required to protect information as outlined in 

the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 

1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules. 

“Testing the Nation’s Healthcare Information 

Infrastructure: NIST Perspective” by Kevin Brady and his 

colleagues from the National Institute of Standards and 

Technology describes NIST’s involvement in healthcare 

automation activities focused on developing associated test 

methods, protocols, and specifications for interoperability 

in the use of EHRs. 

I

n 2010, the initial goal of having 80 percent of 

physicians using EHRs by 2014 seemed optimistic given 

that less than 20 percent were using the technology at 

that time. However, according to a September 2012 survey 

of 21,000 physicians, 82 percent of respondents indicated 

that they are currently using an EHR or plan to do so 

(www.healthcare-informatics.com/news-item/majorityphysicians-currently-use-or-will-implement-ehrs-surveyfinds). Fine-tuning certification criteria and establishing 

best practices appear to be keys to this initiative’s continued overall success. 

Ann E.K. Sobel is an associate professor in the Department 

of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Miami 

University. Contact her at sobelae@muohio.edu.

Selected CS articles and columns are available 

for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

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_____________________________________

______________

______
24 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

COVER FEATURE

has always remained ONC’s sole focus. ONC sees the goals 

of promoting nationwide adoption of health IT as threefold: improving health, providing better healthcare, and 

reducing costs.

To increase the overall health of the population, 

health IT can help address behavioral risk factors, focus 

on preventive care, and identify public health concerns, 

such as the increased risk of chronic illnesses like diabetes or acute illnesses like influenza. Providing better 

healthcare means improving patients’ care experience 

within the Institute of Medicine’s six domains of quality: 

safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, 

efficiency, and equity. Finally, health IT should reduce 

costs by lowering the total cost of care while improving 

quality, resulting in reduced monthly expenditures for 

Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance 

Program beneficiaries.

In addition to supporting the widespread adoption of 

health IT, ONC is focused on developing standards that 

support interoperability and provide strong, clear guidance 

to the implementer community.

MEANINGFUL USE: THE HITECH CORE

Implementation of Meaningful Use is occurring in three 

stages, emphasizing an incremental path that providers 

can take toward implementing EHR use in their practices 

or facilities. 

In stage one, the focus is on making health information

—usually maintained in paper records—electronic by 

implementing EHR use. In this stage, providers must 

demonstrate the ability to capture data in a standardized 

electronic format and then use that information to engage 

patients and their families during care. 

T

he US Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted 

as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was signed into law on 

17 February 2009 to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology. 

Electronic health records (EHRs) can provide many 

benefits for providers and their patients, but the benefits 

depend on how EHRs are used. Meaningful Use is the set 

of standards defined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Incentive Programs in conjunction 

with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT 

(ONC). These standards govern the use of EHRs and allow 

eligible providers and hospitals to earn incentive payments 

by meeting specific criteria.

The benefits of meaningfully using EHRs include delivering complete and accurate health information to patients 

and their providers, allowing better access to that information and, ultimately, empowering patients to take an active 

role in their healthcare.

HEALTH IT GOALS

While developing the Meaningful Use standards and 

related federally managed health IT programs, the patient 

Electronic health records can deliver complete and accurate health information to 

patients and their providers, allowing 

better access to that information and, ultimately, empowering patients to take an 

active role in their healthcare.

Doug Fridsma, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT

Electronic Health 

Records: The HHS 

Perspective

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NOVEMBER 2012 25

In stage two, providers must be able to share records 

with other providers, regardless of the EHR systems in 

use. Ensuring that data is interoperable is a critical foundation to the successful use of health IT. Interoperability will 

improve patients’ care by ensuring that their information 

follows them across different care settings. 

Stage three will focus on improving information exchange and interoperability, building toward the day when 

healthcare providers can actually learn from the electronic 

information they are using. This stage will emphasize 

not only improving individual patient outcomes but also 

improving the health of the general population. This is 

Meaningful Use in action.

WORKING IN THE BACKGROUND: 

IMPLEMENTATION

The work promoting the adoption and uptake of health 

IT is key to ensuring the HITECH Act’s goals. But making 

certain that the technical standards and specifications 

needed to support this technology are in place is also critical to the development and success of a fully functional 

nationwide health IT ecosystem.

As with the technology that people use every day—

telephones, email, the Internet, mobile technology—health 

information exchange doesn’t offer a “one size fits all” 

solution—different providers will use the technology in different ways. The standards and specifications supporting 

these diverse needs are being developed and harmonized 

within ONC’s Office of Science & Technology. Initiatives are 

under way to establish the fundamental building blocks of 

interoperability by

t standardizing healthcare vocabularies,

t leveraging HL7 international standards for interoperability of health information to develop the underlying 

structure, 

t using secure email protocols to standardize transport, 

t using NIST-adopted encryption standards to standardize security, and

t developing open and accessible APIs to standardize 

services.

ONC is working with the health IT community to convene and rapidly prioritize the challenges it faces so that it 

can subsequently develop and harmonize the standards, 

specifications, and implementation guidance needed to 

solve these challenges. ONC is also responsible for curating the set of standards and specifications that support 

interoperability and ensuring that they can be assembled 

into solutions for a variety of health information exchange 

scenarios. Through its Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects program and a series of Innovations 

Challenge grants, ONC will continue to support innovation in health IT.

A key component to ensuring success is providing support to on-the-ground implementers in assembling the 

standards and policy building blocks required to meet 

providers’ most pressing information exchange needs. As 

early implementations produce results, disseminating and 

spreading the information exchange solutions will ensure 

that a wide array of implementation guidance is available to 

providers looking to engage in health information exchange.

THE NEXT STEP: ENSURING 

STANDARDS COMPLIANCE 

As the health IT community develops and agrees upon 

standards, ONC’s Certification Program is intended to 

ensure that EHR technologies meet those standards and 

to help providers and hospitals achieve CMS’s Meaningful 

Use objectives and measures. 

Certification of health IT assures purchasers and other 

users that an EHR system offers the necessary technological capability, functionality, and security to help them 

meet Meaningful Use objectives and measures. Certification also gives providers and patients confidence that the 

products and systems they use are secure and can work 

with other systems to share information. To date, ONC has 

certified many different types of ambulatory and inpatient 

EHR products from numerous vendors, providing this assurance throughout the country.

WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

As of the end of 2011, 52 percent of office-based physicians indicated their intention to take advantage of EHR 

incentives (www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db79.htm). 

What’s more, according to an ONC analysis of the National Ambulatory Medical Care Electronic Health Record 

Survey, the percentage of primary care providers who’ve 

adopted EHRs in their practice doubled from 20 percent to 

40 percent between 2009 and 2011. These numbers are significant because the first step toward widespread adoption 

of standards-based health IT is simply getting the systems 

in place and converting the data into an electronic format.

Momentum is building. In terms of outreach, ONC’s Regional Extension Centers (RECs) have signed up more than 

100,000 primary care providers, meaning that roughly 

one-third of the nation’s primary care providers have committed to meaningfully using EHRs by partnering with 

their local REC. 

The first step toward widespread 

adoption of standards-based health 

IT is simply getting the systems in 

place and converting the data into 

an electronic format.

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COVER FEATURE

Hospital adoption of EHRs has more than doubled since 2009, increasing from 16 percent to 35 

percent (www.healthit.gov/media/pdf/ONC_Data_Brief_

AHA_2011.pdf). In addition, approximately 85 percent 

of hospitals have indicated their intention to attest to 

Meaningful Use by 2015. 

ONC will continue to support the community of stakeholders and the needs of patients. Functionality will 

continue to improve as the portfolio of standards building 

blocks grows in response to priorities that the health IT 

community sets forth. As this happens, ONC’s certification 

program will also evolve to ensure that the country’s health 

IT products conform to these agreed-upon standards. 

Finally, ONC will continue to support the community of 

implementers who are working to make interoperable 

EHRs a reality in our healthcare system.

Much work remains to be done, but ONC is confident 

that the strategy of working within the community 

to build consensus on standards and EHR certification, providing education and support to implementers, 

and focusing on the patient’s needs will ensure ongoing 

success with the adoption of EHRs in the US. 

Doug Fridsma is the chief science officer and director of 

the Office of Science & Technology, Office of the National 

Coordinator for Health IT, US Department of Health and 

Human Services. In his role at ONC, Fridsma is responsible 

for the programs that focus on providing a foundation for 

interoperable health information exchange. He is a board 

member of HL7 and the National e-Health Collaborative. 

Fridsma received an MD from the University of Michigan 

and a PhD in biomedical informatics from Stanford University. Contact him at doug.fridsma@hhs.gov.

Register today! 

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____________________________________________________
COVER FEATURE

0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society NOVEMBER 2012 27

t preferences: types of treatment desired; stipulations 

regarding organ donations, hospice care, living will;

t alarm system: medication warnings, appointments 

with a physician, available analytical results; and

t family history: family diseases, genetic predispositions, if any.

In addition, a PHR stores vital information from the 

patient’s healthcare providers: laboratory tests, medical 

images, allergies, glucose level, blood pressure, blood 

group, weight, height, immunizations, and medications. 

PHR applications are increasingly popular. An estimated 

70 million people in the US now access some form of PHR.1

Users are aware of the benefits that PHRs provide, such as 

improved doctor-patient communication, ease of comprehension, and reduced risk of medical errors. Nonetheless, 

the existence of PHRs raises the possibility for significant 

privacy and security issues, which both users and designers must understand.

PHR FUNCTIONALITY AND ARCHITECTURE

PHRs can store a wealth of user information that 

users can collect and manage. Patients can enter their 

data as well as view data from other sources. Patients 

can also share and exchange their data with other users 

and with healthcare professionals. Because information self-management lets patients better manage their 

own health data, users of PHRs specifically associated 

or integrated with their healthcare providers’ data 

systems have found PHRs to be very helpful in health 

emergencies.1

T

oday’s healthcare practices are increasingly 

transitioning to e-health: the application of information and communication technology (ICT) 

to health information systems. E-health offers 

solutions that respond to the burgeoning problems and 

demands inherent in the management of paper-based 

patient health records. 

Regulations such as the 1996 US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) state that patients 

have a right to control who can access their information 

and how that information is managed. This regulation, 

coupled with patients’ interest in using the Internet to find 

information about their symptoms, diseases, and treatments, has led to the generation of personal health records. 

A PHR is an electronic Web-based application that lets 

individuals access, manage, and share their health information and access that of others if they have the correct 

credentials. A typical PHR stores a variety of information 

beyond personal identification data:

t personalized health advice: from a physician on unhealthy habits, physical exercise, diet;

Personal health records offer a way to manage health data while lessening healthcare 

costs, improving patient data quality, and 

fostering healthcare efficiency, but privacy 

and security issues are particularly important considerations for PHR designers.

Inmaculada Carrión Señor, José Luis Fernández Alemán, and Ambrosio Toval

University of Murcia, Spain

Personal 

Health Records: 

New Means to 

Safely Handle 

Health Data?

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28 COMPUTER

COVER FEATURE

PHR classifications depending on the cost

Free Purchase

PHR percentage

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Regulations compliance

Secure certifications

Social networks

Figure 1. Personal health records (PHRs) in the communications hub between stakeholders who exchange data 

and interact with patients.

Many applications are integrated with, and use, PHRs 

as an information source, as Figure 1 shows. Examples of 

such applications are the electronic health record (EHR) 

systems of healthcare providers, the information systems 

of research labs and pharmacies, and monitoring devices.

An EHR is a repository of information related to a patient’s healthcare history that is processed and supported 

electronically using ICT. An EHR differs from a PHR in that 

medical professionals, not patients, determine its contents. 

Healthcare professionals can support PHR-EHR integration 

because they can use PHRs to help patients manage their 

diseases, especially chronic conditions such as diabetes. 

Interoperability is a key component of PHR architecture 

that permits the integration of PHR and EHR systems. Standards like ISO/TS 13606 (Health Informatics—Electronic 

Record Communication) assist in the design of interoperable 

EHR systems.

As Figure 1 shows, the PHR receives data from patient 

monitoring devices, test results, EHR systems, doctors, and 

third-party applications (the last three obtain data from 

PHRs to perform their functions).

Business intelligence refers to computer-based techniques that identify, extract, and analyze business data, 

such as sales revenue from products or departments or 

from associated costs and incomes. PHRs could apply 

these techniques to extract the information that hospitals, pharmacies, insurers, research laboratories, and 

healthcare associations need. These entities could in turn 

use this information to discover what resources and data 

are needed to perform their activities. Furthermore, PHRs 

could help develop decision support systems for use in 

these scenarios. Finally, social networks are a communication bridge between PHRs and, as a last resort, patients.

PHR ADOPTION

Although the adoption of PHRs, given their proliferation 

and wide availability, seems inevitable at this point, both 

doctors and patients have expressed several concerns:

t Security on the Internet. Web-based PHRs are subject to multiple threats, just like other Internet 

applications.

t Privacy issues. If patients control their PHRs, they 

must know to whom they are granting access and for 

what purpose.

t Less information being recorded. Physicians might 

avoid writing certain information for fear that patients 

can access that information.

t Information quality. If patients introduce their information into a PHR system, the information might 

not be as accurate as if a professional were to 

record it.

t Comprehension difficulty. Patients might be unable to 

understand the information contained in their PHR, 

leading to unnecessary anxiety. This problem could 

be exacerbated in patients with psychiatric problems.

t Educational level. Patients with a lower level of education might be unable to understand the information 

shared on the PHR system.

t Decrease in face-to-face communication. The use of 

PHRs involves the loss of face-to-face interaction 

between doctors and patients, the therapeutic relationships established by personal interaction, and 

associated benefits.

t Increased workload and reduced compensation. Physicians’ workloads might increase, without appropriate 

remuneration, although most professionals believe 

that this increase might also lead to fewer patient 

visits.

t Physicians’ role. It is unclear what the physicians’ roles 

and responsibilities are with regard to PHRs.

These issues could well become barriers to the implementation and adoption of PHRs if not thoughtfully addressed 

by PHR designers.2

PRIVACY AND SECURITY

One challenge when designing a PHR system is ensuring information privacy and security, which is a particular 

concern to users.3

 If patients lack confidence that their data 

is sufficiently protected, they will not use PHRs.

Beyond addressing security concerns, PHR designers 

must contend with legal requirements: many countries 

require personal data protection by law. European Union 

countries, for example, have developed personal data 

protection laws based on the 1995 European directive 

95/46/CE. In the US, the security focus is sectorial, and 

laws such as the Privacy Act of 1974 guarantee the right 

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to information privacy. The “Personal Health 

Records and Security” sidebar offers additional 

information about these regulations.

Moreover, PHRs are subject to threats that are 

inherent in any Web application. The Open Source 

Vulnerability Database (OSVDB), for example, has 

registered 45,413 vulnerabilities to date (www.

osvdb.org) that are related to Web applications. 

These vulnerabilities—scored on the basis of 

impact, exploitability, temporal, and environmental vulnerabilities with the Common Vulnerability 

Scoring System (http://nvd.nist.gov/cvss.dfm)—

have an average severity score of approximately 

4.75 (out of 10). A score of 4.75 means that unauthorized people (usually hackers) could access and 

modify data relatively easily.

One example of a PHR that experienced data 

vulnerability problems is Microsoft HealthVault: 

in 2009, Microsoft identified 13 incidents that 

involved lost or stolen credentials and affected 

15 individuals (http://www.govinfosecurity.com/

articles.php?art_id=2996&opg=1).

A suitable solution for achieving safer PHRs is 

to include privacy and security standards or regulations in the PHR early specifications that can 

readily be defined by, for instance, HIPAA, which 

identifies security and privacy rules that US health 

systems should satisfy. Additionally, the ISO/TS 

13606 standard defines the minimum access 

policy specifications that EHR systems must satisfy if they are to be interoperable.

Various studies have evaluated PHR system 

privacy policies. For example, a 2011 study investigated whether a given set of PHRs satisfied the 

HIPAA rules.4

 In another study, researchers assessed 

the usability of privacy and security characteristics 

in PHR systems.5

 A 2012 study analyzed PHRs by 

function, dividing them into nine categories, depending 

on their security and privacy characteristics.6

 The “Privacy 

Policy Principles in PHRs” sidebar provides details regarding these policies.

It is possible to develop Web-based PHRs that can satisfy security certificates. This certification ensures that 

the data dealt with in the application are protected and 

encrypted, which lets consumers feel more confident when 

using such systems. Several online PHRs, such as dLife and 

HealthyCircles, are certified by entities such as TRUSTe 

(www.truste.com).

Moreover, PHR designers should consider the Health 

on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode; www.

hon.ch) for Web-based records, as it is a code of conduct 

for medical and health websites that specifically addresses 

the reliability and usefulness of medical information on 

the Internet.

Privacy problems can result when, as is commonly the 

case, PHRs are used to analyze the data stored in them for 

research purposes. In these cases, the data is aggregated 

and de-identified—that is, data that has been purged of 

identification information that pertains to many people. 

However, it is very difficult to remove sufficient information to ensure that a specific person cannot be identified. 

Some studies have used methods such as k-anonymity to 

avoid this situation.7

Nevertheless, a new problem has arisen with the integration of PHRs and social networks—researchers Arvind 

Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, for example, successfully identified a person from aggregated data and the 

person’s information that had been stored on a social 

network. Consequently, they developed a generic reidentification algorithm for anonymized social 

networks.8

PERSONAL HEALTH RECORDS AND SECURITY

We analyzed 40 personal health record (PHR) application software packages, of which 16 are free and 24 are available commercially. 

Figure A shows the percentage of free and commercial PHR application 

software that satisfies security regulations or principles, such as the Health 

Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA; www.hhs.gov/ocr/

privacy) and Health On the Net Code of Conduct (HONCode; www.hon.ch), 

has secure certifications, and is integrated with a variety of social networks.

In total, 70 percent of the PHR systems we analyzed satisfy some security 

regulations, 15 percent have one or more secure certifications, and 27.5 percent are connected with social networks. As Figure A shows, a higher 

percentage of free PHRs versus commercial PHRs satisfy these characteristics. Note, however, that we analyzed 33 percent more commercial than free 

PHRs. The total number of PHRs that actually satisfy regulations and secure 

certifications is quite high.

Medefile (www.medefile.com) is the most popular commercial PHR that 

we analyzed, with more than 18,000 fans on Facebook. Medefile satisfies 

HIPAA regulations and has been certified by both TRUSTe (www.truste.com) 

and Geotrust (www.geotrust.com). The most popular free PHR is dLife, specifically for diabetes patients (www.dlife.com), with more than 5,000 fans on 

Facebook alone. This PHR also satisfies HIPAA regulations and has the 

TRUSTe certification.

Social

network

PHR

Devices Lab results

Third-party

application

EHR

Physicians

PHR

Business

intelligence

Pharmacy Insurance Research

laboratory

Healthcare

association

s

Hospital

Figure A. Free and commercial personal health record systems 

classified by regulation compliance, security certification, and 

social network integration.

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30 COMPUTER

COVER FEATURE

Still another situation that could potentially expose a 

person to data vulnerability is that administrative staff 

could access a user’s data without receiving explicit consent.

In our work, we have researched PHRs in terms of availability, social network integration, and privacy policy. 

Table 1 lists 56 PHRs, both free and commercial, that 

we compiled both from a literature search and from the 

myPHR website (www.myphr.com), which was created and 

is managed by the American Health Information Management Association.

ACCESS CONTROL AND AUDIT

As yet, unlike for EHRs, no international standard exists 

to define a PHR. The ISO/TS 13606 standard, for example, 

defines five sensitivity levels of information and identifies seven functional roles associated specifically with 

EHR system users. Each user has a functional role and 

can access the information depending on that role and the 

information’s sensitivity level.

The role-based scheme defined by ISO for 

EHRs, however, can be adapted to PHRs, which 

are patient-centered applications and in which 

patients decide who can access what information. By analyzing 40 online PHRs against the 

backdrop of the ISO standard, we identified eight 

possible roles and permission assignments for 

seven access levels that PHR designers should 

consider in developing future PHRs. Table 2 

lists these roles and permission assignments. 

Although the user ultimately decides who 

accesses what information and with what permission, the PHR system might suggest how to 

grant access. Moreover, because certain PHRs 

do not allow users to grant access, they might 

use this model.

A PHR system will manage varying roles, and 

offer different access levels, depending on its functionality. Administrator access allows another user 

to control and manage the information as if he or 

she is the user who owns it.

Certain PHR systems anticipate what happens 

if the user cannot access a PHR, as in the case 

of an emergency. In this situation, the individual 

would be unable to control who could access the 

data, but these PHR systems define a special role 

used only in these cases. Some systems do not 

grant access merely because someone says that 

an emergency has occurred, and some individuals would consider this to be a privacy breach. 

Other PHR systems use an audit log so that patients can see who has accessed their data, when 

the access occurred, and for what purpose. Both 

HIPAA and ISO/TS 13606 identify the need to use 

such logs.

HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE: 

NEW APPLICATIONS

The integration of PHRs with social networks provides 

significant benefits—notably, patients with the same disease can contact each other to share information and 

experiences. For example, through dLife, a social network 

PHR that provides information specifically intended for 

diabetics, users can communicate with one another to 

share diabetes-related news and information. However, 

using social networking raises additional privacy and 

security issues with which PHR designers must wrestle, 

especially regarding the sharing of information related to 

family members. 

Social networks have other pitfalls. Several PHRs, 

for example, currently offer patients the opportunity to 

provide genetic information. But a patient who voluntarily discloses this information through a social network 

could be violating a family member’s privacy. 

PRIVACY POLICY PRINCIPLES IN PHRS

A given PHR vendor or supplier’s privacy policy contains all the information related to the privacy and security of user data. The privacy policy should 

be clear and concrete so that users can understand how the PHR system 

manages their information.

The Canadian Standards Association, for example, has defined 10 principles that privacy policies should satisfy to ensure that a particular system’s 

privacy policy contains all the information the user needs. We performed a 

study using the seven most important principles defined by this association: 

consent, limiting collection, limiting user disclosures and retention, accuracy, 

safeguards, openness, and individual access. These principles are the only 

ones we could analyze as external auditors of PHR privacy policies. 

We investigated to determine whether the privacy policies of the 23 free 

PHRs shown in Table 1 in the main text satisfy these seven principles.1 The 

histogram in Figure B indicates the percentage of PHRs that satisfy 0, 1, 2, and 

so on, principles. Note that only 17.4 percent of PHRs satisfy all seven 

principles.

Reference

1. G. Yee and L. Korba, “Personal Privacy Policies,” Computer and Information Security 

Handbook Canada, J.R. Vacca, ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 2009.

0 1 2 3 4 5 67

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Figure B. PHR histogram with policies that satisfy the privacy 

principles defined by the Canadian Standards Association.

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Likewise, if a user who has contracted a disease at 

work—for example, after being exposed to chemicals—

shares this information on a social network, the privacy 

of coworkers could be compromised. Another concern is 

information about contagious diseases—those closest to 

the patient might have the same illness, and their privacy 

would not be guaranteed. 

As Figure 4 shows, PHRs such as Microsoft HealthVault have application programming interfaces (APIs) 

that software designers can use to create supplementary applications. PHRs can use these applications as 

a data source, like common health devices, which are 

connected to PHRs and thus make it easier for patients 

to upload and track health data. Conversely, because the 

applications can extract data from PHRs, they should 

likewise protect user data. PHRs such as HealthButler 

(http://healthbutler.com) and myMediConnect (www.

mymediconnect.net) share information with Microsoft 

HealthVault, which leads to a mutual sharing and complementing of both information stored by these PHRs 

and of functionality. 

Microsoft HealthVault connects with third-party 

applications and devices. As Figure 4 shows, MicroTable 1. Availability and type of personal health records.

Free

Social 

network

Privacy 

policy PHRs

No No HIPAA or 

HONCode

EMRy STICK (http://phr.emrystick.com); MedDataNet (www.meddatanet.com); HealthString (www.

healthstring.com); LifeOnKey (www.lifeonkey.com/Solutions/Default.aspx); Lynxcare (www.lynxcare.net); 

HealthButler (http://healthbutler.com); MediKeeper (www.medikeeper.com); MyLifeSaver (www.doctorglobal.

com/index2.asp); Your Health Record (www.yourhealthrecord.com) 

No No No Patient Power (http://gtipatientpower.com) 

No No Own AccessMyRecords(www.accessmyrecords.com); ER-IDcard (www.er-card.com); HealtheTracks(www.

healthetracks.com); HealthTrio (www.healthtrio.com/index.php); K.I.S. Medical Record Solutions (http://kismedicalrecords.com); LifeLedger (www.elderissues.com); MedicalSummary (www.medicalsummary.com); 

MedNotice (www.mednotice.com); MyActiveHealth (https://www.myactivehealth.com/portal); MyMedical

Records (www.mymedicalrecords.com); myPHI (www.my-phi.com), OnlineMedicalRegistry (www.myihr.com/

entry); PeopleChart (www.peoplechart.com); EHE&me (www.eheandme.com); The Smart PHR (www.

thesmartphr.com); WebMD Health Manager (https://healthmanager.webmd.com)

No Yes HIPAA or 

HONCode

Dossia (www.dossia.org); Healthgram.com (www.healthgram.com); Magnus Health (http://magnushealth.

com); Medefile (www.medefile.com); SynChart (www.synchart.com)

No Yes Own MemiTech (www.911medicalid.com); RelayHealth (www.relayhealth.com); TAC Drive (www.tacdrive.com)

Yes No HIPAA or 

HONCode

GlobalPatientRecord (www.globalpatientrecord.com); MedicAlert (www.medicalert.org); MedsFile.com (www.

medsfile.com); My HealtheVet (www.myhealth.va.gov); MediCompass (www.medicompass.com/mcweb/

default.aspx); MyChart (www.mychartlink.com/mychart); Dr. I-Net (www.drinet.com)

Yes No No Medical ID Card (www.tnlink.com/medcard)

Yes No Own iHealthRecord (http://medfusion.net/ihealthrecord); myHealthFolders (https://myhealthfolders.com); 

TeleMedical.com (www.telemedical.com); MiVIA (www.mivia.org)

Yes Yes HIPAA or 

HONCode

My Doclopedia PHR (www.doclopedia.com); Microsoft HealthVault (www.microsoft.com/en-us/healthvault); 

dLife (www.dlife.com); Juniper Health (https://juniperhealth.com)

Yes Yes Own HealthyCircles (www.healthycircles.com); Keas (https://keas.com)

Both No Own myMediConnect (www.mymediconnect.net/index.php); Passport MD

Both Yes Own NoMoreClipBoard.com (www.nomoreclipboard.com); RememberItNow! (www.rememberitnow.com)

Table 2. Roles and possible permission assignments to 

decrease data vulnerability.

Access level functionality

Role View 

data

Add 

data

Modify 

data

Administrator

Owner/user X X X X

Friend X

Family 

member

XX X X

(only one family 

member)

Healthcare 

professional

XX X

Other users X

Device1 X

Application2 X

Other services3 XX X X

1 Such as a blood pressure monitor, a weight, a blood glucose monitor.

2 Such as DiabetesPHA, SmokeFreeLife, Lab Tracker by Health nexus.

3 Insurance companies, pharmacies, and so on.

soft has registered 83 health tools and 20 health 

devices that are collectively classified into 10 activity 

categories.

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32 COMPUTER

CLOUD COMPUTING

The use of PHRs with cloud computing provides new 

possibilities for designers. They could achieve PHRs quicker 

and with fewer mistakes, thus taking advantage of other 

PHRs stored in the cloud. However, this approach leads to 

new security and privacy threats that must be analyzed.

Microsoft HealthVault can be combined with Windows 

Azure capabilities, thus offering cloud computing services through its API. This API enables the development 

of applications for which the data source is Microsoft 

HealthVault. Some PHRs, like HealthATM (http://healthatm.

com), have been deployed around Microsoft HealthVault to 

complement HealthVault’s information and functionality, 

thus making it possible to design low-cost PHRs that are 

customized and optimized for specific functions and populations. Furthermore, third-party applications also use 

HealthVault as a storage service in the cloud. For example, 

Biomedix is an application that uses advanced natural language processing technologies to detect vascular diseases.

Designers of PHRs that offer cloud services must consider the potential for new security and privacy threats. 

New threats PHR designers face include the following:

t Privileged user access. Designers must consider that 

certain data will be processed outside their company.

t Regulatory compliance. Patients are responsible for 

the security and integrity of their own data, and they 

must verify that this data is safe.

t Data location. Data location is not precisely known 

with cloud services. Patients need to know whether 

providers satisfy some specific jurisdictions and what 

privacy requirements they satisfy.

t Data segregation. Data in the cloud is colocated with 

that of other customers, and cloud providers must use 

encryption schemes that take this special characteristic into account.

t Recovery. Cloud providers must 

have a data retrieval system, such 

as Iron Mountain (http://www.

ironmountain.com), to recover data 

in the case of a disaster—for example, a cyberattack that results in 

massive data loss.

t Long-term viability. PHR designers must be sure that users’ data 

will remain available even if the 

cloud provider disappears.

t Network security. All dataflow 

in the network must be secured 

to prevent the leakage of sensitive information. Encryption 

schemes such as Secure Sockets 

Layer could be used for this 

purpose.

t Virtualization technology. The dynamic nature of 

virtual machines permits fast reconfiguration and 

makes it possible to revert to previous instantiations, 

pause or restart, or clone and move the servers that 

create security problems.

t Investigative support. Investigating inappropriate or 

illegal activity can be very difficult in cloud computing. If designers meet to resolve national security and 

privacy requirements in the cloud, they can mitigate 

this problem.9

Achieving adequate security to deal with all these 

threats traditionally involves five aspects: availability, 

confidentiality, data integrity, control, and auditing. Availability is the property of being accessible and usable by 

an authorized entity on demand. Confidentiality ensures 

that information is accessible only to those authorized to 

have access. Data integrity ensures that information is 

accurate and not modified in an unauthorized fashion. 

Control access is a means of ensuring that only authorized 

users access data. Auditing ensures that any action can be 

examined later.

I

n addition to the potential they present for new 

business opportunities, PHRs are gaining increasing interest because of their ease of use, portability, 

and wide applicability. Currently, several million people 

around the world have access to some kind of PHR (www.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2585530). However, 

problems with the privacy and security of such sensitive 

data could pose a serious impediment to PHR development.10 The existence of a reliable certification entity, such 

as TRUSTe, that accredits data protection, along with the 

use of internationally established, well-regarded privacy 

and security standards and regulations such as HONcode, 

Figure 4. Health tools such as DiabetesPHA and devices such as a pedometer or 

blood pressure monitor that connect with Microsoft HealthVault are classified 

by activity. Connect with a health provider

Get organized

Improve fitness

Interact with

community

Manage lab tests

Manage medical records

Manage medications

Prepare for an

emergency

Track health

conditions

Other activities

Activity

40

30

20

10

35

25

15

0

5

Health tools

Devices

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ISO/TS 13606, and HIPAA, will help to increase the numbers of patients and medical professionals who are willing 

to use PHR systems. 

In addition to the privacy and security issues that 

PHRs pose, the integration of technologies such as social 

networks is an ongoing area of research. Additionally, research is needed on the use of secure natural-language 

processing techniques to perform diagnoses and on machine learning to detect suspicious access to data.11 

References

1. D.C. Kaelber et al., “A Research Agenda for Personal Health 

Records (PHRs),” J. Am. Medical Informatics Assoc., vol. 15, 

no. 6, 2008, pp. 729-736.

2. G.L. Yau, A.S. Williams, and J.B. Brown, “Family Physicians’ Perspectives on Personal Health Records: 

Qualitative Study,” Canadian Family Physician, May 2011, 

pp. e178-e184.

3. P.C. Tang et al., “Personal Health Records: Definitions, 

Benefits, and Strategies for Overcoming Barriers to Adoption,” J. Am. Medical Information Assoc., Mar./Apr. 2006, pp. 

121-126.

4. I. Carrión, J.L. Fernández-Alemán, and A. Toval, “Assessing the HIPAA Standard in Practice: PHR Privacy Policies,” 

Proc. 33rd Ann. Int’l Conf. Engineering in Medicine and Biology Soc. (EMBC 11), IEEE, 2011, pp. 2380-2383.

5. I. Carrión, J.L. Fernández-Alemán, and A. Toval, “Usable 

Privacy and Security in Personal Health Records,” Proc. 

Conf. Human-Computer Interaction (Interact 11), LNCS 

6949, Springer, 2011, pp. 36-43.

6. I. Carrión et al., “Evaluation and Neuronal Network-Based 

Classification of the PHRs Privacy Policies,” Proc. Hawaii 

Int’l Conf. System Sciences (HICSS 12), IEEE, 2012, pp. 

2840-2849.

7. L. Sweeney, “k-Anonymity: A Model for Protecting Privacy,” Int’l J. Uncertainty, Fuzziness and Knowledge-Based 

Systems, vol. 10, no. 5, 2002, pp. 557-570.

8. A. Narayanan and V. Shmatikov, “De-Anonymizing Social 

Networks,” Proc. 30th Symp. Security and Privacy (S&P 09), 

IEEE, 2009, pp. 173-187.

9. E. Kuada, H. Olesen, and A. Henten, “Public Policy and 

Regulatory Implications for the Implementation of Opportunistic Cloud Computing Services for Enterprises,” Proc. 

9th Int’l Workshop on Security in Information Systems,

pp. 3-13; www.iceis.org/Abstracts/2012/WOSIS_2012_

abstracts.htm.

10. I. Carrión, J.L. Fernández-Alemán, and A. Toval, “Are 

Personal Health Records Safe? A Review of Free WebAccessible Personal Health Record Privacy Policies,” J. 

Medical Internet Research, vol. 14, no. 4, 2012, p. e114.

11. A.A. Boxwala et al., “Using Statistical and Machine Learning to Help Institutions Detect Suspicious Access to 

Electronic Health Records,” J. Am. Medical Information 

Assoc., vol. 18, no. 4, 2011, pp. 498-505.

Inmaculada Carrión Señor is an associate researcher in 

the Software Engineering Research Group in the Department of Computer Science and Systems at the University 

of Murcia, Spain. Her research interests include medical 

informatics, software engineering, requirements engineering, and security and privacy. Carrión received a BSc in 

computer science from the University of Murcia. Contact 

her at mariainmaculada.carrion@um.es.

José Luis Fernández Alemán is an associate professor of 

programming and software quality in the Department of 

Computer Science and Systems at the University of Murcia, 

Spain. His research interests include e-learning, software 

engineering, medical informatics, and computer-based 

learning and its application. Fernández received a PhD in 

computer science from the University of Murcia. Contact 

him at aleman@um.es.

Ambrosio Toval is a full professor in the Department of 

Computer Science and Systems Department at the University of Murcia, Spain. His research focuses on the design 

and implementation of conceptual UML model verification, 

requirements engineering processes, computer-aided requirements engineering tools, and security requirements. 

Toval received a PhD in computer science from the Technical 

University of Valencia, Spain. Contact him at atoval@um.es.

Selected CS articles and columns are available 

for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

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34 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

COVER FEATURE

vacy aspects of ECRs so that healthcare providers and 

system vendors can focus on the business aspects. The 

approach’s off-the-shelf nature dramatically reduces 

barriers to entry for healthcare providers, making it 

easier to set up and participate in regional healthcare 

networks.

 THE ECR PLATFORM

In 2006, major stakeholders in the German healthcare industry—later formally organized as the Verein 

Elektronische FallAkte (EFA), or Electronic Case Record 

Association—launched an initiative to create specifications 

for a federated and secure ECR service platform (www.

fallakte.de). The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS has since developed a reference 

implementation of the ECR platform that medical IT vendors Siemens, CompuGroup Medical, and the Computer 

Sciences Corporation’s Healthcare Group use.

The ECR platform’s primary goal is for all providers in 

the “circle of treatment,” including the general practitioner, clinical specialists, and therapists, to share a patient’s 

medical data in a single case record during care for a particular injury, condition, or disorder—that is, “the case.” 

A case record is opened upon receipt of the patient’s informed consent and closed upon the patient’s full recovery 

or death. Closing a case record invalidates the informed 

consent and prohibits further access to the record by those 

in the circle of treatment. Because access is directly derived from the patient’s informed consent, there is no need 

to define supplemental restrictions within the case record. 

The system grants the permissions to healthcare professionals based on their functional roles. 

T

he reliable and confidential exchange of medical data is critical to making healthcare more 

efficient and cost-effective, while also protecting 

patient privacy. For this reason, healthcare providers are increasingly abandoning paper-based records 

in favor of electronic health records (EHRs) or electronic 

case records (ECRs). Laws recently enacted in many 

countries, such as the US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, encourage the development and 

use of EHRs/ECRs.

Due to the federated nature of EHRs/ECRs, security, 

privacy, and patient informed consent are key objectives. However, the complexity of state-of-the-art security 

architectures can make their integration with healthcare 

provider IT systems prohibitively expensive. Consequently, 

EHR/ECR providers must strive for innovative, costeffective solutions.

In Germany, the Electronic Case Record Association—an interest group that includes major hospitals 

and clinics, local healthcare associations, and regional 

healthcare networks—has introduced a new deployment 

concept, ECR in a Box, that hides the security and priAn innovative deployment concept decouples document sources and electronic health records to provide an 

easy-to-use, seamless, yet secure platform for use in the cumbersome task 

of integrating an EHR platform into a 

regional healthcare network.

Raik Kuhlisch, Ben Kraufmann, and Hannes Restel, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany

Electronic Case 

Records in a Box: 

Integrating Patient 

Data in Healthcare 

Networks

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NOVEMBER 2012 35

Peer 1 Peer2

Virtually integrated

electronic

case records

Local data Local data

Local data

User

User

User

ECR services ECR services

ECR services

Peer 3 

Figure 1. Distributed peer-to-peer architecture of the Electronic 

Case Record Association’s ECR platform. Each provider participating 

in the circle of treatment acts as an ECR peer, independently implementing all ECR-related services.

As Figure 1 shows, the ECR architecture defines a distributed peer-to-peer platform without 

central services. Each healthcare provider participating in the circle of treatment acts as an 

ECR peer. This implies that each participant 

must independently implement all ECR-related 

services—authentication, authorization, data 

storage, and so on. These implementations are 

based on the ECR service stack specification, 

which defines ECR peer connections to the local 

infrastructure and to other peers.

This federated healthcare environment includes distinct services (implemented as Web 

services), the ECR registry, the ECR repository, 

and the ECR consumer, all of which are managed by an ECR provider—typically a hospital. To 

enable an integrated viewpoint, the ECR provider 

fulfills the role of both data source and mediator: 

it operates one or more peers that both store medical data and return request results from other 

peers. All peers within the medical circle of treatment are 

likewise equal partners in a technical “circle of trust.”

SECURITY ARCHITECTURE

Because security is a cross-cutting concern, the primary healthcare provider’s ECR system incorporates a 

security architecture to ensure that only medical staff 

members with the patient’s consent can access protected 

medical data. The security architecture’s access control 

model combines discretionary access control (DAC), rolebased access control (RBAC), and policy-based access 

control (PBAC). A white paper published by the nonprofit 

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) describes the 

underlying security principles in more detail.1

The communication among different clients and services as well as between the ECR services themselves 

occurs via synchronous end-to-end message exchange 

(unicast) in layer 7 of the Open Systems Interconnection 

(OSI) model. The generic communication pattern between 

two ECR peers is as follows:

t The client sends a request message to an ECR service 

and then pauses until service execution.

t The ECR service processes the request and executes 

the appropriate operation.

t The result is returned to the client, which then resumes its activities.

To g u a r a nt e e m a x i mu m i nt er op er a bi l it y 

between the communicating ECR peers, the ECR architecture uses state-of-the-art standards for its messaging 

infrastructure—for example, SOAP and protocols such as 

WS-SecureConversation to establish security contexts across 

messages,2

 WS-Trust for trusted message exchange,3 and 

WS-SecurityPolicy for the description of a service’s security requirements.4

The security architecture is completely independent of 

the application/business architecture. Security tokens—

specifically, digitally signed SAML assertions5—are 

transferred solely in the SOAP security header, just as the 

WS-Security standard specifies,6

 even for proxy solutions 

deployed behind XML gateways. As Figure 2 shows, the 

ECR architecture applies several security mechanisms 

to protect medical data. This includes authentication and 

authorization at the service layer, and subsequently the 

pseudonymization of the stored data. Furthermore, each 

of the ECR services’ related stored data is technically separated to prevent prohibited data aggregation, such as data 

mining and data fusion.

The security architecture relies on a completely 

decentralized processing paradigm that takes authentication for granted. Each peer uses an identity provider 

to authenticate healthcare professionals via X.509 

certificates. Identity providers establish trust by issuing 

the identity assertions that a service consumer uses to 

demand access to service providers. In the ECR case, 

this identity assertion contains the authenticated healthcare professional’s attributes that might be relevant 

for retrieving a patient’s records. The client application subsequently passes the returned assertion and a 

patient identifier to a cryptographic service provider. This 

admission token service creates secret hashes for each 

healthcare professional attribute concatenated with a 

patient identifier. 

In this peer-to-peer approach, the authentication assertion is forwarded to any other peer that calculates secret 

hashes as well. Admission codes are created for each 

peer and returned to the client application in a second 

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36 COMPUTER

COVER FEATURE

SAML assertion—the admission assertion collection—that 

contains further admission assertions from each peer. This 

approach enables pseudonymization because the relationship between the healthcare professional and the patient 

is secret: a patient identifier is not needed when working 

on a case record.

A peer’s registry service retrieves case records from 

both the local data store and the respective registry service 

of the trusted peers. 

Each registry service returns those records that comply 

with the admission codes assigned to it. For a healthcare 

professional to browse a case record’s contents, create 

folders, or request medical data, the service request 

must contain an authorization. Following the principle of 

using security tokens with separated concerns, a second 

authorization service must issue another SAML (named 

access assertion) by passing a selected case record identifier and an admission assertion to that authorization 

service. The access assertion has one or more assigned 

access policies that express the access rights that the ECR 

business services must enforce. The ECR provider must determine whether the assignment needs an explicit access 

policy. In such a case, either a client application (policy 

push) or an ECR business service (policy pull) might request an optional policy assertion with an XACML policy 

set and enforce it accordingly.7

 To guarantee confidentiality, each ECR peer’s document repository encrypts all 

medical documents before the system transmits them to 

the client.

ECR IN A BOX

The above-described ECR platform provides interfaces 

for both outpatient and inpatient care. But to function 

properly in both domains, the underlying technical 

architecture must maintain interoperability between the 

office-based and hospital-based IT systems. Integration 

with primary healthcare IT systems is essential for the 

platform’s overall acceptance, but this might be limited 

by high costs in terms of both time and money. Related 

concerns include the following:

t The implementation and deployment of state-of-theart security architectures is not a strong business area 

for most hospital IT vendors. Given the fact that hospitals with a long history of systems integration often 

deal with vendor lock-in, this could lead to conflicts.

t The business processes that occur throughout a health 

record’s life cycle are unique in different healthcare 

networks.

t Hospitals and physicians usually implement unique 

IT infrastructures. 

t Each of the numerous established vendors of clinical information systems provide their own interfaces 

and capabilities. Health Level Seven International 

(HL7), a global organization, writes consensus-based 

healthcare communication standards. Some vendors 

support standards-based business process control 

via HL7 v2 messages that can be exchanged between 

different clinical information systems. 

The ECR’s deployment of business and security services 

aims for a tight integration between the hospital information system (HIS) and its supporting clinical workflows. 

A “boxed” implementation of the ECR has been developed by Fraunhofer FOKUS to offer a highly integrated 

ECR solution that supports an easy integration into existing HISs and that encapsulates security aspects and 

issues. Accomplishing this requires a proprietary interface 

between the HIS and the ECR service stack—that is, vendors must provide customer-specific ECR solutions that 

individually integrate with HIS subsystems.

Integrating services

Because developing customer-specific ECR solutions 

can be difficult or even infeasible for some vendors, ECR 

in a Box addresses these concerns. The platform includes 

the following:

t ECR application services come preloaded with security 

services and privacy-enhancing technologies to hide 

complexity from both the provider (the hospital) and 

the client (the physician). Simple programming and 

webservice interfaces on the client side and a standardsbased retrieve, locate, and update service (RLUS) interface on the provider side are likewise predefined. 

Vendors can revert to original interfaces as needed.

t As Figure 3 shows, ECR plugs are the glue between 

the RLUS interface and the HIS. Since HL7 v2 messages are predominantly used in hospitals, ECR 

plugs transform those messages into clinical document architecture (CDA) documents and vice versa.8

Most healthcare information systems encode new or 

Service

view

Data

view

Source Protection mechanism

ECR service

Medical data

Access

rights

Transport

Audit logs

Who is allowed to use which 

service?

Authentication/

Authorization

Who is allowed to assign, 

combine, read, and write 

which data?

Pseudonymization/

Administrative segregation/

Encryption/

Digital signature

Figure 2. ECR architecture approaches to protect medical 

data.

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Figure 3. Connecting ECR to hospital information systems 

subsystems.

updated medical documents in the medical document 

management (HL7 v2 MDM) format; they encode all 

patient-related, administrative events (admit, transfer, 

discharge, and so on) in the admit discharge transfer 

(HL7 v2 ADT) format. ECR plugs are easy to implement 

with the communication servers that link HIS subsystems. Additionally, ECR in a Box provides ECR plugs 

for most common identity and access management 

systems as well as IHE cross-enterprise document 

sharing (XDS) systems.

ECR in a Box handles a case record’s life-cycle management as well as its contents. The platform is loaded with 

special HL7 CDA documents that are used as controlling 

objects to create and update case records, thereby easing 

plug and play. In fact, ECR in a Box’s innovation is that it 

handles file management through CDA documents. This 

approach is similar to the document engineering approach, 

in which the exchanged documents control the underlying 

business process.9

 This moves ECR life-cycle management 

from the HIS to the ECR platform.

A CDA content module is a template for a specific HL7 

v3 CDA entity such as a document, section, or entry. The 

specified ECR modules are based on IHE PCC (patient 

care coordination) CDA content modules, in which CDA 

documents are profiled for their conformance to special 

templates.10 Table 1 lists several CDA content modules 

specified for ECR in a Box.

We focus here on the two most widely used individual 

content modules—extracting and updating documents.11

ECR extract documents are used for two purposes and 

thus come in two variations:

t ECR providers use initial extract documents to create 

documents, such as the initial case record extract 

document, which they can send to ECR in a Box to 

set up a new ECR instance.

t Healthcare professionals use vital extract documents

to query ECR in a Box for a given object’s vital extract 

document, which the platform uses to process an ECR 

or a visit’s current content or state.

ECR update documents update object properties of visits 

and case records. ECRs have two defined update content 

modules because consent and authorization updates 

require special handling as opposed to “generic” 

updates:

t Healthcare professionals use case record update content modules to update the case record itself, that 

is, to upload new documents such as diagnostic 

findings.

t Consent update content modules update patient informed consent. ECR in a Box directly infers access 

rights from these consent documents.

Information object or document metadata cannot be 

updated; if modifications are needed, the client simply 

sends a new document to ECR in a Box. Just as sent HL7 v3 

CDA documents represent operation instructions (“initialize new case record,” “read data,” “put new data”), the exact 

inbound and outbound provider interface must be defined 

for the CDA’s controlling documents. Consequently, ECR 

in a Box’s server-side face must provide an interface for 

querying against the information models inside the box as 

well: case management and medical data are commonly 

governed by the HIS, not the ECR platform.

The inbound/outbound provider interface typically uses 

the following operations:

t initialize—send new information objects to ECR in 

a Box;

ECR

registry

Communication

server

External ECR view

Hospital information

subsystems

RIS, LIS, PACS,

and so on 

ECR plugs

Case record management

setup administration

Internal ECR view

ECR

registry

Table 1. ECR document content modules.

Module Case record Healthcare professional (HCP) visit Information object

Extract document Initial case record extract content module Initial HCP visit extract content module Wrapped non-CDA content module

Vital case record extract content module Vital HCP visit extract content module

Update document Case record update content module HCP visit update content module

Consent update content module

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COVER FEATURE

t put—send updated information objects to ECR in a 

Box; and

t list—fetch one or more information objects from ECR 

in a Box.

Every operation has defined request and response messages that carry information to and from ECR in a Box. 

To initialize, maintain, and use the core structural objects 

found in case records, ECR in a Box accepts messages 

that comply with the RLUS service functional model 

specification.12

The ECR-specific inbound/outbound provider interface 

supports a core subset of the functionalities defined in 

the RLUS specification; specifically, ECR in a Box requires 

HL7 v3. Additional ECR plugs that convert messages in 

outdated formats might support older HL7 versions. Using 

HL7 messages to couple the ECR with the internal IT infrastructure requires mapping the internal record structure 

to the ECR structure. This is accomplished by means of 

semantic signifiers. 

Semantic signifiers

Medical and administrative data transferred between 

ECR in a Box and ECR plugs must be described both semantically and structurally:

t For interoperability with RLUS services, a classification and description of the returned data must be 

available to enable its further processing.

t Requested data from ECR in a Box must be identifiable and transferable in an appropriate return type. 

The return type does not necessarily need to be the 

same as the storage type, but its requestors should 

have defined it.

t Ideally, search requests and filters should not be 

aligned against generic metadata but rather against 

specific information models.

The RLUS specification provides a flexible means 

of querying data. So-called semantic signifiers specify the RLUS messages that ECR in a Box processes, 

defining the syntax and semantics of the data that is 

to be exchanged via the message: with semantic signifiers, a service provider can make statements about the 

message’s content and structure that should be communicated, similar to a service description in WSDL 

documents. A semantic signifier’s essential elements 

include its name, its description, and a normative data 

structure that describes instances of it—for example, 

implementation guidelines, schemas, and specifications 

for validation.13

As the term implies, a specific semantic signifier establishes a specific view on the stored ECR data in an 

ECR data back end. The “filling” of a semantic signifier—its 

instantiation—with medical data relates to the system’s 

ability to interpret the data. Generally, two types of systems identify the extent to which an RLUS implementation 

can interpret medical data:

t A content agnostic implementation cannot interpret 

the data. This is analogous to an IHE XDS.b document 

repository, in which a document from an inquiring 

system—say, an XDS.b document consumer—is retrieved solely by using a document identifier. A system 

behaves similarly when the data is encrypted and 

must be decrypted by a third party. To allow a search 

on such data (content independent), metadata must 

be associated with it.

t In contrast, content-aware systems can interpret or 

analyze a database. These systems are characterized by data that is collectable and transferable into a 

return type defined by a semantic signifier. In other 

words, complex queries for specific data are possible. 

Data warehouse systems with data mining and online 

analytical processing have this capability. Medical 

ontologies might also be used. 

Although ECR in a Box currently processes a handful 

of information types—see the ECR content modules in 

Table 1—future implementations should be able to return 

aggregated data.

Off-the-shelf deployment

ECR in a Box provides a logical combination of technical 

components that can be used for both software and hardware implementations. For example, Fraunhofer FOKUS 

implements the ECR in a Box concepts using an XML gateway to offer 

t service virtualization,

t dataflow control,

t event and access attempt auditing,

t integrity verification and confidentiality enforcement 

on exchanged data, and

t integrated hardware modules.

Going forward, additional ECR implementation could be 

virtualized using XML gateways, such as the ECR application architecture or metadata management.

ECR in a Box provides a highly 

integrated software or hardware 

solution that supports easy integration 

into existing HISs and encapsulates 

security features.

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The client-side counterpart of ECR in a Box 

is the ECR connector. Just as ECR in a Box facilitates the integration of HIS subsystems, the 

ECR connector simplifies the connection of 

client-side systems. As Figure 4 shows, the ECR 

Connector implements various webservice security mechanisms defined by ECR specifications, 

transparently setting up secure ECR in a Box sessions via WS-SecureConversation and handling 

all security tokens such as authentication and 

authorization for service invocations. It is not 

necessary for a physician’s desktop system to 

process ECR security-related tokens because the 

ECR connector encapsulates that task. 

The ECR connector can be used both as a software library and as a hardware box with a SOAP 

interface. Other approaches for using the ECR 

connector incorporate a Web-distributed authoring and versioning (WebDAV) interface or printer drivers 

with text recognition. For example, HL7 CDA referral letters might be used as an active control object to create a 

new case record. Additionally, to register the document, 

the physician’s desktop system can upload it into special 

WebDAV folders or it can print them via a virtual printer, 

which might be necessary if the primary HIS does not support direct document export.

A COMPARISON

The ECR is primarily a 

German construct for which 

there is no comparable system 

in most countries. The ECR 

platform is dedicated to regional health networks with 

the purpose of better treatment for patients receiving 

care from various healthcare 

providers. In Germany, information exchange among 

health information organizations is subject to regulation 

and very restricted. Thus, the 

case record has a dedicated 

use and a limited set of users. 

From the data protection perspective, the ECR concept is 

widely accepted because no 

queries on stored data reveal 

the entirety of a patient’s data. 

Only a limited set of users 

who have received consent 

can retrieve case records. This 

separates the ECR from other 

sharable EHR approaches, 

such as those used in the US or other countries in Europe.

In the US, the Nationwide Health Information Network 

(NHIN), now called eHealth Exchange, created a specification for a messaging platform that allows health-related 

information exchange. The NHIN and ECRs share the same 

architectural principles, such as decentralization, local 

autonomy, and service orientation. Both specifications also 

rely exclusively on open standards. Table 2 highlights other 

similarities and differences. 

Table 2. Comparison of the US Nationwide Health Information Network and Germany’s ECRs.

Feature NHIN ECRs

Audience

Healthcare consumer X --

Healthcare provider X X

Purpose of use General health information Strictly case-related

Services

Pseudonymized records -- X

Patient/record discovery X/-- --/X

Query for available documents X X

Retrieve documents X X

Health information event messaging X --

Document-based control -- X

Security

Webservice-based message security X X

Authorization framework X X

Federated health information 

exchange (federated identity)

X X

Requester authorization X X

Policy-based access control X X

System security categorization Moderate High

Audit trail X X

Figure 4. ECR in a Box and the ECR connector serve as enablers for a 

secure and trustworthy data exchange between HIS and a resident 

physician’s IT.

WAN

ECR

plugs HIS

ECR box

CDA processor

ECR service stack

ECR

connector

Physician’s desktop system

ECR box

ECR provider 2

ECR provider

RLUS

Healthcare professional IT

infrastructure

HL7Msg

SOAP (WS-Security

with SAML 2.0)

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40 COMPUTER

C urrently, ECR in a Box has proved to be valuable on 

the ECR provider side, but future work will focus 

on enabling physicians on the client side to make 

semantic queries via the ECR connector. This will increase 

the quality of communicated data and demonstrate the 

advantages of using a content-aware system at the document level. 

Other work also must be done on secure rendering 

of case records when using mobile devices, which is becoming increasingly more common in the medical field. 

Fraunhofer FOKUS is likewise investigating emerging 

Web security trends such as JSON data structures14 and 

associated JSON security profiles (addressing signatures 

and encryption) and their suitability for the ECR security 

architecture. Thus, JSON simplifies and enables the usage 

of mobile devices and establishes a second, secured communication protocol next to SOAP. 

References

1. J. Caumanns et al., “IHE IT-Infrastructure White Paper, 

Access Control,” IHE Initiative, Sept. 2009; www.ihe.net/

Technical_Framework/upload/IHE_ITI_TF_WhitePaper_

AccessControl_2009-09-28.pdf.

t)ZCSJEKPVSOBMTLOPXOGPSUIFJSFTUBCMJTIFEJNQBDUGBDUPST

t/FXGVMMZPQFOBDDFTTKPVSOBMTJONBOZUFDIOJDBMBSFBT

t"NVMUJEJTDJQMJOBSZPQFOBDDFTTNFHBKPVSOBMTQBOOJOHBMM

*&&&mFMETPGJOUFSFTU

*&&&0QFO"DDFTT

IEEE offers a variety of open access (OA) publications:

Discover top-quality articles, chosen by the IEEE peer-review 

standard of excellence. 

Unrestricted access to today’s groundbreaking research 

via the IEEE Xplore® digital library

Learn more about IEEE Open Access

www.ieee.org/open-access

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___________________

__________________________

_____________________

__________________________________

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___

_______________________________

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_______________ _______________

__________________________

_____________________________

__________________________________

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________________________

________________________________

______________________

_______________________

______________________

2. A. Nadalin et al., “WS-SecureConversation 1.3,” Oasis, 2007; 

http://docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-secureconversation/

200512/ws-secureconversation-1.3-os.html.

3. A. Nadalin et al., “WS-Trust 1.3,” Oasis, 2007; http://docs.

oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-trust/200512/ws-trust-1.3-os.

html.

4. A. Nadalin et al., “WS-SecurityPolicy 1.2,” Oasis, 2007; http://

docs.oasis-open.org/ws-sx/ws-securitypolicy/200702/

ws-securitypolicy-1.2-spec-os.html.

5. J. Kemp et al., “Authentication Context for the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) v2.0,” Oasis, 

2005; http://docs.oasis-open.org/security/saml/v2.0/samlauthn-context-2.0-os.pdf.

6. A. Nadalin et al., “Web Services Security: SOAP 

Message Security 1.1,” Oasis, 2006; www.oasis-open.

org/committees/download.php/16790/wss-v1.1-spec-osSOAPMessageSecurity.pdf.

7. “eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) 

v2.0,” Oasis, 2005; http://docs.oasis-open.org/xacml/2.0/

access_control-xacml-2.0-core-spec-os.pdf.

8. Corepoint Health, “The HL7 Evolution Comparing HL7 

Version 2 to Version 3, Including a History of Version 

2,” white paper, 2010; www.corepointhealth.com/sites/

default/files/whitepapers/hl7-v2-v3-evolution.pdf.

9. R. Glushko and T. McGrath, Document Engineering: Analyzing and Designing Documents for Business Informatics and 

Web Services, MIT Press, 2005.

10. “Patient Care Coordination,” IHE Wiki, July 2012; http://

wiki.ihe.net/index.php?title=Patient_Care_Coordination. 

11. “IG:CDA für die elektronische Fallakte,” HL7 Wiki, 

Mar. 2012; http://wiki.hl7.de/index.php/IG:CDA_

f%C3%BCr_die_elektronische_Fallakte.

12. “Retrieve, Locate, and Update Service (RLUS) Specification, 

v.1.0.1,” OMG, July 2011; www.omg.org/spec/RLUS/1.0.1/

pdf.

13. “ISO/IEC 19757-3:2006 Information Technology—Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL)—Part 3: 

Rule-Based Validation—Schematron,” Int’l Org. for Standardization, Jan. 2010; www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/

catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=40833.

14. D. Crockford, “The Application/JSON Media Type for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), RFC 4627,” IETF, 2006; 

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4627.

Raik Kuhlisch is a researcher at Fraunhofer FOKUS, where 

he works on IT security and Semantic Web technologies 

related to healthcare issues. Kuhlisch received an MS in 

computer science from the University of Hagen, Germany. 

Contact him at raik.kuhlisch@fokus.fraunhofer.de.

Ben Kraufmann is a researcher at Fraunhofer FOKUS. His 

research interests include IT security in distributed systems 

and XML technologies. Kraufmann received a diploma in 

computer science from the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Contact him at ben.kraufmann@fokus.fraunhofer.de.

Hannes Restel is a researcher at Fraunhofer FOKUS. His 

research interests include interoperability, IT security, and 

the Semantic Web. Restel received an MS in computer science from the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Contact 

him at hannes.restel@fokus.fraunhofer.de.
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42 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

COVER FEATURE

have stringent requirements because of the sensitive 

nature of the data involved, business-critical demands, 

regulatory constraints, and the need to securely and 

seamlessly share data among multiple parties including 

healthcare providers, payers, government agencies, and 

patients. 

Fusion is an experimental open, cloud-based platform 

for securely managing and sharing healthcare information at large scale that aims to reduce the cost of adopting 

EHRs. It also offers new opportunities to develop applications that can leverage EHR data to improve quality of care, 

healthcare efficiency, and treatment outcomes. 

FUSION FEATURES AND BENEFITS

Figure 1 shows the Fusion platform’s scope. Small 

clinics, hospitals, payers, and other stakeholders in a 

healthcare system interact with Fusion to upload or access 

data for patient care and potentially for research. Service 

interfaces provide access for developers to create new 

applications and link EHR systems to exchange data.

Features

Fusion has several key features.

Low cost and large scale. Fusion is architected to scale 

horizontally to keep costs low for the cloud service provider, healthcare providers, and patients. Given that EHR 

applications are business critical, the platform is also 

designed to be highly available and reliable.

Secure data protection. Patient data must be stored 

securely and protected for a very long time. The Fusion 

architecture includes mechanisms to enable security, 

H ealthcare forms a large and growing segment 

of the world economy,1

 and providers are under 

significant pressure to reduce costs by introducing automation, which has led to a focus on 

the deployment of electronic health records (EHRs). The 

Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical 

Health (HITECH) Act, part of the American Recovery and 

Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, is an example of how 

governments are increasingly providing incentives for 

healthcare providers to move toward using EHR systems 

in patient care. 

In many settings, small-scale providers are typically a 

patient’s first point of contact with a healthcare system. 

The use of EHRs in these settings is thus essential to 

achieving the technology’s oft-touted benefits. However, 

the substantial IT cost and expertise required to implement 

such systems has limited their adoption. 

Cloud-based platforms are ideally suited for delivering 

IT applications because they offer substantial scalability, 

agility, and cost advantages. However, EHR applications 

An experimental open, cloud-based platform for large-scale, low-cost delivery of 

healthcare applications enables broader 

use of patient-centric management of 

electronic health records and facilitates 

the secure and seamless sharing of EHRs 

among stakeholders within a healthcare 

system. 

Sujoy Basu, Alan H. Karp, Jun Li, James Pruyne, Jerry Rolia, Sharad Singhal, Jaap Suermondt, 

and Ram Swaminathan, HP Labs

Fusion: 

Managing 

Healthcare 

Records at 

Cloud Scale

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Medical

researchers

Laboratory

Primary care

Pharmacy

Hospital

Specialty

care

Patient/

family

Service

APIs

Service

APIs

Web portal/SaaS

applications

Value-added applications/

services

Storing

data

Sharing

data

Fusion

Developers Analyzing

data

Figure 1. Fusion platform. Stakeholders within a healthcare system 

interact with Fusion to upload or access data for patient care and potentially for research. Service interfaces provide access for developers to 

create new applications and link EHR systems to exchange data.

privacy, and auditability of accesses to medical records.

Seamless, decentralized data sharing. 

Disparate healthcare providers can use 

Fusion to directly store patient records and 

securely share this data with other stakeholders. Fusion also supports the integration 

of EHR environments that store data in their 

own formats, and provides mechanisms to 

allow managed sharing of aggregated data.

Patient empowerment. Patients can use 

Fusion to view their own EHRs, regardless of 

which provider generated them, and grant 

access to all relevant members of the healthcare team managing their treatment.

Benefits

Fusion provides multiple benefits to 

stakeholders. 

Patients. Fusion monitors patients’ 

complete health history, improving their 

quality of care and treatment outcomes. It 

also protects patient privacy by controlling 

the release of medical data, ensuring that such data has 

not been subject to unauthorized use. And with Fusion, 

patients have anytime, anywhere access to their health 

records.

Providers. Fusion enables on-demand, real-time 

access to health data and aggregated knowledge derived 

from such data, resulting in better treatment decisions 

and facilitating collaboration among providers during 

treatment. It also contains mechanisms to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements using a common, 

secure platform that supports best practices. Individual 

healthcare IT departments can thus avoid the cost of 

duplicating the necessary enforcement infrastructure 

while demonstrating appropriate use of healthcare data 

when disputes occur. Fusion reduces the risk to the provider of releasing data by managing access to centrally 

stored records, rather than transferring copies of the 

records themselves.

Payers. Patients and providers can use Fusion to 

securely and efficiently grant access to medical records 

such as procedures, tests, clinical notes, and prescriptions 

for claim adjudication, accelerating claims processing 

while ensuring claim integrity and preventing errors.

Developers. Fusion provides open APIs that developers 

can use to create, integrate, and provision existing and 

new applications and services that conform to Fusion’s 

security and privacy protection standards.

ARCHITECTURAL REQUIREMENTS

Fusion’s innovative approach to managing and sharing 

healthcare data addresses significant technical and adoption hurdles that healthcare IT systems face when opting 

for a cloud-based EHR solution. 

Cloud-based delivery model

The cloud-based delivery paradigm is inherently a 

volume model that relies on shared resources to drive 

down cost. To encourage wide adoption, Fusion must scale 

out horizontally while keeping operational costs low. The 

platform is designed to handle up to 1 billion patients, 

10 million practitioners, and 100 billion or more individual 

health records, with an affordable cost per patient and 

per provider. In practice, depending on the scale and trust 

model assumed in the implementation, Fusion could be 

used in public, private, or hybrid clouds.

Balance of security, privacy, 

and ease of data sharing

Health records contain extremely sensitive personal 

information and thus pose strong privacy concerns. Any 

EHR system must comply with various regulatory policies regarding the handling of such information. In the 

US, for example, the Health Insurance Portability and 

Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the HITECH Act define 

strict guidelines and specify the technical and methodological safeguards required to protect medical data. 

Different stakeholders must be able to use Fusion to 

leverage common security and privacy protection technology, best practices, and knowledge offered by the cloud 

service provider to meet compliance requirements. At 

the same time, healthcare practitioners need lightweight, 

transparent, and trustworthy mechanisms to share data 

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COVER FEATURE

without compromising security and privacy. Furthermore, 

security mechanisms must not interfere with normal clinical workflows. 

Collaborative data sharing

The Fusion architecture must facilitate a collaborative 

environment where participating healthcare providers can 

seamlessly share data and best practices while respecting patients’ preferences and consent policies. To enable 

evidence-based medicine and take advantage of derived 

common knowledge, it must allow for the consolidation 

of de-identified patient information across providers to 

support analytics applications.

Patient centricity

All healthcare data related to a given patient should 

be accessible to that patient, regardless of its origin. At 

the same time, patients should not need to be involved in 

day-to-day decisions about sharing data among providers. 

Thus, Fusion should provide direct value to patients while 

also being easy for healthcare practitioners to use.

Openness to third-party service providers

Given the high degree of fragmentation among stakeholders in a healthcare system, the service platform should 

have the flexibility to allow organic growth as needed by 

accommodating applications from diverse third-party 

application developers. In other words, Fusion should have 

an open and not a monolithic closed architecture.

FUSION ARCHITECTURE 

Figure 2 shows Fusion’s layered 

architecture. 

The infrastructure layer contains 

building blocks such as a store for health 

records; a messaging and communications framework for interactions among 

healthcare providers; a compute framework for processing data management 

tasks, including data encryption, data 

retention, and data analyses; and a 

workflow execution and management 

mechanism to manage cross-provider, 

process-driven collaboration. These building blocks are available in most public, 

private, or hybrid cloud offerings, or developers can build on them using appropriate 

software components.

Above the infrastructure layer, 

Fusion contains a common data policy 

management layer, where the system 

handles issues including authorization, authentication, access control, 

auditing, data retention, and consent/

notification for privacy protection. Because regulations and cloud models vary widely,2,3

the policies in this layer must be specific to the geographic region or type of cloud environment where 

Fusion is deployed. We assume that covered entities (such as doctors) will act in accordance with 

existing security requirements, regulatory policies, 

and best practices. While Fusion does not address all 

aspects of regulatory compliance, such as administrative requirements, it provides a common platform to 

capture best practices and share them across users.

Also above the infrastructure layer, Fusion exposes 

functions such as billing, provisioning, and discovery 

as service APIs with developer tools to support the easy 

integration of various third-party healthcare-specific applications. We envision Fusion as a next-generation platform 

for existing EHR vendors as well as for novel applications that leverage Fusion’s capabilities to assist medical 

researchers, payers, and regulatory bodies. 

Finally, Fusion’s domain application layer integrates 

EHR applications targeted at patients, providers, payers, 

researchers, and other stakeholders.

Our research focuses on the common data policy 

management layer. In particular, this layer has two main 

subsystems: the Fusion Store, for large-scale secure management of EHRs to support regular patient care; and the 

Fusion Data Share, for aggregating de-identified data to 

support applications such as healthcare analytics, peercomparison studies, and research that require sharing data 

more broadly across the healthcare system.

Healthcare applications

Patients Healthcare providers Medical research Payers

Appointments,

prescriptions, wellness

management, treatments

Administration, referral/

consultation, discharge

summaries, clinic notes

Data mining, analysis Billing, payments,

claims adjudication

Common cloud services

Common data policy management Third-party application/

service support

Infrastructure services

Consent/

notification Privacy Governance

Auditing Authorization Authentication Collaboration

Migration Replication Retention Context

Account

management

Application

store

Billing Provisioning

Data exchange (ontology, federation, 

data models)

Workflow/process execution and 

management

Scalable messaging and communication 

framework Scalable event notification framework

Scalable compute framework (synchronous, asynchronous)

Scalable store (files, objects, relational data)

Assurance Monitoring 

Deidentification 

Figure 2. Fusion’s layered architecture. 

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Figure 3. The Fusion Store links a patient’s encrypted records together 

using metadata arranged as a tree hierarchy that is also encrypted. Lockboxes on each node store the encryption keys, while the lockbox itself is 

encrypted using the key stored in the parent’s lockbox.

SECURE HEALTH DATA 

MANAGEMENT

Central to the Fusion architecture is 

the need to securely and efficiently store 

patients’ health records and to enable sharing 

them in accordance with regulatory policies 

and the consent and notification requirements of individual providers and patients. 

The Fusion Store combines cloud-based 

data storage with data encryption and 

authorization-based access control4

 to provide a highly secure and privacy-protected 

environment to manage EHR data. Fusion’s 

data access protocols provide patients with 

the ability to access all of their own health 

records, as well as to authorize others to 

access their records, while allowing providers to easily and securely share data 

without the patient’s constant participation 

or intervention.

Protecting data at rest

The Fusion Store uses a record-oriented 

data organization scheme in which each 

data record is encrypted with a unique key. 

Encryption keys also serve as authorization tokens, thus 

allowing a person (or application) that has the keys to 

create or read the corresponding records. A patient’s records are linked together using metadata arranged as a 

tree hierarchy that is also encrypted. The Fusion Store 

uses a journaling mechanism5

 to make metadata and data 

records immutable and appends new metadata and data 

records during updates.

As Figure 3 shows, the metadata tree’s first two levels 

represent patients and providers, while the leaves contain 

pointers to the actual data records as well as the keys used 

to encrypt and decrypt the data records. Lockboxes on each 

node of the metadata tree store the encryption keys. The 

lockbox itself is encrypted using the key stored in the parent’s lockbox. For example, the lockbox at N6

 is encrypted 

using L2

. The Fusion Store uses this lockbox’s content—that 

is, K6—to encrypt the lockbox at node N8

. Thus, given a key 

to node v’s lockbox, one can decrypt the lockbox’s contents 

and recursively use these contents to access encryption 

keys for v’s children.

Secure key management and delegation 

The Fusion Store uses a novel approach to managing 

encryption keys and delegating access to data records. 

Each provider owns and manages a subtree between the 

metadata tree’s root and leaves. In Figure 3, for example, 

provider P1

 owns and manages the subtree rooted at N1.

Thus, a provider can selectively share patient records with 

other providers by sharing the lockbox keys in its subtree.

Setup. Each patient maintains a root secret L0

, possibly stored on a secure personal device such as a smart 

card. When visiting a provider Pi

, the patient presents the 

secure device as part of the process of registering with Pi

,

which in turn generates a provider-specific shared secret 

Li

 that is derived from L0 and unique to Pi. In Figure 3, for 

example, Pi

 could derive Li for i = 1,2,3 from L0 as Li = 

H(L0

, NIi), where H is a one-way cryptographic hash function and NIi

 is the ith provider’s national identifier. With 

this scheme, patients can access all of their records with 

L0

, while Pi need only maintain a single key, Li, for each 

patient. The Fusion Store itself has access to none of these 

keys and thus no visibility into either the metadata tree or 

the stored data records.

Storing data. Providers add new records to the Fusion 

Store by encrypting them with their corresponding keys. 

In Figure 3, for example, when P2

 wants to store a data 

record linked to N8, it opens the lockboxes recursively 

from N2

 to N8, reads the encryption key K8, and encrypts 

the data record with K8

.

Delegating access. Providers delegate access to records 

in a subtree by sharing the key contained in the lockbox 

of the subtree’s root. The delegatee can then recursively 

obtain access to the metadata and data records in the 

subtree.

Revoking access. In Figure 3, suppose provider P2

wishes to revoke delegated access to, say, provider P3

 after 

the patient completes a course of treatment. Because both 

providers have valid access to existing records, the Fusion 

...

Patient

Provider

Encrypted data records

L1

L0

N1

N0

L0

L1

L1 L1

L2

L2 L2

K7

K7

K6

K6

K8 K9

K10 K18 K6

K4 K5 K’6

K’6

L2 L3

L0 L0

N2 N3

N4

N8 N9 N10 N18

K8 K9 K10 K18

K4 K5 K7

K6

N5 N6 N’6

K’6

N7

L2 L3

Key

rotation

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COVER FEATURE

Store does not terminate access to those records, but only 

to records created after the relationship ends. 

The challenge is to generate new versions of encryption 

keys such that old records can still be decrypted using the 

new keys while newly encrypted records are unreadable 

using the old keys. The Fusion Store solves this problem by 

rotating the old keys in a cryptographically secure manner 

to obtain new keys; to prevent reuse of old keys, it relies 

on lazy revocation, wherein rotation of a key terminates 

access to new records by providers using the old keys.6

In Figure 3, for example, suppose provider P2 revokes 

delegated access by provider P3

 and rotates the old version 

of key K6

 to K ́

6

 at node N6. It inserts node N10 after key rotation and encrypts its lockbox with K ́

6

. If P2 now shares K ́

6

with P1

, provider P1 can decrypt the lockbox at N10, rotate 

K ́

6

 back to K6, and use K6 to obtain access to old records. 

However, P3

 cannot rotate K6 forward to obtain K ́

6

 and thus 

cannot access node N10.

Asymmetric encryption keys make it possible to securely separate permissions necessary to read records 

from those necessary to create records.

Fusion Store benefits

The Fusion Store primarily deals with the secure storage and sharing of data, and toward that end provides the 

following benefits in the context of a cloud-based EHR. 

Additional components such as auditing and consent/

notification that are necessary for meeting regulatory 

compliance are subjects of future research. 

Secure navigation of patient health data. A consulting healthcare provider can browse a patient’s history 

represented in the metadata tree and ask for permission to 

access certain data records from other providers without 

being able to see the rest of the data records.

Security and privacy within the cloud. Since 

all data residing in the cloud is encrypted, and 

the Fusion Store by itself cannot decrypt the 

data, the security and privacy of data at rest 

are guaranteed.

Simple management of encryption keys. 

The patient maintains a single secret, and 

each provider maintains a single key for each 

patient. All other necessary keys are either 

derived from these secrets or recovered from 

lockboxes at the metadata tree’s nodes. This 

reduces the overhead of secure key management for patients and providers.

Seamless sharing of healthcare data. A

patient can access all treatment data once 

providers release it into the cloud. Similarly, 

providers can share data without involving the 

patient and ensure that only relevant data is 

shared. 

Simple access revocation. Using key rotation and lazy revocation, the Fusion Store balances the 

continuing need for retroactive access to records, while 

terminating access to new records that should no longer 

be visible to unauthorized providers.

DATA MODELING AND INTEGRATION

A fundamental tenet of Fusion is that it provides an 

open environment for applications to store and share 

healthcare-related information. Healthcare applications typically have their own data types and formats, 

but also need to share information with other applications. Because the Fusion Store neither imposes nor 

provides any structure for the data records it stores, 

data integration in Fusion must address disparate data 

sources and sinks.

As an example of these diverse, integrated applications, consider Figure 4, which shows the path of a 

patient who interacts with multiple healthcare providers including clinical teams of doctors, diagnostic test 

centers, and a pharmacy. In these interactions, the 

patient is the only entity that is constantly involved in 

all steps. The figure shows the patient’s EHRs from the 

different teams being submitted to the Fusion Store. This 

information can then provide context to subsequent 

teams for decision making—for example, for selecting 

high-level clinical pathways, guidelines, and progress 

of care or for reducing the communication needed to 

coordinate care. 

Application developers and integrators use Fusion’s 

data-modeling tools to define data formats that they produce and consume. Fusion’s data-modeling approach is 

object-oriented and uses common tools, techniques, and 

terminologies found in other data-modeling environments 

such as the Unified Modeling Language. 

Figure 4. Healthcare applications interact via the Fusion Store and 

Fusion Data Share systems.

Admission Detection Treatment Discharge Follow-up

Fusion Store De-identified data

EHR 1 EHR 2

High-level

patient flow

Clinical

teams

Medical

guidelines

triggered

Fusion Data

Share

Alternative

treatment

queries

Team 1 Team 2

Team 3 Team 4

Team 5

Team 1 Team 2

Team 4

Team 2

Team 3 Team 1

EHR in context

Admission

guideline CT scan 

guideline

ACE inhibitor 

guideline

Beta blocker 

guideline

Discharge

 guideline Education

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Fusion’s data modeling process has a threefold role.

First, it provides a core model for sharing information 

among multiple healthcare applications. Fusion’s data 

model defines concepts common to various EHR applications and is built upon existing relational models used in 

EHR systems and controlled vocabularies such as SNOMED 

CT (www.ihtsdo.org/snomed-ct), ICD-9-CM (www.cdc.gov/

nchs/icd/icd9cm.htm), and LOINC (http://loinc.org). Fusion’s 

modeling tools support vocabulary transformations like 

those defined in the Unified Medical Language System 

(UMLS) Metathesaurus (www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/

knowledge_sources/metathesaurus/index.html). The core 

model also captures common concepts supporting thirdparty applications such as billing, provisioning, and asset 

management. 

Second, while Fusion’s core concepts allow interoperability, the object-oriented data modeling process enables 

extensions for specific EHR applications. Developers can 

easily build upon existing models in Fusion or introduce 

entirely new ones.

Third, Fusion’s data models provide a means of discovering how applications represent data, helping developers 

to logically present information residing within the system. 

The open models support a naturally evolving environment for new services.

With Fusion’s data modeling approach, creating or integrating services is typically a two-step process. First, 

the developer determines which parts of the existing, 

predefined data models it will work with and what extensions or new concepts to introduce. Fusion accordingly 

makes all new models available to other participants in the 

healthcare system. The service then uses the APIs defined 

within Fusion to retrieve the required EHR data.

DATA SHARING

To build a knowledge base from each patient’s encounter with healthcare providers and thereby increase 

efficiency, improve treatment outcomes, and reduce costs, 

Fusion makes de-identified data from the Fusion Store 

available to applications via the Data Share. 

The Data Share relies on Fusion’s common data policy 

management mechanisms (see Figure 2) to manage data 

access and sharing. In particular, it relies on the deidentification service for moving data from the Fusion 

Store to the Data Share and the authorization and authentication services for access control. Fusion can provide 

explicit means for obtaining patients’ consent for secondary use of their records when they register with a provider, 

simplifying the consent/notification process. Unlike data 

in the Fusion Store, the Data Share’s de-identified data is 

more broadly sharable, and thus has less stringent security 

requirements. Data mining and analysis applications can 

directly retrieve and process the data either offline or using 

compute and storage facilities offered by cloud providers. 

Figure 4 illustrates use of the Data Share in support 

of an evidence-based healthcare application.7

 Such an 

application combines information about a patient under 

study with de-identified data from other patients with a 

similar demographic and health history to assess and 

prioritize various medical options. While patients have an 

incentive to share their data to improve their own treatment outcome, data sharing across a large population of 

patients will also benefit providers, medical researchers, 

pharmaceutical companies, public health agencies, and 

commercial or government payers by helping them to 

address systemwide concerns including effectiveness, 

safety, efficiency, productivity, patient satisfaction, and 

health service coordination and integration. 

RELATED WORK

The current EHR market is relatively fragmented, with 

no single dominant player.8,9 About half a dozen commercial systems provide functionality that they have developed 

and refined over many years. These systems have typically 

focused on the data sharing and interoperability needs 

of hospitals or large outpatient clinics, although increasingly they are serving smaller clinics as well. In addition, 

several open source EHR products are available as well 

as a growing number of cloud-delivered offerings from 

emerging vendors.

In the US, the development of regional and nationwide 

health information exchanges10 with common standards, 

services, and policies has been a goal for decades, with 

significant research funding by the Department of Health 

and Human Services. For example, HHS has supported 

creation of the UMLS and various regional health information organizations and networks. The HITECH Act offers 

major financial incentives for providers to enable sharing 

of EHR information but, except for vertically integrated 

providers or in some cases providers with the same EHR 

vendor, there is still little interoperability among systems 

used by clinics and hospitals, with most independent providers continuing to share patient records through printed 

or faxed documents. 

There have been a few cloud-based, consumercontrolled personal health record (PHR) systems on the 

market, including Microsoft HealthVault (www.microsoft.

com/en-us/healthvault) and Google Health (discontinued 

in 2011), but they have had limited success and adoption. 

In addition, many commercial EHR vendors now offer 

Data sharing across a large population 

of patients will also benefit providers, 

medical researchers, pharmaceutical 

companies, public health agencies, and 

commercial or government payers.

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_______________________________
COVER FEATURE

48 COMPUTER

so-called tethered PHRs that are essentially patientfacing views of their internal EHRs. Patients using these 

systems can view information released by their doctors 

and in some instances supplement it with information 

they enter themselves. However, tethered PHR systems 

usually do not allow the integration of data originating 

from multiple vendors or even institutions, nor do they 

let patients manage the sharing of information among 

other stakeholders. All PHR service providers have visibility into all patient data, and thus cannot guarantee 

the degree of control over security and privacy that 

Fusion offers.

Practice Fusion (www.practicefusion.com) and CareCloud (www.carecloud.com) are EHR products that use 

a cloud model, but the cloud encrypts data and manages 

keys, enabling the service provider to see all the EHR data 

hosted in its environment. 

PatientsLikeMe (www.patientslikeme.com) lets users 

join a social network of patients with the same disease 

or disorder. They disclose the details of their condition 

voluntarily to the network, encourage each other during 

care, and share their own perspective when another 

patient in that group needs to make a decision such as 

which treatment option to choose.

F

usion is an experimental open, cloud-based platform 

for large-scale, low-cost delivery of both existing and newly developed healthcare applications. 

It enables broader use of patient-centric management 

of electronic health records and facilitates the secure 

and seamless sharing of EHRs among stakeholders in 

a healthcare system, protecting patient privacy while 

improving system efficiency, treatment outcomes, and 

quality of care. 

Although Fusion’s design is agnostic to the choice of the 

underlying cloud infrastructure, we are building a research 

prototype on HP Cloud Services to demonstrate its feasibility. Thus far, we have prototyped major architectural 

components to validate the data access protocols, including encryption key generation from the metadata tree 

structure, key rotation, and key revocation. Preliminary 

studies indicate that Fusion can meet expected performance and cost targets.

We have started integrating several existing open source 

EHR applications—notably Oscar (www.oscarcanada.org), 

OpenMRS (http://openmrs.org), and OpenEMR (www.

open-emr.org). Because these applications have existing 

data models in the form of relational database schemas, 

we have incorporated concepts within these applications 

into data models to explore the modeling tools necessary 

for Fusion. We have also developed bridges between the 

relational stores and the Fusion Store to transfer medical 

records between them. 

References

1. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “National 

Health Expenditure Data,” 11 Apr. 2012; www.cms.gov/

NationalHealthExpendData. 

2. Office of the Nat’l Coordinator for Health Information Technology, “HITECH Programs,” 27 Jan. 2011, US Dept. Health 

and Human Services; http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.

pt/community/healthit_hhs_gov__hitech_programs/1487.

3. “Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and 

of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the Protection of 

Individuals with Regard to the Processing of Personal 

Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data,” Official J. 

European Communities, no. L 281, 23 Nov. 1995, pp. 31-39; 

http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/

dir1995-46_part1_en.pdf.

4. J. Li and A.H. Karp, Zebra Copy: A Reference Implementation 

of Federated Access Management, tech. report HPL-2007-

105, Hewlett-Packard Development Co., 2007; www.hpl.

hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-105.html. 

5. M. Rosenblum and J.K. Ousterhout, “The Design and Implementation of a Log-Structured File System,” ACM Trans. 

Computer Systems, Feb. 1992, pp. 26-52.

6. M. Kallahalla et al., “Plutus: Scalable Secure File Sharing on 

Untrusted Storage,” Proc. 2nd Usenix Conf. File and Storage 

Technologies (FAST 03), Usenix, 2003, pp. 29-42.

7. T.E. Love et al., “Electronic Medical Record-Assisted Design 

of a Cluster-Randomized Trial to Improve Diabetes Care 

and Outcomes,” J. General Internal Medicine, Apr. 2008, 

pp. 383-391.

8. C.-J. Hsiao et al., “Electronic Medical Record/Electronic 

Health Record Use by Office-Based Physicians: United 

States, 2008 and Preliminary 2009,” Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention, Dec. 2009; www.cdc.gov/nchs/

data/hestat/emr_ehr/emr_ehr.htm. 

9. T.J. Handler, Magic Quadrant for Global Enterprise EHR 

Systems, industry research report G00214841, 6 Sept. 2011, 

Gartner. 

10. Office of the Nat’l Coordinator for Health Information 

Technology, “Nationwide Health Information Network 

Exchange,” 16 May 2012, US Dept. Health and Human Services; http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt/community/

healthit_hhs_gov__nhin_exchange/1407. 

Sujoy Basu is a senior scientist at HP Labs, where he 

has worked on Web services, distributed computing, 

networking, multimedia content distribution networks, 

and processor and system architecture. Basu received a 

PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois at 

Urbana-Champaign. He is a senior member of IEEE and 

ACM. Contact him at sujoy.basu@hp.com.

Alan H. Karp is a principal scientist in the Intelligent Infrastructure Laboratory at HP Labs, where he is conducting 

research on the resilience of distributed applications at 

scale. He also heads the Virus Safe Computing Group, 

which implements usable security. Karp received a PhD 

in astronomy from the University of Maryland. He is a 

member of the IEEE Computer Society, ACM, the American 

Astronomical Society, and the International Astronomical 

Union. Contact him at alan.karp@hp.com.

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NOVEMBER 2012 49

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Jun Li is a principal scientist at HP Labs. His research focuses 

on large-scale policy-aware data management frameworks 

to ensure correct management of business-critical data 

in the cloud computing environment. Li received a PhD in 

computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. 

Contact him at jun.li@hp.com.

James Pruyne is a senior scientist at HP Labs, where 

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client-server systems and evolving to service-oriented approaches. Pruyne received a PhD in computer sciences from 

the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Contact him at james.

pruyne@hp.com.

Jerry Rolia is a principal scientist in the Services and Solutions Research Lab at HP Labs. His research interests 

include cloud computing, healthcare information systems, 

capacity management, and performance engineering. Rolia 

received a PhD in computer science from the University of 

Toronto. Contact him at jerry.rolia@hp.com.

Sharad Singhal is a distinguished scientist at HP Labs. His 

research interests include speech and video processing, 

neural networks, middleware, and personal communications services. Singhal received a PhD in engineering and 

applied science from Yale University. He is a member of 

IEEE and the Acoustical Society of America. Contact him 

at sharad.singhal@hp.com.

Jaap Suermondt is the director of healthcare research at 

HP Labs. His research spans analytics, electronic health 

records, personalization, data mining, storage and information management, decision support systems, patient safety, 

and operational efficiency. Suermondt received a PhD in 

medical information sciences from Stanford University 

School of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American College 

of Medical Informatics. Contact him at jaap.suermondt@

hp.com. 

Ram Swaminathan is a senior scientist at HP Labs. His 

research interests include mathematics, especially linear 

algebra; combinatorial optimization; cryptography; and 

complexity theory. He has also actively worked on networking and storage systems. Swaminathan received a PhD in 

computer science from Purdue University. He is a member 

of the Mathematical Society of America, the American 

Mathematical Society, and the Society for Industrial and 

Applied Mathematics. Contact him at ram.swaminathan@

hp.com.

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50 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

COVER FEATURE

and efficiently, without any information loss. Accordingly, the National Institute of Standards and Technology 

has been working closely with ONC; Integrating the 

Healthcare Enterprise (IHE; www.ihe.net), an initiative 

by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the 

way healthcare computer systems share information; 

and other organizations, such as IEEE, to accelerate the 

adoption of information technology by US healthcare 

enterprises.

NIST, specifically its Information Technology Laboratory, is involved in several healthcare automation activities 

focused on developing associated test methods, protocols, 

and specifications, for interoperability. These projects, 

which frequently involve coordination with related organizations such as IHE, have been devised according to 

healthcare information flows.

INFORMATION FLOW IN 

HEALTHCARE SERVICES

The healthcare services industry generates and processes large amounts of complex information relating 

to patient diagnosis, testing, monitoring, treatment, and 

health management; billing for healthcare services; and 

asset management of healthcare resources. Healthcare 

delivery is a collaborative process, with many physicians, 

specialists, nursing staff, and technicians from multiple 

organizations participating in patient treatment. In addition, many external organizations, including government 

agencies, insurance companies, employers, medical researchers, pharmacists, and even lawyers in malpractice 

suits use the resulting healthcare information. 

A

ccording to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the US spent nearly $2.6 trillion 

on healthcare in 2010, an amount estimated to 

nearly double by the end of this decade (www.

cms.gov). This rate of spending was underscored by 

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush: “The US spends an 

amount equal to 300 percent of India’s GNP on healthcare, and India’s population is three times ours” (Fortune,

16 Jan. 2012, p. 22). In an attempt to rein in healthcare 

costs, the Obama administration, like the preceding Bush 

administration, has initiated a major effort to move from 

paper-based medical record keeping to electronic health 

records (EHRs). These efforts established the Office of the 

National Coordinator for Health Information Technology 

(ONC) and formulated financial incentives for the nation’s 

physicians to use EHRs, which will jointly lead to considerable automation in the healthcare industry.

To take advantage of such automation, information 

generated in the healthcare enterprise must be digitally 

encoded with the right semantics, archived for efficient 

storage and retrieval, and transported reliably, securely, 

The National Institute of Standards and 

Technology is enabling the development 

of an integrated healthcare information infrastructure by developing test tools and 

techniques that will facilitate seamless 

exchange of information across the healthcare enterprise.

Kevin Brady, Ram D. Sriram, Bettijoyce Lide, and Kathleen Roberts

National Institute of Standards and Technology 

Testing the 

Nation’s Healthcare Information 

Infrastructure: 

NIST Perspective

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NOVEMBER 2012 51

The healthcare industry creates and uses different 

classes of information, including the following five types:1,2

t detailed medical records of each patient for every 

episode of illness or type of healthcare delivered;

t workflow for patient referrals to specialists,3 physician 

orders for diagnostic tests or procedures, and hospital 

admission and discharge;

t detailed administrative records for managing healthcare resources—for example, scheduling patient 

appointments, tracking hospital bed utilization, and 

inventory management of pharmaceutical supplies;

t billing for healthcare services, healthcare cost control 

procedures, and coordination of benefits; and

t research reports, clinical observations, results of new 

pharmaceutical clinical trials, and new guidelines.

One category of information flow occurs within the 

healthcare services industry and is characterized as follows: 

t An administrator obtains patient medical history, 

employment and social data, and health insurance information and enters the data into the patient’s chart.

t A nurse records the patient’s vital signs, medications, 

and chief complaints for a particular visit.

t A physician conducts an examination and writes or 

dictates an “encounter note” for subsequent transcription and signoff for inclusion in the chart. An 

administrator submits billing information identifying 

services rendered and the diagnosis codes for use in 

insurance claims.

t Larger healthcare institutions might have internal 

advisory groups that recommend treatment guidelines (evidence-based medicine) to be followed by the 

healthcare staff to improve healthcare quality.

A second category of information flow involves information exchanged between healthcare facilities:

t The physician might prescribe an order for a laboratory or diagnostic imaging test or procedure, refer the 

patient to a specialist, or have the patient admitted to 

a hospital. In some cases, the physician would include 

the patient’s relevant clinical history. 

t The results of a laboratory test or the report and 

images of a diagnostic imaging would subsequently 

be sent to the physician.

t Upon the patient’s discharge from the hospital, the 

discharge summary would be sent to the patient’s 

physician.

In the third category of information flow, information 

is transmitted between a healthcare facility and external 

agencies:

t The office administrator submits claims to an insurance agency using the physician-supplied codes for 

claims processing, and sometimes seeks benefits authorization for specialized treatment for the patient.

t Health insurance agencies might seek additional 

justification for treatment provided to the patient or 

for a recommended course of tests or treatment.

t Health insurance agencies might provide a list of 

preferred medications (formularies) and other cost 

containment measures to healthcare facilities.

t Managed care organizations and other payer agencies 

might also provide treatment guidelines.

t Life insurance companies might seek a patient’s medical record to evaluate the risk of a policy applicant 

or to identify fraud due to a known, but undisclosed, 

preexisting medical condition.

t Clinic nursing staff occasionally might need to report 

incidents of certain diseases to public health agencies 

and record pediatric immunizations with the appropriate state’s vital statistics bureau.

t Medical researchers might seek medical records of 

patients with certain profiles for investigations; the 

clinic might provide the information (with patient 

consent) after removing patient-identifiable data.

t Malpractice lawsuits might require a healthcare facility to submit medical records of patients (with profiles 

similar to the litigant’s) to determine adherence to 

standards of practice.

Finally, accrediting organizations in this information 

flow category might review patient records to review 

operational and quality standards.

ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS

The EHR or electronic medical record (EMR) is the foundation for healthcare information sharing, as both contain 

all the relevant patient healthcare data in sharable form. In 

healthcare delivery, the EHR serves integrating functions 

similar to a manufacturing bill of materials. Although the 

terms EMR and EHR are used interchangeably, ONC makes 

a distinction between these two, as follows (see htttp://

www.healthit.gov). EMRs represent digital versions of the 

paper charts in a doctor’s office. An EMR contains the 

medical and treatment history of the patients in one practice, but the information in EMRs doesn’t travel easily out 

The foundation for healthcare 

information sharing is the electronic 

health record (or electronic medical 

record), as it contains all the relevant 

patient healthcare data in sharable form.

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52 COMPUTER

COVER FEATURE

of the practice. EHRs do all those things, and more. EHRs 

focus on the patient’s total health, going beyond standard 

clinical data collected in the provider’s office and include 

a broader view on a patient’s care. EHRs are designed to 

reach out beyond the health organization that originally 

collects and compiles the information.

Although large healthcare institutions have significant 

investments in EHR-based computer systems, it is estimated that only a small percentage of US small practices 

use an EHR system in their daily practice (www.aafp.org).4

In most healthcare settings—especially small clinics—

paper-based records and fax-based communications are 

still the norm. Recent incentive programs issued by the 

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, however, are 

accelerating EHR adoption by both small and large practices (www.cms.gov/ehrincentiveprograms). 

The adoption of standards for information interchange 

will help to integrate disparate healthcare systems. However, rather than being geared simply to support human 

readability of medical reports, healthcare data integration 

implementations should incorporate the formalism and 

details necessary for proper computer interpretability of 

such information. The formalism and details contained 

within NIST’s Health Level Seven International’s (HL7’s) 

Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standard (http://

hl7book.net/index.php?title=CDA) are 

exemplary in this regard.

HL7, briefly, is the global authority on interoperability standards 

for health IT (www.hl7.org). 5

Such measures would prevent the 

loss of information during data interchange that could otherwise occur due 

to differences in terms, codes, and related semantics in various healthcare 

vocabularies. By using IT that adheres 

to HL7, healthcare institutions could 

deal transparently with information 

obtained from external agencies as 

well as with information generated 

by in-house healthcare information 

systems. Their applications could perform data mining of patient medical 

records for healthcare quality metrics, 

identify patients across populations 

for timely medical interventions, and 

check for compliance with preventiveservice protocols.

A variety of messaging and information exchange standards permits 

an enterprise to integrate the various health information systems and 

archive the data as an EHR or EMR 

(www.nist.gov/healthcare/index.cfm). 

In addition to HL7, such standards include Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), IEEE 

11073 Healthcare Devices and Personal Health Devices, 

and others listed by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s Integrating the Healthcare 

Enterprise initiative and ANSI’s Healthcare Information 

Technology Standards Panel. 

Figure 1 illustrates the classes of clinical information 

and some of the standards that link these classes to a full 

EHR. Specifically, HL7 messaging standards allow disparate healthcare information systems to communicate 

with each other. Version 2.x, although the most common 

implementation, is likely to be superseded by version 3.0, 

which uses an object-oriented approach. Independent 

healthcare institutions can submit orders and referrals 

via HL7 for healthcare services for their patients. DICOM 

standards enable the interchange of information between 

imaging systems and facilitate remote access for physicians at their clinic. 

With standards-based integration of information systems and authenticated remote access to reports and 

images, physicians can review radiologists’ reports and 

diagnostic images for use in patient counseling. One concern with the current standards, however, is that they 

deal only with syntactic issues. Thus, due to the disparate 

Admission/

Transfer/

discharge

Billing Payers

Community

pharmacies

External

laboratories

Hospital

pharmacies

Hospital

labs

Physiological

monitors

Bedside

computer

Order

entry

Charting

Radiology

Pharmacy

benefit

managers

NCPDP

External services

X12N

Administrative record keeping

Clinical record keeping IEEE 11073

ECG

monitor

IV

pump

Ventilator

Support

services

Electronic

medical

record

HL7/IEEE

11073

HL7/IEEE

11073

HL7

HL7

HL7

HL7

HL7

NCPDP

DICOM/HL7

HL7

HL7

Figure 1. Standards that link to an electronic health record. (Source: US 

Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Bringing Healthcare Online: The 

Role of Information Technologies, OTA-ITC-624, US Government Printing Office, 

Washington, D.C., 1995.)

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NOVEMBER 2012 53

Figure 2. NIST HL7 toolkit infrastructure.

nature of the medical terminology in various EHRs (it is 

common for different EHRs to 

use different terminology to 

represent the same concept), 

it is increasingly important to 

develop tools and techniques 

for semantic interoperability.

HEALTH IT TESTING 

AT NIST

NIST’s Information Technology L aboratory (for 

brevity, we use “NIST” to 

denote this laboratory from 

here on) is collaborating with 

industry, healthcare informatics-related standards 

organizations, consortia, 

and government agencies to 

build tools and prototypes to 

advance the adoption of IT 

within healthcare systems. NIST researchers are carrying 

on several activities in particular:

t Collaborating with HL7 to help ensure that HL7 

messaging and EHR systems’ conformance can be 

defined and measured at an appropriate level.

t Providing technical leadership on IHE projects, 

specifically for cross-enterprise document sharing 

and patient care devices.

t Providing technical leadership to build a common 

Web-based tool set that integrates testing tools 

and activities of various standards development 

organizations, consortia, and other organizations; 

also, providing technical leadership on the development, selection, and implementation of security 

specifications for securely communicating health 

information. 

t Collaborating with ONC to achieve a Nationwide 

Health Information Network (NwHIN) and developing 

several test procedures for “meaningful use.” According to ONC, “meaningful use is the set of standards 

defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 

Services (CMS) Incentive Programs that governs the 

use of electronic health records and allows eligible 

providers and hospitals to earn incentive payments 

by meeting specific criteria.”

t Collaborating with the Centers for Medicare and 

Medicaid Services to provide guidance on the Health 

Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Security 

Rule.

t Participating in the ONC Federal Advisory Committee 

on Health Information Technology Standards Committee and associated working groups to pursue these 

efforts. Working groups include HL7, IEEE 11073, the 

National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, and 

the American Telemedicine Association. 

Following are several NIST projects, at various stages of 

completion, that have resulted from these activities.

HL7 testing toolkit

As Figure 2 shows, NIST is building a toolkit for testing 

HL7 message interfaces based on message profiles. The 

toolkit’s foundation is a set of Java APIs and a testing framework that supports activities such as automated message 

generation, message validation, and use case testing. Developers can use the toolkit to build tools or Web services, 

or they can incorporate it into third-party applications and 

testing environments. 

NIST has applied the toolkit to develop numerous tools 

for creating messages, cross-referencing patient identity, 

and formulating EHR queries. The toolkit’s main focus is 

on HL7 version 2, although developers have recently added 

capabilities to the toolkit to support version 3 validation. 

Tools are delivered as stand-alone applications, Web services, and Web applications.

The HL7 (version 2) standard, around which we have 

based the toolkit, is a specification for moving clinical 

and administrative information between healthcare applications. In the US, 90 percent of hospitals use the HL7 

standard. Its adoption in other care settings such as outpatient and long-term care facilities or telemedicine is 

necessary to ensure that organizations can reap the benefits of widespread electronic communication. However, 

Java

database

HL7

artifacts

NIST HL7

test data

Profile

registry

HL7 communication

Data

sources

Message

generation

Message

validation

Message

Test

agents

Message

encoding

Profile

validation

Profile

Java APIs

Testing framework

Web services:

Message generation

Message validation

3rd-party

applications

and testing

environments

Web applications:

IHE PIX/PDQ

IHE PCD

MU EHR → PH

MU Immunization → PH

NHIN PIX/PDQ

CCHIT lab messages

Message generation

Message validation

Message

validation

Message

maker

Profile

validation

HL7 data

repository

MC

validation

Applications and services

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54 COMPUTER

COVER FEATURE

the cost-restrictive nature of managing an HL7 system to 

achieve interoperability is a concern for widespread adoption in these other settings.

When originally developed, the HL7 standard was designed to accommodate the many diverse processes within 

the healthcare industry. Although a universal design was 

necessary to gain broad industry support, the initial design 

resulted in a standard that could not be sufficiently constrained to provide a single and consistent interpretation, 

which prohibited plug-and-play installations. Consequently, systems were difficult to implement and debug, 

resulting in undue costs.

To help alleviate this shortcoming, HL7 introduced the 

concept of message profiles. A message profile is a subset 

of the HL7 messaging standard that constricts message 

definition so that it specifically states a message’s optional 

constructs and processing rules. However, if EHR vendors 

do not follow the profile rules, interoperability problems 

will persist. Conformance testing is essential. NIST is developing testing tools to ensure that vendors apply message 

profiles as intended to fulfill the promise of interoperable 

healthcare systems.

Clinical Document Architecture validation

The HL7 version 3 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) 

is an XML-based markup standard intended to specify the 

encoding, structure, and semantics of clinical documents 

for exchange, and is not itself a document type. CDA was 

developed using the HL7 development framework, which 

is based on the HL7 Reference Information Model. NIST—in 

collaboration with IHE’s Patient Care Coordination (PCC) 

domain, the Quality, Research and Public Health domain, 

and HL7—is working on a series of testing tools for promoting CDA’s adoption by vendors and users of healthcare 

information systems.

The toolkit can validate documents from legacy Health 

Information Technology Standards Panel (www.hitsp.org) 

work, the IHE PCC domain documents, and HL7 documents. The toolkit also includes sample documents of 

syntactically correct XML files for most document types. 

The NwHIN testing team also uses this toolkit at IHE Connectathons (multivendor testing events held worldwide) 

to check for meaningful use (MU) and for patient identity 

to validate documents being exchanged. Users access the 

tool via a webpage form where they upload their XML file 

or through a SOAP-based Web service to automatically 

load and validate from external applications. NIST has 

future plans to expand the toolkit to support the Quality 

Reporting Document Architecture’s Quality Reporting and 

e-Measures format.

Meaningful-use Stage 1 test method

The US Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, enacted as 

part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment 

Act, emphasizes the need for the US to begin using 

EHRs. To encourage more widespread adoption of interoperable health IT, the legislation calls for ONC, in 

consultation with NIST, to establish a program for the voluntary certification of health IT as being in compliance 

with applicable criteria to meet defined MU requirements. 

MU will be implemented in three stages: Stage 1 in 2011, 

Stage 2 in 2013, and Stage 3 in 2015. Further details of 

these stages can be obtained at www.healthit.gov. Physicians will receive federal financial incentives depending 

on how well they conform to criteria described in rules 

associated with each stage.

Under the health IT certification program, ONCauthorized testing organizations use the NIST test method 

and conformance tools to evaluate EHR software and 

systems so that doctors’ offices, hospitals, and other 

healthcare providers can have confidence in the systems 

they purchase. In collaboration with ONC, NIST has developed the necessary functional and conformance testing 

requirements, test cases, and test tools in support of Stage 

1 of the MU health IT certification program and is currently 

working on the other two stages.

In August 2010, NIST published an ONC-approved test 

method (encompassing test procedures, data, and tools) for 

testing EHR systems to meet MU Stage 1 certification criteria and standards. During the test method’s development, 

NIST collaborated with ONC to ensure that the relevant 

standards and certification criteria were consistent and 

effectively represented within the test procedures. The approved NIST-developed test method evaluates EHR system 

components such as electronic prescribing of patient prescriptions to pharmacies, submission of laboratory results 

to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 

how pediatric doctors plot and display growth charts of 

patients, and how vendors control access so that only authorized users can retrieve information.

The following tools for MU Stage 1 testing are complete 

and available from NIST (we are working on Stage 2 tools, 

which should be available in a few months):

t Stage 1 Test Method (http://healthcare.nist.gov/use_

testing/effective_requirements.html). This method 

defines the approved version 1.1 test procedures that 

Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies (ATCBs) 

use in the health IT certification program.

Legislation calls for the voluntary 

certification of health information 

technology to encourage more 

widespread adoption of interoperable 

health IT.

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NOVEMBER 2012 55

t Reportable Lab Results and Immunizations (http://healthcare.nist.gov:8080/

HL7V2MuValidation2011). With this HL7 

v2 test tool, ATCBs can assess the certification criteria for doctors to use in 

submitting immunizations and reporting lab results to the CDC.

t Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) 

Validation (http://hit-testing.nist.gov/cdavalidation/mu.html). NIST provides an 

HL7 Continuity of Care Document (CCD) 

validation tool designed specifically to 

support MU Stage 1 testing.

According to ONC, more than 2,500 EHR 

products for ambulatory care and more than 

800 products for in-patient care are currently 

certified for MU Stage 1 (http://oncchpl.force.

com/ehrcert/CHPLHome; a product is not necessarily a complete EHR—see ONC’s website 

for definition of a product). All products can 

be traced back to NIST-developed test procedures and tools.

Cross-enterprise document sharing 

NIST is working with industry to develop a standardsbased registry infrastructure that will allow healthcare 

professionals to find and access all pertinent patient clinical information regardless of the healthcare organization 

that creates and manages the documents. Additionally, 

NIST is collaborating on the IHE project on CrossEnterprise Document Sharing (XDS). Specifically, NIST 

is a primary author of the XDS standards-based specification. As Figure 3 shows, healthcare professionals 

can use XDS to manage document sharing between any 

healthcare enterprise, from a private physician’s office 

to an acute care in-patient facility and personal health 

record systems.

Sharing is managed through document repositories and 

a document registry to create a longitudinal patient information record within a given clinical domain. These are 

distinct entities with separate responsibilities. A document 

repository stores documents in a transparent, secure, reliable, and persistent manner and can respond to document 

retrieval requests. A document registry stores information 

about those documents so that the documents of interest for 

a patient’s care can be easily found, selected, and retrieved 

irrespective of the repository where they are actually stored.

Using document registries to share clinical information 

intraorganizationally presents unique challenges: data 

interoperability and interchange, for example, requires 

standardized metadata, interfaces, and formats; moreover, 

the technology must support strict adherence to security 

and privacy policies related to healthcare information.

NIST has developed a reference implementation for 

the XDS specification and a Web-based test suite, allowing vendors to determine conformance to the XDS 

profile. Vendors also use the test suite as an early stage 

tool for interoperability testing. The reference implementation is available as IHE open source, an open source 

project hosted on Source Forge (http://iheos.sourceforge.

net). The NIST test suite is available at http://ihexds.

nist.gov.

Medical device communication testing

In a typical intensive care unit, a patient might be connected to one or more vital-sign monitors, receive fluids 

through multiple infusion pumps, and be supported by a 

ventilator. Each of these medical devices can capture volumes of data, which is available multiple times per second, 

on a per-patient basis. Today, these devices do not communicate and have little or no plug-and-play interoperability. 

Medical device interoperability raises several issues:

t Manually captured data is labor intensive, recorded 

infrequently, and prone to human error. 

t Expensive custom connectivity equipment might be 

used only for patients with acute needs. 

t Detection of patient problems such as adverse drug 

events is hindered due to the inability to collect realtime data from multiple devices. 

t Vendors intending to communicate data between devices must develop specialized interfaces for each 

device.

Figure 3. Cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS). Healthcare professionals within a community can use XDS to access a patient’s clinical 

information regardless of where it is located.

Cross-enterprise

document

registry

(XDS)

Repository

enterprise

Repository

enterprise

Repository

enterprise

Repository

enterprise

Primary care

physician

Imaging

center

Emergency room

Hospital A

Admin Patient

Hospital B

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COVER FEATURE

56 COMPUTER

The ISO/IEEE 11073 (x73) Healthcare Devices and Personal Health Devices Working Groups are defining a set 

of standards to enable medical devices to interoperate 

and electronically capture and process data. These working groups are collaborating with the IHE Patient Care 

Device Domain to develop a framework for integrating 

medical device data into an EHR.

NIST is actively developing medical device communication test methodologies and tools to enable consistent 

and correct communication between medical devices and 

device-gateways across the healthcare enterprise. This work 

is intended to provide standards-based, rigorous validation 

of medical device communication through conformance 

leading to interoperability. Rigorous testing is essential to 

achieve multivendor and enterprise-wide interoperability, 

and it must be predicated on sufficiently specified medical 

device and enterprise-communication standards. The NIST 

software test tools aim to meet the X73-defined requirements as well as the enterprise/electronic health record 

level defined in the HL7 messaging standard.

A related tool is the ICSGenerator (http://hit-testing.

nist.gov/medicaldevices/index.html), which facilitates 

creation of vendor conformance statements that would 

be applicable to testing a particular X73 device. With 

the ICSGenerator, users can easily develop and produce 

implementation conformance statements. Users such 

as medical device vendors, manufacturers, and clinical 

engineers can execute the tool to produce statements that 

disclose details of a specific implementation and specify 

the features provided by a particular medical device—that 

is, a device profile. Medical device vendors can compare 

device implementation conformance statements based on, 

and required by, the x73 standards and use them across 

device interfaces to help overcome the semantic interoperability problem.

Conformance test tools can use device profiles in conjunction with messages to and from devices to determine 

standards conformance and validity. The ValidatePDU tool 

can determine not only the correctness of the x73 message, 

but also the message’s compliance to a user-defined profile 

(derived via the ICSGenerator tool). ValidatePDU provides 

basic syntax, structure, and low-level semantic checking 

for one or more captured messages. Both ValidatePDU and 

ICSGenerator use the electronic representation of the x73 

standards information model that NIST researchers implemented in an XML schema. These tools (and information 

model) are publicly available (http://hit-testing.nist.gov/

medicaldevices/index.html). Medical device test message 

generation is also possible to facilitate future manager/

agent conformance test scenarios.

IHE CONNECTATHONS

Each year, the IHE sponsors Connectathons in North 

America, Europe, and Asia to promote interoperability among IHE profile implementations (www.ihe.net/

connectathon). The Connectathons are cross-vendor 

structured testing events where developers of health information systems can compare their implementations with 

those of other vendors. The goal is to promote the adoption of standards-based interoperability solutions defined 

by IHE in commercially available healthcare IT systems.

The 2012 North American Connectathon held in Chicago, Illinois, featured more than 160 systems from 117 

participating organizations, which performed and verified more than 3,500 successful tests of IHE integration 

profiles. Ninety percent of the applications demonstrated 

at the Connectathon used the NIST test tools. Participants and monitors use NIST tooling in cross-enterprise 

document sharing, patient identity and queries, patient 

care devices, and CDA validation to compare them against 

the IHE profiles.

Interest in the Connectathons and NIST tooling to 

support them has been growing; at the 2012 event, IHE 

Korea and IHE Japan began using NIST tooling with IHE 

Australia to learn how to use the technology for their 

respective Connectathons.

NWHIN TESTING

NwHIN is a set of standards, services, and policies 

that enable secure health information exchange over the 

Internet. NwHIN is not a physical network but rather is 

a foundation for the communication of health information across diverse entities and communities around the 

country. Electronic health information exchange that 

follows patients across providers regardless of geographical 

boundaries greatly improves the clinical-decision-making 

process by providing clinicians with updated, relevant, 

and accessible patient data (http://nwhin.siframework.org/

NwHIN+Basics.)

These standards, services, and policies enhance patient 

care quality and evolve care coordination by helping move 

current paper-based medical records to an electronic process for securely storing and sharing EHRs. NIST has been 

involved in the testing process for “on-boarding,” the process by which an organization joins the Nationwide Health 

Information Network Exchange, which verifies that it complies with NwHIN-supported specifications. On-boarding 

includes verifying an organization’s eligibility for participation (must be a federal agency or ONC contractor), that its 

Electronic health information exchange 

that follows patients across providers 

regardless of geographical boundaries 

greatly improves the clinical decisionmaking process.

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NOVEMBER 2012 57

Selected CS articles and columns are available 

for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

gateway complies with the NwHIN specifications, and that 

it can exchange information.

NwHIN uses an existing set of NIST tools with modifications based on the NwHIN specifications (http://hit-testing.

nist.gov:12080/xdstools2nwhin). The tools include XDS, 

Cross-Community Patient Discovery Query and Retrieve 

(XCPD), Patient Identity Cross Reference, Patient Discovery 

Query, and a CDA validator. These tools help to automate 

the on-boarding process and allow potential participants 

to completely test their gateways at the NIST website before 

they start on-boarding. The NwHIN network might play a 

larger role in meaningful use testing in Stage 2.

T

he creation of an integrated healthcare information 

infrastructure depends on all parties involved—

consumers, healthcare professionals, researchers, 

and insurers—having systems, tools, and information 

that are complete, correct, secure, and interoperable. Until 

we achieve a full-scale interoperability of software systems in the healthcare enterprise, we will not realize the 

full benefits of using information technology in healthcare. Achieving true interoperability would require that 

three tightly integrated activities must succeed: standards 

development, implementation support (including implementation guidance and precertification testing), and 

comprehensive conformance and interoperability testing. Thus, true interoperability testing cannot be achieved 

without having the right standards, implemented in the 

right way, and tested—both for syntax and semantics—

to the right requirements. NIST will continue the

research and development activities required to support 

and test a fully integrated and interoperable healthcare 

enterprise. 

Acknowledgments 

Project leads for the various projects include Robert Snelick 

(HL7 V2 Testing Toolkit), Ken Gebhart (Meaningful Use), Bill 

Majurski (Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing), John Garguilo 

(Medical Device Interoperability), Andrew McCaffrey (CDA 

validation), and Gavin O’Brien (NwHIN). Lisa Carnahan initiated the testing projects during her term as the leader of the 

health IT conformance testing program; Mary Laamanen and 

Sandra Martinez also contributed efforts in CDA and Medical 

Devices, respectively. We appreciate the input from Steven J. 

Fenves and Lisa Carnahan on this article. 

References

1. C. Bock et al., Healthcare Strategic Focus Area: Clinical Informatics, NIST Internal Report 7263, Nat’l Inst. of Standards 

and Technology, Washington, D.C., 2005.

2. National Research Council, For the Record: Protecting Electronic Health Information, National Academies Press, 1997.

3. M. Ramaiah et al., “Workflow and Electronic Health 

Records in Small Medical Practices,” AHIMA’s Online 

Research J., Perspectives in Health Information Management, 2012.

4. S.R. Rao et al., “Electronic Health Records in Small Physician Practices: Availability, Use, and Perceived Benefits,” 

J. Am. Medical Informatics Assoc., vol. 18, no. 3, 2011, pp. 

271-275.

5. T. Benson, Principles of Health Interoperability: HL7 and 

SNOMED, Springer, 2010.

Kevin Brady is Interoperability Group leader, Systems and 

Software Division, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology. His research 

interests include health information technology, smart 

healthcare, and cyberphysical systems. Brady received an 

MS in computer science from the George Washington University. Contact him at kevin.brady@nist.gov.

Ram D. Sriram is chief of the Systems and Software 

Division, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology. His research interests 

include distributed design, artificial intelligence, and smart 

networked systems and societies. Sriram received a PhD 

in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He 

is a senior member of IEEE, a fellow of ASME and AAAS, 

and a life member of AAAI and ACM. Contact him at ram.

sriram@nist.gov.

Bettijoyce Lide is the health IT program manager, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards 

and Technology. Her research interests include health 

information technology, evaluated scientific data, and collaborations on cutting-edge R&D. Lide received an MS in 

chemistry, information technology, and management from 

the American University. She is a member of the American 

Chemical Society. Contact her at bjlide@nist.gov.

Kathleen Roberts is associate director for federal and industrial relations, Information Technology Laboratory, 

National Institute of Standards and Technology. Roberts 

received an MS in computer science from the George Washington University. Contact her at Kathleen.Roberts@nist.

gov.

The identification of certain commercial software systems in this article does not imply recommendation or 

endorsement by NIST nor does it imply that the products identified are necessarily the best available for the 

purpose. Further, any opinions, findings, conclusions, 

or recommendations expressed in this material are 

those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the 

views of NIST or any other supporting US government 

or corporate organizations.

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0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society NOVEMBER 2012 59

directly executed on the machine as written. Allowing for 

typographical errors, at least a few of them contain nontrivial bugs. Our emulator validated corrected versions of 

all the programs in the original IAS reports,1-4,7 producing 

the expected results.

PROGRAMMING THE IAS MACHINE

A brief overview of how problems were solved on the IAS 

computer provides background for appreciating the intellectual achievements of von Neumann as well as of Arthur 

Burks, Herman Goldstine, and all others who worked at the 

Institute for Advanced Study.

The IAS computer consisted of a memory bank referred 

to as the Selectrons, an accumulator (A) capable of shifting, 

adding, and subtracting; and an arithmetic register (R), 

used, among other things, to hold double width results from 

multiplication and division along with the accumulator 

(these latter operations were accomplished through shifting and adding or subtracting). The machine also had the 

necessary support logic for reading and writing memory 

and for fetching and executing instructions from memory. 

S

ome of the first computing programs ever written 

were to solve mathematical problems pertaining to 

the Institute for Advanced Study computer.1-5 The 

IAS computer is intimately linked with John von 

Neumann, who led the IAS project team in Princeton, N.J., 

during the post-World War II era. Our analysis of these programs revealed several errors. Given that these programs 

have not been examined for well over 50 years after the 

only machine that could execute them was shut down, this 

is hardly surprising.

To conduct our investigation, we used an IAS machine 

emulator, developed originally for educational purposes 

so that users could write and execute programs in the 

original IAS instruction set.6

 Executing these programs 

reveals time-tested truths about computer architecture, 

side effects, instruction set design, and automatic programming—truths all foreseen by von Neumann and his team 

so many years ago.

The evidence suggests that at least a few of the programs, which appeared in both IAS technical reports and 

later in John von Neumann: Collected Works,

5

 were never 

A study that examined and executed the programs John von Neumann 

wrote for the IAS machine reveals time-tested truths about computer 

architecture, side effects, instruction set design, and automatic 

programming—truths all foreseen by von Neumann and his team 

more than 50 years ago.

Barry Fagin, US Air Force Academy

Dale Skrien, Colby College

Debugging on the Shoulders of 

Giants: Von Neumann’s Programs 

65 Years Later

PERSPECTIVES

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60 COMPUTER

PERSPECTIVES

All registers and data paths visible at the assembly language 

level were 40 bits wide.

Table 1 lists the basic instructions, referred to as orders.

Some descriptions have been modified for clarity.

Programming the IAS required translating an algorithm 

originally expressed in the language of mathematics into a 

sequence of the instructions in Table 1.2

First, each programming problem began with a description of the algorithm in a combination of English and 

mathematics. The IAS mathematicians then translated this 

algorithm into a flow diagram like the one in Figure 1.2

Circles in Figure 1 indicate entry and exit points. 

Arrows indicate the flow of control. Boxes with two exit 

arrows are alternative boxes: they represent conditional 

branches, typically denoting loop exit points. 

A “+” denotes the path taken if the expression in the box is greater than or equal to zero, 

a “−” indicates the path if the expression is 

negative. Boxes with one entry and one exit 

point are operation boxes and are labeled with 

the mathematical description of the computations performed. In modern parlance, these 

are called basic blocks. Boxes labeled with “#” 

denote either substitution boxes, indicating 

changes to variables in memory, or assertion 

boxes, indicating certain valid mathematical relationships at the time the computation 

mo × C 1 –>i

#

#

I II

III

i – I – 1 i

1 1.5 2 +

–

2

2

2

3

e

i + 1 →i

Vi

 = aui

2 + bui

 + c to A.2i dui

 + e

(m + 2i)o to C

Figure 1. Flow diagram for an IAS computation.

Table 1. IAS computer instruction set.

Inst # Inst name Abbrev Description

1 S(x) q Ac + x Copy number in Selectron location x into A.

2 S(x) q Ac – x – Same as #1 but copy the negative of the number.

3 S(x) q AcM xM Same as #1 but copy the absolute value.

4 S(x) q Ac–M x – M Same as #1 but subtract the absolute value.

5 S(x) q Ah + xh Add number in Selectron location x into A.

6 S(x) q Ah – xh – Subtract number in Selectron location x from A.

7 S(x) q AhM xhM Same as #6, but add absolute value.

8 S(x) q Ah–M xh – M Same as #7, but subtract absolute value.

9 S(x) q R xR Copy number in Selectron location x into R.

10 R q A A Copy number in R to A.

11 S(x) * R q A x × Multiply number in Selectron location x by the number in R.

Place the left half of the result in A and the right half in R.

12 A/S(x) q R x ÷ Divide the number in A by the number in Selectron location x.

Place the quotient in R and the remainder in A.

13 Cu q S(x) xC Continue execution at the left-hand instruction at Selectron location x.

14 Cu’ q S(x) xC’ Continue execution at the right-hand instruction at Selectron location x.

15 Cc q S(x) xCc If the number in A is > = 0, continue as in #13. Otherwise, continue normally.

16 Cc’ q S(x) xCc’ If the number in A is > = 0, continue as in #14. Otherwise, continue normally.

17 At q S(x) xS Copy the number in A to Selectron location x.

18 Ap q S(x) xSp Replace the right-hand 12 bits of the left-hand instruction at Selectron location x by the right-hand 12 bits of A.

19 Ap’ q S(x) xSp’ Same as above, but modifies right-hand instruction.

20 R R Shift the number in A to the right 1 bit (left-most bit is copied).

21 L L Circularly left-shift the bits in A and R as an 80-bit quantity, leaving the most significant bit of A unchanged.

A: accumulator

Cc: control conditional (conditional branch in modern parlance)

Cu: control unconditional (unconditional branch or jump in modern parlance)

R: arithmetic register

S: Selectrons (memory in modern parlance)

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traverses the box. Memory locations are indicated with 

capital letters and numeric suffixes.

In following Goldstine and von Neumann’s translation 

process, once they believed the diagram to be complete, 

they labeled alternative and operations boxes with roman 

numerals, and obtained a preliminary enumeration of 

instructions. This process is roughly similar to the output 

a modern compiler might supply to a linker, in that it contains the necessary instruction sequence but with only 

symbolic memory addresses. Each line in a preliminary 

enumeration has at most three fields: a designator indicating the block from the flow diagram associated with the 

instruction and the instruction number within the block, 

a symbolic memory location, and an optional instruction 

abbreviation from Table 1 (if omitted, the instruction is 

assumed to be a load of the accumulator from the address).

The first few instructions from the preliminary enumeration of Figure 1 are as follows (we have added comments 

to aid understanding):

Once the preliminary enumeration is complete, the 

program’s total size can be determined, which means that 

storage locations can be assigned (typically those immediately following the instructions), and branch targets filled in. 

IAS stores two instructions per memory word, and therefore 

pairs them into words at this stage. Based on the program’s 

total size and the storage locations assigned, the instructions in the preceding preliminary enumeration become 

the four words in the following final enumeration. Whereas 

the 1947 reports used only abbreviations in preliminary and 

final enumerations, we have included the long forms to aid 

understanding.

From this point, an engineer would translate the final 

enumeration into binary and load the program into the 

Selectrons, presumably by setting toggle switches as dictated by the binary translation.

THE IAS EMULATOR

The process of developing and eventually teaching a US 

Air Force Academy course on “Great Ideas in Computing” 

led to a search for tools that would permit students to program the original IAS computer. No such tools were found. 

However, CPU Sim, a general-purpose emulator, was available from Colby College (http://www.cs.colby.edu/djskrien/

CPUSim).6

 Based on the descriptions of the machine and 

instruction set provided in the 1946-1947 documentation, 

we used CPU Sim to create IASSim, an emulator for the 

Princeton IAS computer. As Figure 2 shows, IASSim accepts 

text files containing long-form sequences of IAS instructions and executes them based on the semantics of Table 1. 

IASSim supports both single-step and start-to-finish execution mode, and it allows full inspection of all machine 

registers and memory.

We have used IASSim in support of graded classroom 

work. College freshmen with no prior computer science 

background have used it to program in IAS assembly 

language.8

Once the emulator was up and running, other uses 

beyond computer science education evolved. In particular, 

the existence of a functioning IAS emulator provides researchers with the opportunity to revisit the programming 

problems given in the 1947 IAS reports. As the IAS programs 

are among the oldest programs ever written, runnable on 

only one machine in the world, we believed it would be 

interesting to run them through the emulator to see which 

programs, if any, contained bugs.

SOURCES OF ERROR IN PROGRAM 

TRANSLATION

Many steps are required to go from a 65-year-old 

algorithm description to a working program running on a 

21st-century emulator. We performed all of the steps except 

the last one by hand, any one of which could introduce an 

error that would make the result incorrect. These steps 

were as follows:

1. Describe algorithm mathematically.

2. Depict algorithm in flow diagram.

3. Translate flow diagram into preliminary enumeration.

4. Transform preliminary enumeration into final 

enumeration.

5. Transcribe final enumeration from the 1947 technical 

reports in the 1963 edition of John von Neumann: Collected Works.

6. Enter program listing into emulator.

7. Execute program on emulator.

I,1 B.6 // load contents of memory location B.6 into 

the accumulator

 .2 C S // store the accumulator into memory 

location C

II,1 C // load C into accumulator

 ,2 B.7 h – // subtract contents of memory location B.7 

from accumulator

 ,3 e Cc // branch to exit point if accumulator >= 0

III,1 C // load C into accumulator

 , 2 III,3 Sp // Change the address field of the following 

instruction to the lower 12 bits of the 

accumulator

 ,3 - // load from address as set by previous 

instruction

WORD INST PAIR LONG FORM

0 19, 22S S(x) -> A 19 A -> S(x) 22

1 22, 20h- S(x)-> A 22 A -> A-S(x) 20

2 26Cc, 22 Cc-> S(x) 26 S(x) -> A 22

3 3Sp’, - Ap’-> S(x) 3 S(x) -> A -

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62 COMPUTER

PERSPECTIVES

the coresidence of data and 

instructions. Instructions, 

however, are 20 bits wide, 

with an 8-bit opcode and 

a 12-bit address. Thus, as 

the previous code example 

demonstrates, the IAS stores 

instructions in pairs, which 

requires making distinctions 

between the instructions 

in the left and right half of 

a word in branch targets. 

In Table 1, these are indicated with an apostrophe 

in the instruction notation. 

For example, Cc 30 means 

to conditionally branch to 

the instruction in the left 

half of the memory word 

30, while Cc ́ 30 means the 

target is the instruction in 

the right half of the word. 

The IAS makes the distinction between the left or right 

“handedness” of instructions 

during the translation of a preliminary enumeration to a 

final one.

Number representation

The IAS represents integers in fixed-point binary 2’s 

complement notation. The assumed binary point is to the 

immediate right of the most significant bit (the left-most bit). 

All numbers are 40 bits in length. Thus, 1⁄2 would be represented as the 40-bit quantity 0100 ... 000, and –5/8 would 

be 10110 ... 000. The only numbers that can be represented 

in the machine, therefore, lie on the interval –1 <= x < 1. 

Interestingly, 1 cannot be represented. The IAS engineers 

maintained accuracy by using appropriate rescaling of 

numbers when necessary, or by the programmer’s having 

sufficient knowledge of the problem under study to prescale inputs appropriately and apply the correct postscaling 

to the results.

This representation scheme dictates the requirement 

that all data inputs to the machine, all intermediate quantities calculated during program execution, and all outputs 

must lie on the interval –1 < = x < 1. Otherwise, the results 

might be incorrect.

The only exceptions to this representation scheme are 

numbers used to address memory, referred to as position 

marks (memory addresses in modern terminology). These 

numbers are 12 bits long. Since the IAS stores instructions 

in pairs, and each has a 12-bit address field, it is convenient 

to store these numbers as duplicated 12-bit patterns if the 

IAS performs address manipulation, so that instructions 

Von Neumann and his team would have performed steps 

1-4 as part of the programming process. Steps 5-7 were 

added by the authors to support execution on the emulator.

We note that step 5 is not strictly necessary. We originally took our program listings from the Collected Works 

alone. When we eventually found errors, we compared 

the code with that in the original 1947 technical reports. 

Occasionally, we found programs in the original reports to 

be correct while the corresponding code in Collected Works 

was wrong, suggesting that copying or printing errors occurred when Collected Works was first compiled. Thus, 

we cite the transfer of code from the technical reports to 

Collected Works as a possible source of error.

UNUSUAL FEATURES OF THE IAS MACHINE

The IAS computer contained a few features that are, by 

modern standards, somewhat unusual.

Lack of I/O

The IAS machine had no I/O. This meant that users had 

to enter variables, as well as constants, by hand into specific memory locations. The program placed the results 

in memory locations, and engineers had to inspect them 

manually after program termination. This should be kept 

in mind when examining IAS program listings.

IAS memory and instruction format

The IAS organized memory into 2,048 40-bit words. One 

of the machine’s pioneering achievements is, of course, 

Figure 2. Screenshot from IASSim, an emulator for the IAS computer (www.cs.colby.edu/

djskrien/IASSim).

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cally alter the sequencing of basic blocks in the program. 

The IAS can even use these instructions to manipulate 

data directly.

VON NEUMANN’S ORIGINAL 

15 PROGRAMMING PROBLEMS

Volume 2, part 1, of Goldstine and von Neumann’s 

technical report, “Planning and Coding Problems for an 

Electronic Computing Instrument,”3

 contains nine programming examples; part 2 lists six more. The authors 

chose the examples, given in order of approximate increasing complexity, to illustrate the IAS machine’s different 

problem domains and features. 

We give a brief overview of each example and indicate 

whether Goldstine and von Neumann’s programming solutions as given in the literature are correct. If a mistake 

existed in either the original reports or the Collected Works,

we describe the nature of the error, how we believe the 

error originated, and show the necessary correction.

A simple algebraic expression

Problem 1 is the simplest one, intended as an introduction to IAS features and the process of programming for it. 

Problem 1 calculates the value of the expression v = (au2

+ bu + c) / (du + e), where a through e are constants and 

u is a user-supplied variable. The code as written is correct.

Parameters and subroutining

Problem 2 is the same as problem 1, but now the code 

stores u and v at specific memory addresses, with v pointing to where the result will go. This is intended to illustrate 

the concept of parameters and subroutines. The code given 

is correct.

Iteration

Problem 3 treats v as a function f(u) for which the program uses iteration to calculate multiple values. It stores 

each (u, v = f(u)) pair in consecutive memory locations 

starting at memory address M. One interesting feature of 

this program is that it has a partial substitution order that 

modifies the instruction immediately after it:

This partial substitution is a potential hazard since the 

program prefetches both instructions in a word simultaneously. We know from the literature that the IAS computer’s 

design accounted for this possibility and therefore allowed 

it in programs.1

 The initial design anticipated the complications of data forwarding and delayed branching in modern 

pipelined architectures.

and addresses in the left half of words need not be treated 

specially. Thus, the IAS would store the number 3 position 

mark as the 40-bit quantity 0×00-003-00-003 (represented 

here in hexadecimal notation with hyphens separating address and opcode fields). 

The original literature indicates position marks with 

a subscript of 0. Thus, if n = 6, an indication that (n – 1)0

should be stored in a given memory location does not refer 

to the number 5, since the IAS machine cannot represent 5. 

Instead, it represents the position mark 0×00-005-00-005.

Self-modifying code

The IAS designers recognized early on that vector processing—the ability to perform the same computation on 

multiple data items—was an important requirement. The 

machine achieved this capability through self-modifying 

code, a programming technique generally frowned upon 

today. 

Two special IAS instructions can modify the address 

field of memory words at a given address. Von Neumann referred to these instructions as “partial substitution orders,” 

or “substitution orders” for short. They are denoted as Ap 

and Ap ́ for modification of the left and right address fields 

in a word, respectively. These are instructions 18 and 19 

from Table 1.

For example, consider the following IAS program 

fragment:

Suppose the lower 12 bits of the accumulator contain 

0x053 when the instruction at memory location 20 is 

fetched. When it completes, instruction 50’s address field 

will be modified to 0x53. Thus, the program will now look 

like this:

Notice that instruction 50 has yet to execute; the effect 

of the address change will not be apparent until it does.

As von Neumann noted, the substitution orders are 

quite powerful. If they modify load and store instructions, 

they implement vector processing—but they can also 

modify branch instructions, in which case they dynamiWORD LONG FORM HEX INSTRUCTION

20 Ap -> S(x) 50 0x 12 032 : change address field 

of left inst at mem[50]

...

50 S(x) -> Ac + 0 0x 01 000 ; currently set to load 

accumulator from 

mem[0]

20 Ap -> S(x) 50 0x 12 032 : change address field 

of left inst at mem[50]

...

50 S(x) -> Ac + 0 0x 01 053 ; will now load accumulator from mem[83]

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

3 Ap’->S(x) 3 3Sp’

S(x)->Ac+ – –

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64 COMPUTER

PERSPECTIVES

The solution to problem 3 contains an error. As written 

in the original report, the instruction sequence at words 

12 and 13 is:

The problem is that the result of the division in the 

second instruction is left in the R register, but the second 

instruction must move it to the accumulator before the 

third instruction can store it in memory. The simplest correction is to insert two R q A instructions between words 

12 and 13:

This insertion in turn requires adjusting all target 

addresses from word 14 onward. In our case, the 

IASSim emulator’s built-in assembler performs this task 

automatically.

Strictly speaking, although only one extra instruction 

is required, this would change the left-right parity of all 

the instructions in the words that follow, which would in 

turn require changing the parity of all branch instructions 

affected. We chose a simpler approach.

Precalculation of scale factors

Problem 4 shows how to precalculate the appropriate 

scaling factor for a quotient u/v (the integer n such that 2(n-1)

<= (u/v) < 2n

), without having to compute u/v explicitly. 

This would have been a common programming task on 

the IAS machine.

The only error in the listing appears to be typographical. Instruction 10 is written as 35  h, but should appear 

as 35h. This error appears in both the original reports and 

the Collected Works.

Newton’s method for calculating square roots

Problem 5 iterates zi+1 = 1⁄2 (zi + u/zi) from a starting estimate z0

 until the limits of machine precision are reached. 

This converges to √u. The code as originally published is 

correct; however, there is an error in the Collected Works,

probably introduced during the transcription process. The 

instruction in the left half of word 5 is written as 9h in 

the original IAS report, but is incorrectly rendered in the 

Collected Works as 0h.

Binary to binary-coded decimal conversion

Problem 6 is the IAS code to convert a number in 

standard IAS floating-point format to IAS binarycoded decimal (BCD) format. As originally published, the instruction pair at word 11 has the 

branch parities reversed. The simplest correction is 

to switch the targets (which would make the second 

branch a noop). The code was originally written as 

12Cc ́, 3C ́. Changing the instruction pair to 3Cc ́, 

12C corrects the code.

BCD to binary conversion

Problem 7 is similar to problem 6, but converts from 

BCD to binary. The published solution has three minor 

errors and one logic error. The minor errors are as 

follows:

The first two are probably typographical errors, since 

they differ only by one digit. The correction to the third error 

is consistent with the flow diagram given in the IAS report,3

and so the error would have been introduced after that point 

in the compilation process.

In addition, there is a logic error between instruction 

words 26 and 27:

The L instructions (left shift) occur in a loop, and have 

the side effect of moving bits into the R register. In one 

part of the program, this side effect is needed, but in 

this particular part it is not. The instruction at word 27 

uses these left shifts only to multiply the accumulator 

by 4, and the remaining parts of the program will not 

work correctly if the L instructions at word 27 alter the R 

register in any way.

The easiest fix is to insert a pair of S(x) q R 43 instructions between words 26 and 27, since according to the text 

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

12 S(x)->Ah+ 16 16h

A/S(x)->R 24 24÷

13 R->A

R->A

14 At->S(x) – – S

Cu->S(x) 1 1 C

and 

so on ...

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

12 S(x)->Ah+ 6 16h

A/S(x)->R 24 24÷

13 At->S(x) – – S

Cu->S(x) 1 1C

WORD 

AS 

WRITTEN

SHOULD 

READ SOURCE OF ERROR

24 17S, 48 17S, 43 Collected Works

35 42S, 36Cc 42S, 26Cc IAS report, Collected Works

38 41Cc ́, A 39Cc ́, A IAS report, Collected Works

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

26 At->S(x) 42 425

S(x)->Ac+ 17 17

27 L L

L L

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NOVEMBER 2012 65

Numerical integration via Simpson’s rule, 

subset of points

Problem 11 is similar to problem 10, except that the 

boundaries of a subinterval of the function values are 

used as boundaries for integration. These are assumed 

to be the problem parameters. The code as originally 

written in the IAS report is correct; however, two 

minor printing errors appear in the Collected Works as 

follows:

Lagrangian interpolation

Problem 12 uses Lagrangian interpolation to calculate the coefficients of the unique polynomial of degree 

M – 1 that passes through M points (x1

,p1) .. (xM,pM), and 

then evaluates that polynomial for some given x. The code 

is correct.

Three problems using Lagrangian 

interpolation for a tabulated function

Problem 13 is divided into three subproblems, each 

showing different ways to use problem 12’s code to interpolate a tabulated function. For these problems, there are 

N >> M points (p1

,y1)..(pN,yN). The computer is first used to 

find the index k of M points starting with yk

 that are closest 

to the value of a given variable y. The program then passes 

this index value to the code of problem 12 to evaluate the 

function at y.

For problem 13a, we assume the points to be equidistant, which means that the computer stores only the 

total number and the endpoints. For problem 13b, the 

points are not equidistant, which means that the emulator 

must store all points explicitly. Problem 13c is identical to 

13b except that the pi

 and yi values alternate in memory 

instead of being stored as a vector of p’s followed by a 

vector of q’s.

Problem 13a has at least two logic errors. To perform a 

certain arithmetic operation, the code uses three substitution orders at various places:

memory, location 43 contains 0. This has the effect of clearing R:

As with earlier examples, only one instruction is strictly 

necessary, but inserting a pair of identical instructions is 

simpler. Similarly, the usual adjustment of target addresses 

is required.

A legitimate question is whether the implementation 

of different semantics for the L instruction would make 

the published solution correct and that we are simply applying the wrong ones. Different semantics for different 

IAS instructions were indeed known and published (for 

example, in the IAS reports, changes are evident from 

volume 1 to volume 2). However, in this case the L instruction was changed to modify the R register precisely to 

support binary to decimal conversion, which this example 

was intended to illustrate.

For the emulator, we chose the semantics for all IAS instructions given in volume 2, part 1, the same report in 

which these problems were published.3

 We are aware of 

no consistent semantics for the L instruction that make 

the published listing work correctly for this problem. With 

the proposed correction, the code runs on the emulator 

exactly as described, correctly converting numbers in IAS 

BCD format to their floating-point representations.

Double-precision sum

The code in problem 8 sums two 80-bit IAS numbers and 

is correct as written. 

Double-precision floating-point product

The code in problem 9 multiplies two 80-bit IAS numbers 

and is correct as written.

Numerical integration via Simpson’s rule

The problems from volume 2, part 2, are substantially 

more complex,4

 and were chosen to illustrate the power 

and broad applicability of the electronic stored-program 

computer.

Problem 10 numerically integrates a function supplied as 

N + 1 values f(x) on the closed interval x = [0..1]. The code 

as written is correct. There is only a minor printing error 

in the Collected Works, which lists the contents of memory 

location 21 as 2N/3 but should instead be written as 2/3N.

The annotation is correct in the IAS report.

WORD

As printed in vol. 2, 

part 1 (Correct)

As later printed in 

Collected Works (incorrect)

14 34, 26Sp ́ 34, . 26Sp ́

23 –, – – h –, – h

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

26 At->S(x) 42 425

S(x)->Ac+ 17 17

27 S(x) -> R 43 43R

S(x) -> R 43 43R

28 L L

L L

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

64 Ap ́->S(x) 52 52Sp ́

...

69 ...

Ap->S(x) 50 50Sp

72 Ap->S(x) 51 51Sp

...

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PERSPECTIVES

66 COMPUTER

The insertion of two extra instruction words requires 

incrementing all word addresses from 85 and beyond by 2. 

The code as corrected above produces the desired solution 

on the emulator.

Problem 13c has the same errors as problem 13b. The 

complete listing was not given in the original report, only 

those changes necessary from the code of 12 and 13b. 

Making those changes coupled with the corrections above 

requires suitably modifying the branch targets . Other than 

that, the code is correct.

There is a printing error in the listing for this problem in 

the Collected Works. Instruction pair 53 reads 93, 62Sp but 

should read 93, 62Sp ́. The listing is correct in the original 

report.

Merging two lists

The IAS authors deliberately chose problems 14 and 15 to 

be less mathematical in nature and more suggestive of data 

processing. Clearly, von Neumann anticipated the powerful 

nonmathematical applications of digital computing.

Problem 14 inductively merges two lists of records. What 

the report calls a “complex,” we now call a record. A “sequence” is a list in modern terminology, and a “principal 

number” is a key.

The listing contains what is probably a typographical error. 

The instruction in the second half of word 26 reads 10Cc ́, 

but should read 10C ́ (replacing a conditional branch with an 

unconditional one). With this change, the code runs correctly.

Sorting a list

Problem 15 uses the problem 14 code to inductively sort 

a list by first merging successive pairs of lists of size 1, then 

merging half again as many lists of size 2, and so on. List 

sizes that are not powers of two are accommodated. The 

only error is the same one in problem 14. With that correction, the code runs correctly.

LESSONS FOR COMPUTER 

SCIENTISTS TODAY

Revisiting the computational problem-solving processes 

first outlined in the 1947 IAS technical reports offers both a 

trip back in time and a prescient glimpse into the future of 

computing. Many of the issues computer scientists would 

For this operation to have the desired effect, the indicated memory locations must be zero before the emulator 

alters them (recall that substitution orders replace only 

parts of words). Even if we assume that memory locations 

that are not explicitly initialized begin with default values 

of zero, two of the three referenced locations above are 

sinks of previous instructions, so at least two of them are 

incorrect.

The easiest correction is to find two memory locations 

we can explicitly initialize to zero without further affecting the program. A review of the code shows the program 

can use the memory locations 48 (C.1), 49 (C.2), and 50 

(C.1.1), which means the instruction in the right half of word 

69 can remain unaltered. Thus, if the program explicitly 

initializes memory locations 48–50 to zero, the following 

changes will make the code correct:

Problem 13b suffers from the same deficiency. The solution, however, is more elaborate, because the affected 

substitution orders now occur in a loop. This requires 

explicitly clearing the memory locations during program 

execution.

The affected sequence of instructions follows, grouped 

by pairs for clarity:

To ensure that memory location 51 is cleared before the 

substitution order at 83, the program inserts a load from a 

memory location set to zero. In this case, it uses the lowestnumbered memory location not in use, which according to 

the listing is #52. For the order at 84, however, that will not 

work, because the next instruction needs the value in the 

accumulator. Since the program only needs to explicitly 

clear the lower half of the word in this context (the upper 

half is already zero), the easiest solution is to insert an Ap ́ 

substitution order. The program then follows it with a duplicate order as a noop to preserve the parities of the branch 

targets that follow. The following is a comparison of the 

original and corrected code:

WORD LONG FORM SHORT FORM

64 Ap ́->S(x) 48 48Sp ́

...

69 ...

Ap ́->S(x) 50 50Sp

72 Ap->S(x) 49 49Sp

WORD SHORT FORM

81 42h, 65Cc

82 49, 50h

83 51Sp ́ 51

84 R, 51Sp

85 51h, 48S

WORD ORIGINAL CORRECTED

81 42h, 65Cc 42h, 65Cc

82 49, 50h 52, 51S

83 51Sp ́, 51 49, 50h

84 R, 51Sp 51Sp ́, 51

85 51h, 48S R, 51Sp ́

51Sp ́ , 51Sp

51h, 48S

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NOVEMBER 2012 67

of orthogonality in interaction among IAS instructions. 

Reasoning about side effects such as changing register 

values, shifting bits from one register into another, and 

having some instructions modify others is notoriously difficult. Adding support at the instruction-set level for specific 

computational tasks like binary-to-decimal conversion as 

the IAS machine did seems similar, for example, to the use 

of the POLY instruction in the VAX 11/780 40 years later.10

It appears to significantly complicate the hardware, and it 

makes correct programming at the assembly language level 

more challenging. 

The emergence of reduced-instruction-set computer 

architectures in the 1980s might be seen as a response 

to concerns about the orthogonality and side effects in 

instruction set design, as well as the implementation and 

refinement of more complex instruction sets in terms of 

simpler micro-operations. Achieving the correct balance 

between hardware and firmware may be a perpetual challenge for computer science.

The challenge of testing a nonexistent computer 

None of the codes in the IAS technical reports could have 

been tested when they were published in 1947, since their 

target machine was not fully functional until five years later. 

Obviously, emulation was not an option, so the researchers 

could rely only on their vision of how the machine would 

work. Under those circumstances, the relatively small 

number of errors in the codes is quite remarkable.

A

third IAS technical report, which we have not yet 

fully investigated, introduces two more programming problems.7

 These are not specific mathematical 

tasks per se, but instead illustrate subroutining, linking, 

and loading—tasks that were automated in later decades. 

We propose using IASSim to investigate these problems as 

a topic for future work.

Finally, although we understand that the computer 

science curriculum is already quite challenging, our exploration into the IAS machine makes us wonder if some sort 

of exposure to older machines might make sense for future 

computer designers. After all, those who do not learn from 

computer history are condemned to repeat it. 

References

1. A.W. Burks, H.H. Goldstine, and J. von Neumann, “Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic 

Computing Instrument,” Report to US Army Ordnance Department, Inst. for Advanced Study, 1946.

2. H.H. Goldstine and J. von Neumann, Planning and Coding 

Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument, vol. 1, 

part 2, Inst. for Advanced Study, 1947.

3. H.H. Goldstine and J. von Neumann, Planning and Coding 

Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument, vol. 2, 

part 1, Inst. for Advanced Study, 1947.

later grapple with, and continue to wrestle with today, can 

be seen in microcosm by retracing the process from flow 

diagram to emulated result. Four issues are particularly 

noteworthy.

Programming automatization 

Bridging the semantic gap between mathematics and 

electrical impulses was an intellectually demanding and 

error-prone process, even for the most brilliant minds of 

the post-World War II era. All of the IAS examples began 

with correct mathematics, but the lack of automatic tools 

to support the necessary transitional steps from flow diagrams to bits led to the inevitable introduction of errors, 

paradoxically due to both the complexity and the tedium 

of the work required. As more hardware became available, 

researchers began to meet this need for transitional steps 

in the 1960s with assembly language, assemblers, high-level 

languages, and compilers, but the need to further remove 

human error from the programming process remains vital 

today. Once humans have indicated the problems they want 

their computing devices to solve, the less involvement they 

have with that process, the better.

Formal methods 

Related to the previous point, it is clear that von Neumann anticipated the use of more formal mathematical 

techniques in the programming process, even if he could 

not employ them as extensively as he might have preferred. 

Much of the historical delay was probably due to the prodigious increase in the number of computer programmers 

and mathematicians. Based on his writing, we suspect von 

Neumann would have viewed that trend negatively. He 

wrote, for example, that the inclusion of a floating point in 

the machine would have been a mistake, both because of 

the complexity and because it encouraged a lack of mathematical rigor. If a user did not know to within a power of 

two what the correct result of his computation should be, 

he probably didn’t understand the problem well enough to 

be using the machine.

However, formal methods might now be maturing to 

a point that would have gladdened von Neumann’s heart. 

Work is ongoing, for example, on an implementation of a 

Domain Name System server that uses Ada and the SPARK 

program analysis toolset to prove the absence of runtime 

exceptions.9

 These tools require users to insert assertions 

at various points in the code to indicate what properties 

should hold there. The analogy to the assertion boxes of von 

Neumann’s original flow diagrams is immediately apparent.

Simplicity and orthogonality in instruction 

set design 

Related to the lack of programming tools that were 

available for the IAS machine, many of the errors we found 

were due to side effects, inconsistent semantics, and lack 

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IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications bridges the theory and practice of computer graphics. 

From specifi c algorithms to full system implementations, CG&A offers a unique combination 

of peer-reviewed feature articles and informal departments. CG&A is indispensable reading 

for people working at the leading edge of computer graphics technology and its applications 

in everything from business to the arts.

CG&A

Visit us at www.computer.org/cga

PERSPECTIVES

10. W.D. Strecker, “VAX-11/780—A Virtual Address Extension to 

the DEC PDP-11 Family,” Proc. Nat’l Computer Conf., AFIPS, 

1978, pp. 967-979.

Barry Fagin is a professor of computer science at the US Air 

Force Academy. His research interests are computer science 

education, computing and public policy, and using formal methods to improve internet security. He received a PhD in computer 

science from the University of California, Berkeley. Fagin is a 

member of ACM and is an IEEE Senior Member. Contact him at 

barry.fagin@usafa.edu.

Dale Skrien is a professor of computer science at Colby College. His research interests include algorithmic graph theory, 

object-oriented design, and computer music. Skrien received a 

PhD in mathematics from the University of Washington. He is 

a member of ACM. Contact him at djskrien@colby.edu.

68 COMPUTER

4. H.H. Goldstine and J. von Neumann, Planning and Coding 

Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument, vol. 2, 

part 2, Inst. for Advanced Study, 1947.

5. A.H. Taub, ed., “Design of Computers, Theory of Automata 

and Numerical Analysis,” John von Neumann: Collected 

Works, vol. V, Macmillan, 1963.

6. D.J. Skrien, “CPU Sim 3.1: A Tool for Simulating Computer 

Architectures for Computer Organization Classes,” ACM J. 

Educational Resources in Computing, Dec. 2001, pp. 46-59.

7. H.H. Goldstine and J. von Neumann, Planning and Coding 

Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument, vol. 3, 

part 2, Inst. for Advanced Study, 1947.

8. B.S. Fagin and D.J. Skrien, “IASSim: A Programmable Emulator for the Princeton IAS/Von Neumann Machine,” Proc. 

42nd ACM Technical Symp. Computer Science Education

(SIGSE 11), ACM, 2011, pp. 359-364.

9. M. Carlisle and B. Fagin, “Creating a Provably Secure DNS 

Server,” tech. report, US Air Force Academy Center for Cyberspace Research, Mar. 2011.

Selected CS articles and columns are available 

for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

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_______

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RESEARCH FEATURE

70 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

The answers to these questions offer an introduction 

to China’s innovation policies and the R&D activities and 

strategies of foreign MNCs in China.

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

We studied China’s indigenous innovation policies, and 

the decisions and activities of major MNCs in the information and communication technology industry in China. 

We also interviewed a dozen R&D executives at five large 

US MNCs, executives of IT industry associations, and US 

government officials in China. 

Table 1 provides background information on each of the 

MNCs. We do not reveal company names at their request.

CHINA’S INDIGENOUS INNOVATION 

POLICIES

China is now the leading manufacturer of many electronics products, assembling advanced PCs, mobile phones, 

networking equipment, and other high-tech goods. Yet only 

a few Chinese companies are globally competitive in any 

of these industries, and MNCs or Taiwanese companies 

produce most exports. As a result, although China plays a 

major role in the global IT industry, it captures a small share 

of the profits in the value chain.3

China’s government leaders want to move into higher 

value activities such as R&D, particularly the development 

R

ecently, the growth of R&D in emerging economies 

such as Brazil, Russia, and particularly India and 

China, has captured the attention of researchers.1

Collectively called BRIC economies, these large and 

growing markets also produce many relatively low-cost scientists and engineers. To develop products for these markets, 

and to tap their skilled human resources, multinational corporations (MNCs) are setting up R&D labs in these countries 

and in some cases outsourcing R&D activities to local firms.

China has a strong desire to learn from MNCs, while 

developing domestic companies that can compete globally and reduce China’s dependence on foreign intellectual 

property (IP). The resulting indigenous innovation policies 

have raised alarm among MNCs, which complain that these 

policies can be arbitrary and unfair to foreign companies.2

Based on a review of the literature and interviews conducted in China in 2009, we asked the following questions:

t What are the objectives of China’s indigenous innovation policies, and how is China translating these 

objectives into specific regulations and initiatives?

t What factors influence MNC R&D activities in China, 

and what is the impact of China’s indigenous innovation policies?

t How do MNCs manage R&D in China within the context of their global organizations?

Multinational corporations seeking access to China’s burgeoning consumer markets and human resources are establishing R&D centers in 

the country and developing ways to thread a path through its complex 

innovation policies.

Jason Dedrick and Jian Tang, Syracuse University

Kenneth L. Kraemer, University of California, Irvine

China’s Indigenous 

Innovation Policy: 

Impact on Multinational R&D

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of new products and advanced technologies.4,5 Starting 

in the mid-1980s, China instituted a series of policies to 

promote domestic technology development for commercial markets.6

 These policies helped domestic enterprises 

and promoted innovation in the PC, electronics, software, 

integrated circuit, and telecommunications equipment 

industries.

China’s five-year 2006 to 2010 plan further targeted the 

information industry by focusing on indigenous innovation. 

It emphasized

t developing domestic standards and technologies,

t promoting innovation in IT products, and

t supporting domestically owned technology firms.

At the same time, China announced a 15-year “Mediumto-Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and 

Technology,” which called for the country to become an 

innovation-oriented society by 2020 and a world leader in 

science and technology by 2050.7

A statement by Zhang Dejiang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party and vice prime 

minister, captures the motivation behind these policies 

(www.miit.gov.cn/n11293472/n11293877/n13702866/

n13702883/14206919.html): 

Under the guidance of Decisions of Accelerating the 

Growth and Development of Strategic Emerging Industries, 

it is important to enhance the policy support and strengthen 

the capability of indigenous innovation, especially to make 

the IT industry to be the leading industry. ... It is also 

essential to continue supporting TD-SCDMA [time division 

synchronous code division multiple access, a standard], and 

encourage the industrialization and internationalization of 

TD-LTE [time division, long-term evolution].

Promoting domestic standards and technologies

China seeks to develop IP and core technologies, and 

views technical standards as crucial to its success.8,9 It has 

been working hard to push Chinese standards as international standards. For example, the government selected 

TD-SCDMA to be the 3G mobile standard of China Mobile 

(China’s largest mobile carrier), and the International 

Telecommunication Union has approved it as a global 

standard.6,10

The government clearly uses the standards-setting process as a tool to support domestic companies. Establishing 

domestic standards reduces the competitive advantage 

of MNCs, which use technologies based on international 

standards.

MNCs have been involved in some Chinese standards 

initiatives, such as TD-SCDMA, the Audio Video Standard 

(AVS), and the Intelligent Grouping and Resource Sharing 

(IGRS) protocol, a home networking standard.10 But MNCs 

are not involved in other standards, such as the Wireless 

LAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI). It 

would be fair to say that China sees the importance of participating in global standards bodies as well as the value of 

involving MNCs in its own standards forums.

In the longer run, China seeks to become a leading player 

in international standards bodies, but plans to do so from a 

position of internationalizing its own national standards as 

well as localizing international standards.10 The MNCs realize that they will need to adopt China’s standards in some 

cases if they want to participate in the Chinese market, so 

they attempt to influence those standards when possible.

The desire to promote domestic standards rather than 

just adopt international standards might put China behind 

in adopting some technologies. For example, its promotion of TD-SCDMA for 3G mobile phone service and the 

decision to require China Mobile to adopt the standard left 

China years behind other countries in rolling out 3G mobile 

phone service. Yet the government was willing to pay that 

price to promote a domestic standard and ensure that domestic equipment manufacturers such as Datang, a state 

enterprise under the China Academy of Telecommunication 

Technology, would have a leading role in the 3G market.10

Promoting domestic innovation

To promote domestic innovation, the government offers 

tax incentives and other financial benefits to domestic and 

foreign firms that set up R&D centers in China. To be eligible for these benefits, firms must seek certification, which 

means they must

Table 1. Background information for companies in the study.* 

Characteristic MNC 1 MNC 2 MNC 3 MNC 4 MNC 5

Industry sector Computers, software, 

and services

Computers Software Semiconductors Mobile 

communications

No. of employees 

in China

20,000 > 10,000 4,000 7,000 10,000

No. of R&D 

employees in China

6,000 total; 300 PhDs < 100 researchers 

plus interns and 

postdoctoral 

candidates 

2,000 total, 250 in 

research labs

> 1,200 hardware 

and software 

engineers

1,000 to 2,000

* From company documents and interview notes.

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72 COMPUTER

RESEARCH FEATURE

the PC market. Even favored state enterprises often face 

competition in the sectors they dominate.11

Bureaucratic competition in policy 

implementation

Although outsiders might see China’s government as 

a unified actor making policies that affect the MNCs, the 

reality is much different—the state’s role can be ambiguous and is not always unified.10 Several central government 

institutions implement indigenous innovation policies; each 

institution has different agendas, as do provincial and city 

governments.4

The key central government agencies are the Ministry of 

Science and Technology (MOST), the National Development 

and Reformation Committee (NDRC), and the Ministry of 

Education.2

 The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is a key agency in the information industry. 

The Standardization Administration of China (SAC) leads 

in developing standards policies. According to interviewees, there is inconsistency and sometimes conflict among 

central government agencies. This might reflect not only 

institutional rivalry, but also the personalized nature of 

many policy processes in China, which only increases the 

level of uncertainty and ambiguity in policy outcomes.4

Policy objectives can also differ between the central 

and local governments. For example, the central government sets the certification criteria that define a high-tech 

company, whereas local governments certify individual 

companies. MNCs seek high-tech certification because it 

reduces the corporate income tax from 25 to 15 percent. 

For certification as a high-tech company, an MNC’s local 

subsidiary should perform R&D and file patents in China. 

However, most local governments mainly want jobs and 

have been willing to certify MNCs as high-tech companies 

without strict adherence to the criteria. As one interviewee 

stated, “Local governments are not fussy about what they 

label as R&D in their reports to the central government, so 

a wide variety of activities end up being called R&D.”

As another interviewee stated, “The local governments 

are under pressure to stimulate high-tech industry, so they 

attract companies that appear on the surface to be doing 

high-tech work although in reality they might not be doing 

so. Although the central government is concerned about the 

long-term impact and the development of indigenous R&D, 

local governments are not.”

The result of competition among localities for investment and jobs is the emergence of a regionalized high-tech 

industry, with major regions specializing in different 

aspects of production and innovation.4

 For example, Beijing 

hosts MNCs and domestic firms specializing in software 

development and is the home to many MNC R&D labs, as 

well as Lenovo. The industry is concentrated in the Zhongguancun Science Park, a development supported by the 

central and Beijing municipal governments.12

t register in mainland China (which does not include 

Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan),

t engage in R&D,

t develop independent IP in core technologies, and

t file patents in China.9

Most certified firms are domestic companies, as the 

requirements are problematic for foreign firms. According 

to one interviewee, the head of an IT industry organization, “There are some high-profile cases where companies 

left China or chose another location in Asia, such as 

the Philippines, because of the IP laws and certification 

requirements.” Other MNCs conduct R&D in China without 

receiving certification or the associated incentives.

The government also adopted measures to speed technology development and transfer, including financial 

support, tax incentives, IP protection, and domestic R&D 

centers. It also required more technological investments 

from MNCs, including R&D centers that engage in research 

collaboration with local researchers and institutions. Our 

interviews indicate that China anticipates that domestic 

researchers in these collaborations will have access to advanced technologies from the MNCs.

Supporting domestic firms

China’s indigenous innovation policy gives preference 

to domestic companies in procurement by government 

agencies and state-owned enterprises. Regulations state 

that “If government departments purchase software related 

to national sovereignty or economic security, they should 

follow the procedure of government procurement” and give 

preference to local companies.9

China also promotes national champions to act as a 

counterbalance to the market power of MNCs in specific 

sectors; it also encourages these champions to become 

innovators capable of competing globally.2

 As one interviewee said, “China’s strategy is to create one strong player 

in each industry segment and to build them up to dominate 

the China market and prepare them to go global. They do 

not care about creating competition among local companies, and they want to protect these companies from 

foreign competition.” However, having national champions 

does not mean that these sectors are competition free. For 

example, Huawei competes at home and abroad with ZTE 

in networking equipment, while Lenovo, China’s leading 

PC maker, faces both domestic and foreign competitors in 

China’s indigenous innovation policy 

gives preference to domestic companies 

in procurement by government agencies 

and state-owned enterprises.

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Key factors influencing the location of 

MNC investment in overseas R&D include 

a large domestic market, availability of 

low-cost R&D manpower, and the scale 

of national technology capabilities.

tioned market growth as a reason for manufacturing in 

China, and cited specific market opportunities for product 

development in the country.

How does this market potential translate into a need for 

R&D in China? One factor is understanding market needs. 

One general manager stated that “China is valuable for R&D 

because the economy is huge and growing bigger, and the 

customers have unique [scale] requirements. By being in 

China, we can gain an edge over competitors because we 

understand these requirements better than others.”

The Chinese market also has some characteristics that 

create novel R&D opportunities for MNCs. For example, 

China bans sales of most videogame consoles, and only 

a few retail outlets sell games. Instead, consumers can 

download games from government-approved websites. One 

company said that this created a potential market for technology that accelerates downloads and leads to performing 

related work in its China R&D lab.

Another interviewee pointed to the potential for research 

opportunities that take advantage of the vast amount of 

data that certain events can generate in China, such as Web 

traffic during the 2008 Olympics. For technologies such 

as large-scale data mining or managing network capacity 

during huge spikes in traffic, China can serve as a unique 

research environment.

R&D talent availability and cost

Access to China’s large pool of science and engineering 

graduates is a major factor for most MNCs locating R&D in 

China. China’s universities and colleges produce an abundance of graduates in science and engineering. Although 

most of these graduates are not of the caliber that MNCs require, MNCs select from the cream of the crop—the top 0.5 

percent, according to one company, or the top 10 schools, 

according to another.

Competition for talent has increased as more MNCs enter 

the market, along with Taiwanese and mainland Chinese 

companies. According to several interviewees, state-owned 

enterprises, once unattractive to talented graduates, now 

offer competitive salaries and better benefits—such as subsidized housing—compared with MNCs. In addition, the 

prestige of working for an MNC has somewhat diminished.

This competition has led to salary increases, especially 

for experienced scientists and engineers, as well as for 

managers. Although competition is becoming more intense 

The Shanghai area hosts several MNC R&D labs and 

is home to both MNCs and domestic semiconductor and 

telecommunications companies. Shanghai’s municipal government has played a key role in developing science parks 

and promoting the local IT industry.4

The Pearl River Delta in southern China hosts the largest 

concentration of hardware manufacturing, including the 

massive Foxconn campus near Shenzhen, which makes 

products for Apple, HP, Dell, Intel, and others. It is also 

home to China’s greatest homegrown high-tech success 

story, Huawei, a network equipment company.

FACTORS INFLUENCING R&D DECISIONS

Key factors influencing the location of MNC investment 

in overseas R&D include a large domestic market, availability of low-cost R&D manpower, and the scale of national 

technology capabilities. There is no clear evidence that 

R&D incentives offered by foreign governments have an 

impact on R&D intensity or that adverse policies (such as 

inadequate patent protection or restrictive trade regimes) 

affect the attractiveness of a country for R&D.13

Our interviews support prior research by showing that 

MNCs are attracted to China primarily by the size of the 

domestic market and the availability and low cost of R&D 

talent.14 However, China’s technological capabilities do not 

appear to be an important attraction; its perceived weak 

protection of IP rights might limit the types of R&D activities conducted there.

Domestic market

The size and growth rate of China’s economy make it 

a unique attraction for MNCs, leading them to make concessions that they might not make in other markets. For 

example, China has as many mobile phone users as the 

combined populations of the US and the European Union 

(about 800 million), and has an estimated 538 million Internet users. China’s economy is larger than the combined GDPs 

of the other three BRIC economies. A continuation of the 

double-digit growth of the past three decades could make 

China the world’s largest economy in less than 20 years.

At the same time, it is difficult for foreign companies to 

enter China’s market. Obstacles include inadequate physical and financial infrastructure in many places, lack of 

enforceable commercial laws, weak IP protection, heavy 

competition from domestic firms with lower costs, and 

an array of government restrictions on the activities of all 

companies, particularly foreign companies. In the words 

of one interviewee, “Policy is everything and is arbitrary. 

One day you can do [a type of] business, the next day they 

say, ‘Sorry, you can’t.’”

Despite these issues, the Chinese market is so attractive that MNCs must be there. The representatives of four 

of five MNCs we interviewed mentioned market access as 

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74 COMPUTER

and salaries are increasing, the quality of graduates has 

also improved.

One interviewee said, “People used to get PhDs in two 

to three years. No research methodology, just theory. Now 

the education system has improved. They have numerous 

professors with degrees from the US and experience in US 

universities. The gap is much smaller than it was.”

The biggest shortage is in middle managers and higherlevel leaders who can run a project or an entire division. 

There are few people with 10 to 15 years’ experience in 

China, and bringing experienced personnel from the US is 

expensive. Salaries for people with 15 years’ experience are 

comparable to those in other locations such as Ireland or 

Israel, according to one interviewee. One solution to finding 

experienced people is to hire Chinese nationals who have 

studied and worked in the US or other locations to manage 

teams in China.

Despite increased competition and cost, as well as shortages in some skills, the availability and quality of science 

and engineering talent is clearly a major attraction for firms 

doing R&D in China. Cost is mentioned less often, but it is 

an advantage. To be clear, although salaries are rising in 

China, there is still a huge gap compared with the US. As of 

2005, a newly graduated computer engineer in China could 

expect to start at $7,500 to $10,000 a year, while in the US, 

the figure was around $60,000.15

INFLUENCE OF CHINA’S POLICIES ON MNC 

STRATEGIES

China’s policies in general have a major influence on 

the decisions of MNCs to locate R&D in China. As one interviewee said, “Most companies are doing only as much 

as the government forces them to. Market access requires 

doing R&D in China.”

Although MNCs might look for incentives or subsidies, 

the bigger motivation is to gain favor from government officials. In the words of a former R&D director for a major 

MNC, “The main reason that MNCs come to China is cheap 

labor, but it is also to have influence with the government 

so that these companies can participate in large Chinese 

government procurements or in the consumer market. If 

companies play the game right, they can get considerable 

help from the government in many different forms.”

China’s indigenous innovation policies seem to have a 

weaker and mixed effect on MNCs. Companies are generally unhappy with some requirements, but have been 

willing to expand their R&D activities in China in spite of 

those concerns. When incentives are available, they seek 

certification as high-tech companies. In general, they 

do better with local governments than with the central 

government.

A US official said, “The central government offers subsidies to domestic companies for indigenous development 

of technology. But there is no clear definition of what a 

domestic company is.”

The policy of requiring IP registration in China for firms 

that desire treatment as domestic companies is a major 

concern to some MNCs, less so to others. This difference 

might relate to differences in the firms’ strategies, whether 

they seek incentives, or the extent to which they focus on 

the government and SOE markets.

According to one interviewee,

Registering IP in China doesn’t fit with a global operations model, where R&D is done in a unified way. How do 

you justify having some part of it coming from China, and 

how do you protect it if you do define some part as from 

China? The business issue is this: Do the benefits of licensing 

in China, like tax benefits, potential sales, goodwill with the 

government, outweigh the IP risk?

On the other hand, another US MNC said that it had obtained certification as a high-tech company. The company 

indicated that the Chinese government defined the criteria in advance, and the company reports performance 

every year. This company has made a major commitment 

to China as a manufacturing and product development location, as well as a market, so potential tax incentives are 

especially valuable.

Some MNCs have been more aggressive in challenging 

China’s policies and trying to involve the US government. 

Others try to keep a low profile and avoid possible 

retaliation from the Chinese government. The most visible and contentious issues in the past have been over IP 

protection—for example, from software piracy—standards 

setting, and content censorship.

MNCs were successful in acting together to challenge 

MIIT’s 2009 order that all new PCs come with Green Dam 

software installed to block certain Internet content. The 

MNCs argued that this was an unreasonable requirement, 

and eventually MIIT dropped the requirement. This success 

came largely because the MNCs allied themselves with Chinese PC makers and consumers, and with the US and other 

governments. In contrast, Google shut down its mainland 

China search engine for a time after being unable to resolve 

censorship issues. In this case, the US government was 

powerless to influence China’s position in spite of criticism 

from the US secretary of state.

Although MNCs might look for incentives 

or subsidies, the bigger motivation is to 

gain favor from government officials.

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for an important government catalogue prepared by 

MIIT, to ensure that it will not be used for import 

substitution, the provision of export subsidies, or to 

discriminate against American equipment manufacturers in Chinese government programs targeting 

these products.

MNC R&D STRATEGIES IN CHINA

As Table 2 shows, MNC strategies have focused primarily 

on using low-cost talent to exploit their technology assets 

by localizing existing products to the Chinese market rather 

than developing technologies for global markets. However, 

R&D activities have evolved as local scientists and engineers 

have gained experience and capabilities, as well as the confidence of corporate management. Although no China lab 

has the independent authority enjoyed by more established 

labs in Europe, Japan, or Israel, some have begun to move 

in that direction.

MNC 1: Computers, software, and services

The China R&D group in MNC 1 focuses on localization of products for China and on testing for the whole 

In the case of indigenous innovation, US MNCs made a 

major issue of discrimination in the procurement aspects 

of the policy and obtained support from the US government 

in negotiating with China on the issue. Possibly as a result, 

the Chinese government announced changes in its policy 

during President Hu’s state visit to Washington in January 

2011. Specifically, the Chinese promised to delink indigenous innovation from government procurement (www.

reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70J7RL20110121).

The White House described the agreement as follows (www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/19/

fact-sheet-us-china-economic-issues):

t The US and China agreed that government procurement decisions will not be made based on where the 

goods’ or services’ IP is developed or maintained, that 

there will be no discrimination against innovative 

products made by foreign suppliers operating in China, 

and that China will delink its innovation policies from 

its government procurement preferences.

t China agreed to eliminate discriminatory indigenous 

innovation criteria used to select industrial equipment 

Table 2. Motivation, activities, and management of China R&D.

Characteristics MNC 1 MNC 2 MNC 3 MNC 4 MNC 5

Factors influencing R&D location in China

Key motivations for 

R&D in China

Market access, 

understand market, 

influence policy, 

access to talent

Market access, 

understand market 

needs, access to 

talent

Win government 

favor and support for 

IP protection

Market access, lowcost talent, be a 

“good citizen”

Win government 

favor, develop China 

as major market, tap 

local talent

MNC interaction with the local innovation system

Local partnerships University-focused: 

hire talented students, joint projects

Joint R&D projects 

with universities

Industry and university focused, 

outsourced software 

development

Joint R&D projects 

and education 

programs

Industry focused

IP policies IP managed globally IP managed globally, 

share IP from joint 

projects

IP managed globally IP managed globally, 

share IP from joint 

research

IP registered in China 

and globally if developed in China

Response to indigenous innovation 

policy

Try to influence and 

shape policy behind 

the scenes

Does not seek treatment as domestic 

company

Developing local 

outsource suppliers, 

attract R&D to China

Built a fabrication 

plant, increased R&D 

activity

Certified as high-tech 

company for lower 

tax rate

China R&D strategy

R&D activities in 

China

Development and 

testing for global 

teams, localization

Localization, potential to develop 

technology for 

global market

Research and 

develop technologies for global 

business units

Develop extensions 

of existing technologies for local market, 

possible use in other 

markets; testbed for 

unique conditions

Development for 

local market, development and test for 

global projects

Management control Limited control, decisions made in US or 

elsewhere

Limited control, decisions made in USIndependent projects, integrated into 

global projects; business units are all 

represented in China 

lab

Matrixed organization reporting to 

local management 

and corporate teams

Lead some global 

projects, compete 

with other global 

labs

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RESEARCH FEATURE

76 COMPUTER

develop a domestic outsourcing industry that is competitive with India.

MNC 4: Semiconductors

MNC 4 has been aggressive in trying to transition from 

little more than a satellite operation created for public relations to an independent lab on par with other leading labs 

outside the US.

The director of research at MNC 4 stated that the company’s R&D had gone through four phases since it first 

established a lab in China 10 years ago. At first, MNC 4 was 

just trying to “give back to China,” as it had been making a 

lot of money there.

In the initial phase, Chinese engineers were well behind 

the skills of their counterparts in other countries. They thus 

worked on software that was for internal use only, not for 

the company’s products. In the second phase, teams in 

the US sent tasks to the China lab for the development of 

designs initiated in the US. In the third phase, some senior 

engineers in China could initiate a project, but the team in 

China could not carry out the entire project. The current 

fourth phase is a shift to developing an independent R&D 

lab capable of carrying out complete projects to develop 

technologies for use in China and other markets.

MNC 5: Mobile communications

MNC 5 has a history of extensive R&D activity in China, 

a major market and operational center for the company. Its 

R&D labs are part of a global network, and the company 

expects that China will move from a following to a leading 

role over time. According to the R&D director,

Our different R&D centers around the world coordinate 

and compete with one another. The R&D centers try to get 

involved in projects rather than just wait to be chosen. Each 

business unit looks at R&D globally and decides where it 

wants to do things. If the cost of other locations is too high, 

they’re likely to grow more in China. Our R&D center’s mission is to transition R&D from localization and support to 

development projects and then to projects for some global 

markets. 

EXPECTATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The MNCs in this study conduct R&D in China primarily because China’s government at least implicitly expects 

such investment in exchange for market access and favorable treatment. Some seek to exploit China’s large pool of 

low-cost talent; others see market opportunities for their 

products and services as well as learning opportunities that 

they can apply to other large emerging markets. They also 

seek to meet the special requirements of local customers.

These R&D centers seldom operate independently of an 

MNC’s business units or its other R&D units. Most perform 

a well-proscribed development function within this larger 

corporation. It thus works on a broad scope of technologies, but MNC 1 still limits its role to a small part of the 

R&D process. This R&D group does not act autonomously, 

but is under the control of corporate R&D management. 

According to one MNC 1 interviewee,

China R&D does product R&D for our whole corporate business model. China does the test phase and some 

localization; architectural design and business development 

and delivery models are all done by units outside China. 

We invest a lot rotating people in China through the various labs. In the future, some development and business 

direction may shift to China, but decisions about product 

offerings and positioning of the product will be decided 

outside China.

MNC 2: Computers

In MNC 2, the China lab serves the company’s business 

units and participates in development for those units rather 

than in research. However, there is some room for local 

initiative, with the possibility of developing technologies 

for use in the parent company.

“[MNC 2] is close to [our] business units. We develop 

demos that the business units request. We also develop 

demos based on our own imagination and show them to 

the business units.”

IP developed in partnership with local universities is 

jointly owned; the company files patents in China as well 

as the US. As one interviewee said, “Patenting is not different in China from elsewhere. [We] have experienced, 

professional people in the company to help with patenting.”

MNC 3: Software

MNC 3 operates as an independent R&D unit serving 

the firm’s global businesses. All of the company’s business 

units are present in the China lab and operate independently of each other, working on their own projects. The lab 

director referred to this as a federated model. This company 

has a heavy focus on basic research and operates its China 

lab accordingly, “hiring top researchers and leaving them 

alone,” according to the director.

MNC 3 also does a substantial amount of software 

localization and outsources to local firms as part of an 

agreement with the government. The goal is to help China 

IP developed in partnership with local 

universities is jointly owned; the 

company files patents in China as 

well as the US.

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global sales in 2011 (www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-19/

china-becomes-apple-s-second-largest-market-by-salescook-says.html#). Whether Apple can sustain its growth 

without committing to R&D in China remains to be seen. 

One lesson from the history of MNCs in China is that 

an MNC should not individually challenge policies that it 

finds unacceptable. China does not need any individual 

MNC, but it does need MNCs as a group to help achieve its 

technology goals. So the government sometimes reconsiders when facing complaints from several MNCs, especially 

when these firms can rally local allies, as in the Green Dam 

case. MNCs can also solicit pressure from the US or other 

governments, especially when a policy is inconsistent with 

international rules.

Google’s experience highlights the risks of a direct challenge to the government by a single company. China’s rich 

complexity requires that MNCs develop a highly nuanced 

strategic approach. MNCs must balance helping to advance 

China’s goals in return for market access without giving up 

their own sources of competitive advantage.

B

ecause of strong motivations to invest in R&D regardless of policies, it appears that in many cases, China’s 

indigenous innovation policies do not matter. Companies with experience in China continue to prosper. As 

Apple’s experience demonstrates, even new entrants that 

have products Chinese consumers want can do very well. 

Indigenous innovation policies might even benefit MNCs 

that have a strong commitment to China, but those companies must be very careful about exposing IP to take 

advantage of government incentives.

References

1. Y. Sun, M. Von Zedtwitz, and D.F. Simon, “Globalization 

of R&D and China: An Introduction,” Asia Pacific Business 

Rev., vol. 13, no. 3, 2007, pp. 311-319.

2. J. McGregor, “China’s Drive for ‘Indigenous Innovation’: A Web of Industrial Policies,” US Chamber of 

Commerce, 2010; www.uschamber.com/sites/default/files/

reports/100728chinareport.pdf.

3. G. Linden, K.L. Kraemer, and J. Dedrick, “Who Captures 

Value in a Global Innovation Network? The Case of Apple’s 

iPod,” Comm. ACM, Mar. 2009, pp. 140-144.

4. D. Breznitz and M. Murphree, Run of the Red Queen: Government, Innovation, Globalization and Economic Growth in 

China, Yale Univ. Press, 2011.

5. M. von Zedtwitz, “Managing Foreign R&D Laboratories in 

China,” R&D Management, Sept. 2004, pp. 439-452.

6. A. Segal, Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge, W.W. Norton and Co., 2011.

7. C. Cao, R.P. Suttmeier, and D.F. Simon, “China’s 15-Year 

Science and Technology Plan,” Physics Today, Aug. 2006, 

pp. 38-43.

8. G. Linden, “China Standard Time: A Study in Strategic Industrial Policy,” Business and Politics, vol. 6, no. 3, 2004, pp. 

1-26.

framework, usually more development and testing than 

actual research. R&D management outside China, usually in the US, determines their activities. However, a trend 

toward greater autonomy is arising at some companies.

Implications for MNCs

China is serious about becoming a center for indigenous 

innovation, so MNCs must carefully consider whether and 

how to develop R&D there. 

It is true that China generally favors domestic firms in 

many policy decisions. Although it is convenient to see 

a dynamic that pits the Chinese government against the 

MNCs as a group, the reality is much more complex. Various 

central ministries as well as provincial and local governments set and implement Chinese policies, and they do not 

always coordinate efforts. 

MNCs can sometimes thread a path through the system 

and benefit from favorable treatment, especially from provincial and local governments, which are more interested 

in receiving investment than in enforcing indigenous innovation policies. On the other hand, it is difficult for MNCs 

to know where they stand; one institution might overturn 

another’s approval.

Lessons learned 

Several lessons come from the experience of the MNCs in 

this study. Some apply to all firms, whereas others depend 

on a specific firm’s circumstances in China.

Although government agencies and state-owned enterprises are a difficult market to break into, MNCs continue 

to anticipate that their share of domestic business will increase as China grows. They sometimes compare China 

to Japan and Korea, where protectionist economies have 

gradually opened up, and MNCs have grown their businesses with domestic companies. This confidence appears 

to be justified by the performance of firms with greater 

experience in China. In a recent survey, only 42 percent of 

US companies with less than two years in China reported 

China operations were profitable or very profitable. In contrast, that figure was 81 percent for firms with 10 to 20 

years in China, and 76 percent for firms with more than 

20 years’ experience.16

But China is also different in many ways. Japan and 

Korea encourage competition among private domestic 

companies as well as with foreign MNCs, whereas China 

promotes national champions in many sectors. In the long 

run, domestic companies are likely to become competitive 

in more industries both at home and globally.

A key issue for foreign MNCs is to balance a realistic view 

of market potential against the risks of exposing IP through 

R&D in China’s complex and uncertain environment. An interesting case is Apple, which has no R&D in China, yet has 

seen its sales there quadruple in one year. China ranks as 

Apple’s second largest market, accounting for 16 percent of 

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RESEARCH FEATURE

78 COMPUTER

16. AmCham-China, American Business in China, American 

Chamber of Commerce in China, 2011.

Jason Dedrick is an associate professor in Syracuse University’s 

School of Information Studies. His research interests include the 

globalization of technology and innovation, global value chains 

in the electronics and wind energy industries, national technology policies, and the economic and organizational impacts of IT. 

Dedrick received a PhD in management from the University of 

California, Irvine. Contact him at jdedrick@syr.edu.

Jian Tang is a doctoral student in Syracuse University’s School 

of Information Studies. Her research interests include IT use 

and evaluation (especially from the ecological psychology perspective) and the information industry and innovation policies 

in developing countries. Tang received a BA in information 

management and information systems from Renmin University 

in Beijing, China. Contact her at jtang04@syr.edu.

Kenneth L. Kraemer is a research professor at the Paul Merage 

School of Business and codirector of the Personal Computing 

Industry Center, University of California, Irvine. His research 

interests include the social implications of IT, national policies 

for IT production and use, the contributions of IT to productivity and economic development, and the value of innovation in 

global innovation and production networks. Kraemer received 

a PhD in public policy and management from the University of 

Southern California. Contact him at kkraemer@uci.edu.

9. Ministry of Information Industry, “Guidance of Accelerating Independent Innovation in Information Industry,” Sept. 

2006; www.gov.cn/zwgk/2006-09/01/content_375841.htm 

(in Chinese).

10. R.P. Suttmeier, X. Yao, and A.Z. Tan, Standards of Power? 

Technology, Institutions, and Politics in the Development of 

China’s National Standards Strategy, Nat’l Bureau of Asian 

Research, 2006.

11. B. Naughton, “China’s Economic Policy Today: The New 

State Activism,” Eurasian Geography and Economics, May/

June 2011, pp. 313-329.

12. Y. Zhou and T. Xin, “An Innovative Region in China: Interaction between Multinational Corporations and Local Firms 

in a High-Tech Cluster in Beijing,” Economic Geography, Apr. 

2003, pp. 129-152.

13. N. Kumar, “Determinants of Location of Overseas R&D 

Activity of Multinational Enterprises: The Case of US and 

Japanese Corporations,” Research Policy, Jan. 2001, pp. 

159-174.

14. Y. Sun, “Strategic or Tactical? Foreign Research and Development in Developing Countries: A Case Study of China,” 

Asian Geographer, vol. 22, nos. 1-2, 2003, pp. 143-167.

15. J. Dedrick and K.L. Kraemer, “Impact of Globalization and 

Offshoring on Engineering Employment in the Personal 

Computer Industry,” The Offshoring of Engineering: Facts, 

Unknowns, and Potential Implications, Committee on the 

Offshoring of Engineering, Nat’l Academies Press, 2008, pp. 

125-136.

Learn industry solutions you can use from 

practical articles, case studies, blogs, and 

interviews that address high-interest, focused 

areas of technology. 

Mobile Computing rCloud Computing r Security r

Software r High-Performance Computing r Networking

Visit http://computingnow.computer.org

NEW+EXPANDED

IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY’S COMPUTING NOW WEBSITE

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0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society NOVEMBER 2012 79

GREEN IT

challenges in developing clear business strategies, which might not fully 

address sustainable IT. This puts the 

onus on the IT department to deliver 

the benefits of sustainable IT across 

the organization.

 SUSTAINABLE IT 

FRAMEWORK

Sustainability is still a relatively 

new, complex subject with few 

guidelines and best practices. Those 

responsible for achieving sustainable 

IT can feel like they are pioneers in 

uncharted territory with no map to 

guide them. This means that once 

they’ve reached certain milestones, it’s 

unclear where they should go next and 

how far along the journey they are.

To address this issue, a consortium 

of leading organizations from industry, the nonprofit sector, and academia 

have developed a framework for 

improving sustainable IT capabilities (B. Donnellan, C. Sheridan, and E. 

Curry, “A Capability Maturity Framework for Sustainable Information 

and Communication Technology,” IT 

Professional, vol. 13, no. 1, 2011, pp. 

33-40).

SUSTAINABLE IT 

CHALLENGES

Despite an increasing profile and 

tangible, measurable benefits, there 

remain numerous misconceptions 

about sustainable IT—that it’s simply 

about saving the planet and isn’t a 

business issue; that it’s driven by compliance; that it only concerns energy 

savings, the datacenter, or what goes 

on in IT’s own arena; and that it’s 

expensive to implement.

Businesses considering sustainable 

IT face many questions:

t Does the organization recognize 

IT as a significant contributor to 

its overall sustainability strategy?

t How does IT contribute to the 

organization’s sustainability 

goals?

t What more could IT do to contribute to those goals? 

t Are there clear, measurable 

objectives for sustainable IT?

The issue is further complicated by 

the fact that sustainability is an enterprise-wide issue that spans the full 

value chain. The business already has 

S ustainability is an import a nt b u s i ne s s i s s u e, 

affecting new products 

and services, compliance 

requirements, cost-reduction opportunities, reputation, and revenue 

generation. Many people think that 

incorporating sustainable practices 

requires a significant transformational program, but the ultimate goal 

is to embed sustainability into business-as-usual activities. 

Researchers have estimated that 

information and communications 

technology (ICT) is responsible for at 

least 2 percent of global greenhouse 

gas emissions, with datacenters 

accounting for about 1.3 percent. In 

any individual business, ICT accounts 

for a much higher percentage of its 

carbon footprint. 

Yet, researchers also estimate that 

ICT can reduce an organization’s 

carbon footprint fivefold. To leverage these benefits, many corporate 

IT departments are now looking to 

develop sustainable IT capabilities. 

Unfortunately, these organizations 

often don’t exploit IT’s full potential in 

their efforts to achieve sustainability.

Sustainable IT capabilities benefit not only the environment but 

also business value.

Edward Curry, National University of Ireland, Galway

Bill Guyon, Intel

Charles Sheridan, Intel Labs Europe

Brian Donnellan, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Sustainable IT: 

Challenges, Postures, 

and Outcomes

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GREEN IT

Figure 1 compares these postures at 

the five sustainable IT maturity levels.

Regardless of its posture, IT can 

realize business value by maturing 

in the area of sustainable IT. However, IT’s posture will determine the 

maximum achievable business value 

over time. For example, as long as IT’s 

posture is a cost center, no matter 

how much it matures, it will always 

emphasize improving efficiencies. 

However, shifting to a service center 

posture could help IT get its foot into 

the business side of value. An effective sustainable IT program can help 

IT reposition itself from the viewpoint 

of both customers and management.

SUSTAINABLE IT AT INTEL

Intel has long recognized sustainability as a strategic priority for 

its company and has become a recognized leader in the space. At the 

beginning of 2008, CEO Paul Otellini 

set out an ambitious five-year plan 

to reduce environmental impacts in 

several areas, including energy, water, 

more efficiently to aligning business 

with IT and identifying those sustainability processes where IT can 

contribute.

When defining sustainable IT practices and capabilities, it’s important 

to consider their potential value from 

the vantage point of different IT postures within the organization. There 

are four basic sustainable IT postures:

t UIFDPTUDFOUFS manages the direct 

sustainability costs within the IT 

arena, with only indirect benefits 

for the business;

z the service center focuses on 

the sustainability of IT services 

supplied to support the business;

z the investment center delivers 

predictable sustainabilit y 

benefits across both IT and the 

business; and

t UIFWBMVF DFOUFS leverages sustainable IT as a strategic asset 

to drive sustainable business 

opportunities as a competitive 

differentiator.

This framework serves two important purposes. First, it’s the basis of 

an assessment process that helps an 

organization determine the current 

maturity level of their sustainable IT 

efforts. Second, it provides a view of 

the growth path by identifying the 

next set of capabilities an organization should develop to drive greater 

business value from sustainable IT.

The framework defines a maturity 

curve with five levels—initial, basic, 

intermediate, advanced, and optimizing—for sustainable IT capabilities 

including strategy and planning, 

processes management, people and 

culture, and governance.

IT POSTURES AND 

SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainable IT goes beyond using 

IT to reduce energy consumption. 

It’s also about helping the whole 

business meet its sustainability 

targets. This greatly extends IT’s 

scope from simply executing the IT 

design-procure-run-dispose life cycle 

Optimizing

Initial

Advanced

Basic

Intermediate

Maturity Cost Center Service Center Investment Center Value Center

Continuous,

sustained IT

efficiencies

Predictable

incremental 

costsavings

Defined objectives,

accountable

individuals

Undefined cost

savings, limited

Cost savings driven

by tech upgrades

Continuous

sustainable service

improvement

Limited

sustainability in

service areas

Regular, predictable

service enhancements

Defined process to

meet business

sustainability needs

Occasional servicelevel sustainability

efficiency

Aligned to business

strategy, embeddedi

n portfolio

Unmanaged,

unfunded, undefined

value

Individual efforts,

limited recognition

of sustainability

Driven by IT

strategy, projects

return predictable

sustainability

impacts

Defined governance,

new IT deployed with

defineds

ustainability output

Limited

opportunities

Occasional

product

sustainability

improvements

Cross-functional

capabilities to

dentify new

sustainability

opportunities

Sustainability

opportunities

drive business

revenue

Emerging

strategy,

repeatable impact

to the business

Figure 1. The four basic IT postures at varying sustainable IT maturity levels. 

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NOVEMBER 2012 81

IEEE Computer Society’s Conference Publishing 

Services (CPS) is now offering conference program 

mobile apps! Let your attendees have their conference 

schedule, conference information, and paper listings in 

the palm of their hands. 

The conference program mobile app works for 

Android devices, iPhone, iPad, and the Kindle Fire.

For more information please contact cps@computer.org

CONFERENCES

in the Palm of Your Hand

land, Galway. Contact him at edward.

curry@deri.org.

Bill Guyon is a program manager 

at Intel’s IT Sustainability Program 

Office. Contact him at bill.guyon@

intel.com.

Charles Sheridan is the associate 

director of Intel Labs Europe’s Energy 

and Sustainability Research Lab. Contact him at charles.g.sheridan@intel.

com.

Brian Donnellan is the academic 

director of the Innovative Value Institute, National University of Ireland, 

Maynooth. Contact him at brian.

donnellan@nuim.ie.

to 2007. During the same time period, 

IT’s computing processing capacity increased 159 percent, storage 

increased from 18.6 to 38.2 petabytes, 

and network bandwidth increased 

from 3.0 to 6.2 gigabits per second—

all while delivering IT services to an 

additional 11,000 employees. Moreover, Intel’s annual revenue rose by 

41 percent. 

I

ntel IT’s experience demonstrates that choosing an 

appropriate posture for sustainable IT, together with a structured 

methodology to maturing that capability, can deliver tangible fi nancial 

and environmental savings, all while 

assisting businesses to meet their 

overall sustainability targets. 

Edward Curry is a research scientist 

at the Digital Enterprise Research 

Institute, National University of Ireand reduction of carbon emissions by 

20 percent on 2007 levels. 

Seeing this as an opportunity for 

IT to play a key role in achieving the 

company’s sustainability goals , CIO 

Diane Bryant established the IT Sustainability Program. The program 

used an investment posture to help 

the business deliver on its objectives by reducing the environmental 

impacts of IT operations, and to help 

transform the overall organization (E. 

Curry et al., “Developing a Sustainable 

IT Capability: Lessons From Intel’s 

Journey,” MIS Q. Executive, Jan. 2012, 

pp. 61-74).

One of the primary ways Intel 

IT reduced its carbon footprint was 

through server consolidation in 

its datacenters. While chip performance doubles every 18 months, the 

energy consumed by the chip does 

not double. Moore’s law thus drives 

continuous chip-level energy efficiency, meaning that newer servers 

and laptops use less power than older 

machines to do the same work. 

Intel IT has settled on a four-year 

server refresh policy, which has 

allowed it to double processing capacity and reduce costs. Together with 

an aggressive server virtualization 

strategy and improved management 

of workload distribution among servers, Intel IT has reduced the number 

of servers from 100,000 to 75,000.

The program also helped the whole 

company to reduce its carbon footprint. In 2011, Intel had more than 

91,500 employees across 164 sites in 

62 countries. These employees would 

typically work in distributed and virtual teams. Intel IT made extensive 

use of collaboration technology to 

reduce the need for employees to 

travel. In 2010 and 2011, video conferencing efforts saved employees 

435,000 travel hours—a cost savings 

of more than US$114 million and an 

environmental savings of more than 

87,500 metric tons of CO2 emissions.

By the end of 2011, Intel had 

reduced the carbon emissions of its 

IT operations by 60 percent compared 

Editor: Kirk W. Cameron, Dept. of Computer 

Science, Virginia Tech; greenit@computer.org

 Selected CS articles and 

 columns are available for free at 

http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

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82 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

OUT OF BAND

Stratfor or 

Stratagainst

Nearly one year has 

passed since WikiLeaks 

relea sed Strat for’s 

internal email via the 

hacktivist group, Anonymous. By 

now, this story should have inspired 

public discussions on any number of 

fronts: journalistic ethics, whether 

private intelligence-gathering companies that use bribery to gain privileged 

information from politically exposed 

persons (PEPs) should fall under 

the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 

and whether governments and their 

employees should be held accountable for supporting such activities, 

to name but a few. Yet the current 

crop of thought leaders appears to be 

avoiding any potentially important 

policy issues that might underlie this 

incident.

BLACK OPS NGOs

Stratfor illustrates the post-9/11 

wave of private cybermercenaries—

for-profit organizations that sell 

cyberservices to risk-averse and fearful businesses and governments. 

Although the psychology behind this 

mindset may be the more interesting 

topic and will likely be the subject of 

social science treatises, essays, and 

monographs for decades, we’ll limit 

our present discussion to the cyber 

side of things. 

The missions behind the current 

crop of cybermercenaries seem to fit 

within the following continuum: 

1. intelligence gathering—basically 

the same investigation plus analysis activities usually associated 

with law enforcement, perhaps 

with an increased level of sophistication in real-time reporting and 

analysis, just-in-time briefings of 

impending events, back-end data 

mining, and so forth. This activity may involve illegal behavior 

such as the bribery, extortion, and 

blackmail of PEPs.

2. cyberespionage and cybersurveillance—again, basically what law 

enforcement does, only privately 

and with neither oversight nor 

court orders. 

3. cyberweapons manufacturing 

or deployment—either licensed 

to clients or used offensively by 

developer. 

From what I can tell from the 

WikiLeaks documents, Stratfor is 

primarily in the first group—along 

with HBGary Federal (now part of 

ManTech) and Palantir on their best 

behavior. The third group is also 

easy to populate (thanks again to 

the Anonymous folks). Players in 

this space include HBGary and the 

Gamma Group. The second group 

is harder to define because it draws 

talent from the other groups. For 

example, as the “URL Pearls” sidebar describes, some of the software 

developed by HBGary and the Gamma 

Group was designed for cyberespionage and cybersurveillance, 

and some of the activities of Stratfor, 

HBGary, and Palantir under such 

innocuous-sounding rubrics as “predictive policing” involve surveillance. 

It should be noted that the activities in (1) and (2) fall within the 

domain of statutory investigative 

agencies such as the police and 

FBI. I note here that accurate classification of cybermercenaries is 

difficult for outsiders because of the 

secrecy under which they operate—

well outside the sphere of statutory 

authority and beyond the reach of 

the media—kind of like a National 

Security Agency but without the tax 

support.

This parallels the proliferation 

of corporate mercenaries—private 

armies, private military contractors, 

private security contractors—such 

as Academi (formerly Xe Services, 

Blackwater) and Triple Canopy. For 

the moment, the cyber side seems 

to remain largely decoupled, but I 

predict that, in time, these interests 

will converge into one-size-fits-all, 

general-purpose private army/police/

intelligence-for-hire concerns. Experiments at such integration have 

already occurred—see the Computer Sciences Corporation, which 

owned the private military contractor 

DynCorp from 2003 to 2005. Not surprisingly, as Figure 1 indicates, some 

of these companies have been known 

to target WikiLeaks. 

Hal Berghel

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Based on what you know about WikiLeaks and Stratfor, which 

group seems to be the greater threat to society? 

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The Stratfor website states that 

“Stratfor is a subscription-based provider of geopolitical analysis. ... Unlike 

traditional news outlets, Stratfor uses 

a unique, intelligence-based approach 

to gathering information via rigorous 

open-source monitoring and a global 

network of human sources.” Founded 

in 1996 by George Friedman, this 

Austin, Texas, company “publishes 

analysis via ... website and customized email updates.” It isn’t clear that 

much of what Stratfor does with its 

“intelligence” is particularly interesting or controversial, but the way that 

it gets its “intelligence” is both interesting and controversial, as is evident 

from the WikiLeaks revelations.

As the press release from Stratfor’s 

founder, shown in Figure 2, indicates, 

Stratfor’s expressed objection to the 

Anonymous/WikiLeaks exposé is that 

it was “illegal” and a “breach of privacy.” Let’s see if we have this right: 

Stratfor is claiming that there’s something wrong with illegal breaches 

of privacy or the dissemination of 

information that has been obtained 

without the information owner’s 

permission. 

Ponder that for a while. It seems 

to me to be a clear case of pots and 

kettles, snakes and crabs, or brambles and pomegranates. Let’s try to 

put it into some sort of meaningful 

perspective. 

While the mainstream press has 

extensively covered WikiLeaks for 

several years now, Stratfor has operated largely in the dark. Many of us 

had never heard of Stratfor before the 

Anonymous hack of December 2011, 

so I offer the following short review 

for the benefit of the uninitiated.

Stratfor’s avowed goal is to become 

“the world’s leading private intelligence organization.” This is expressly 

stated in one of CEO George Friedman’s leaked emails (5 September 

2011, with the subject line “Labor 

Day Review of Where We Are”). This 

is also the email in which Friedman 

announced to Stratfor employees 

the StratCAP partnership with Shea 

Morentz, then managing director of 

Goldman Sachs, who invested several million dollars in Stratfor to 

create actionable intelligence useful 

to investors in exchange for a Stratfor board seat. Apparently this deal 

soured.

Stratfor uses global informants. 

According to some media reports, at 

least some of these informants are 

paid via Swiss bank accounts and 

prepaid debit cards.

Stratfor serves global corporations and agencies. A quick review 

of the “GB Master Client List” spreadsheet dated 3-15-07 is a who’s who 

of financial institutions, government 

contractors, technology companies, and Forbes 1,000 companies, 

including Coke, Wexford Capital, 

Perot Systems, Dow Chemical, and 

Northrup Grumman.

According to Friedman, Stratfor is 

not above innovative means to conFigure 1. A slide taken from Palantir’s presentation “The WikiLeaks Threat.” (The CEO 

of Palantir has since apologized for this.)

URL PEARLS

Bruce Schneier refers to HBGary Federal as a “cyberweapons arms manufacturer.”(http://gizmodo.com/5888440/wikileaks-reveals-private-cias-dirty-laundry-updatinglive). HBGary has been associated with a variety of software that would qualify as either, 

including FastDump and FDPro Windows memory-capturing utilities and the 

Windows rootkit project, Magenta (http://cyberwarzone.com/cyberwarfare/hbgarysrootkit-project-magenta?page=4). The Gamma Group is associated with FinFisher, a 

general-purpose snoop tool that offers screen scraping, Skype session capture, 

keylogging, decryption, and rootkit capabilities (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/

2012/08/13/elusive-finspy-spyware-pops-up-in-10-countries). Some interesting analysis of the FinFisher product can be found at https://citizenlab.org/2012/07/frombahrain-with-love-finfishers-spy-kit-exposed.

Wikileaks refers to the 5 million or so Stratfor email messages that it released as “The 

Global Intelligence Files” (wikileaks.org/gifiles/releases.html). WikiLeaks has the entire 

Palantir/HBGary/Berico slide presentation in PDF format online at http://wikileaks.org/

IMG/pdf/WikiLeaks_Response_v6.pdf. Forbes.com has the complete statement from

Palantir CEO Alex Carp online at www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/

11palantir-apologizes-for-wikileaks-attack-proposal-cuts-ties-with-hbgary. 

The PayPal book-banning story has been well covered (www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/

bernard-oleary/paypal-banned-books-the-books-banned-by-paypa_b_1314953.html). 

In reaction to the outcry from anticensorship groups, PayPal has since lifted the ban 

(www.abffe.org/news/86299/).

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84 COMPUTER

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trol its sources: “If this is a source 

you suspect may have value, you 

have to take control od [sic] him. 

Control means financial, sexual or 

psychological control to the point 

where he would reveal his sourcing 

and be tasked.” This email is dated 

6 December 2011 and went to a Stratfor intelligence analyst regarding an 

informant’s report on the health of 

Hugo Chavez.

Regarding relationships with the 

media, Stratfor works with media 

organizations and journalists whom 

it refers to as (among other things) 

“confederation partners.” It’s not 

at all obvious that a private intelligence organization’s close relation 

with the media satisfies the standards of journalistic ethics taught 

in the academy.

With those few clarifications in 

mind, I offer for your consideration 

Table 1 as a modest comparison of 

Stratfor and WikiLeaks in terms of 

their operations and objectives.

I’ve based Table 1 on information 

available from mainstream media 

reports and analysis of the WikiLeaks 

documents. Assuming that this is a 

fair characterization, and based on 

what you know about WikiLeaks and 

Figure 2. Stratfor CEO’s announcement of the WikiLeaks revelations. 

Table 1. Comparison of WikiLeaks and Stratfor operations.

Activity WikiLeaks Stratfor

Revenue model Not for profit For profit

Primary constituency served Media/individuals Corporations/agencies

Seeks access to nonpublic, proprietary, or classified information, for 

which the owner does not authorize access

Under dispute Yes

Relies on a leak-centric communication network Yes Yes

System built on paid informants No Yes

Uses active intelligence systems: leakers, spies, whistleblowers Yes Yes

Willing to corrupt media resources Perhaps Yes

Partners with media to inform public Yes No

Provides intelligence to media/public Yes Limited

Provides actionable intelligence to partners in military industrial complex No Yes

Black ops No Yes

Uses third-party contractors (spies) No Yes

Controls sources via money, sex, blackmail, extortion No Yes

Nature of risks to society Overt Covert

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NOVEMBER 2012 85

rule of law, and whether government 

agencies should be tolerating it, much 

less encouraging it. I’m not sure that a 

“trust us” defense should be any more 

compelling to society in this case than 

when it was used to defend flawless 

efficient markets before the most 

recent economic meltdown. 

One final observation: it’s 

unlikely that any of this 

would have become public 

were it not for Anonymous. But that’s 

a topic for another column. 

Hal Berghel, Out of Band column 

editor, is a professor of computer science at the University of Nevada, Las 

Vegas, where he is the director of the 

Identity Theft and Financial Fraud 

Research and Operations Center 

(itffroc.org). Contact him at hlb@

computer.org.

lack of oversight and transparency 

in the process. From the email, it 

appears that Stratfor has introduced 

a corrupting influence on the process 

of intelligence gathering. 

The question that informed world 

citizens should ask is whether they 

feel comfortable with their governments supporting such things. It 

should be emphasized that there is 

a reason why governments and businesses outsource this kind of work. Is 

it due to the fact that dedicated private 

companies are so much better at it? 

Or do the customers and clients want 

to maintain distance from, and deniability of, putatively illegal activity.

There is no obvious Fourth Amendment protection against private 

shadow intelligence agencies, just as 

there is no First Amendment protection against PayPal banning books. 

While the constitutional lawyers 

argue the legality, the public should 

be discussing whether or to what 

extent Stratfor’s activities are consistent with democratic values and the 

Stratfor, which group seems to you to 

be the greater threat to society?

THE BRIGHT SIDE

Good journalists are always 

concerned about the possibility of 

accidentally disseminating erroneous 

information. At this point, I haven’t 

seen a single report from any source 

that I deem credible that claims the 

WikiLeaks Stratfor emails are bogus. I 

encourage everyone to look into these 

leaked documents, and the concomitant media coverage, and come to 

their own conclusion. 

The Stratfor revelations are alarming for at least two reasons. First, I’m 

not convinced that Stratfor’s approach 

to intelligence analytics will lead to 

significantly better decision making 

than we’ve come to expect from the 

military industrial complex, and I’m 

fearful that unenlightened leadership may be lulled into overreliance 

on such analyses. That might in turn 

lead to even more ill-advised decisions. Second, I’m bothered by the 

Selected CS articles and columns 

are available for free at 

http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

Stay connected with the IEEE Computer Society Transactions by signing 

up for our new Transactions Connection newsletter. It is free and contains 

valuable information like:

Not a subscriber? Don’t worry. You can still sign up to receive news about the transactions.

Visit http://www.computer.org/newsletters to sign up today!

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0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society NOVEMBER 2012 87

IDENTITY SCIENCES

Biometric Authentication: 

System Security 

and User Privacy

I

dentity theft is a growing concern in our digital society. The 

US Federal Trade Commission 

reports that ID theft affects 

millions of innocent victims each year 

and is the most common consumer 

complaint (www.ftc.gov/opa/reporter/

idtheft/index.shtml). 

Traditional authentication methods such as passwords and identity 

documents aren’t sufficient to combat 

ID theft or ensure security. Such surrogate representations of identity 

can be easily forgotten, lost, guessed, 

stolen, or shared. 

Biometric systems recognize individuals based on their anatomical 

traits (fingerprint, face, palmprint, 

iris, voice) or behavioral traits (signature, gait). Because such traits are 

physically linked to the user, biometric recognition is a natural and more 

reliable mechanism for ensuring 

that only legitimate or authorized 

users are able to enter a facility, 

access a computer system, or cross 

international borders. Biometric systems also offer unique advantages 

such as deterrence against repudiation and the ability to detect whether 

an individual has multiple identity 

cards (for example, passports) under 

different names. Thus, biometric 

systems impart higher levels of security when appropriately integrated 

into applications requiring user 

authentication.

While law enforcement agencies 

have used fingerprint-based biometric 

authentication for more than a century in forensic investigations, the 

last two decades have seen a rapid 

proliferation of biometric recognition 

systems in a wide variety of government and commercial applications 

around the world. Figure 1 shows 

some examples.

Although many of these deployments are extremely successful, 

there are lingering concerns about 

the security of biometric systems and 

potential breaches of privacy resulting from the unauthorized release of 

users’ stored biometric data. Like any 

other user authentication mechanism, 

a biometric system can be circumvented by a skillful impostor given 

the right circumstances and plenty 

of time and resources. Mitigating such 

concerns is essential to gaining public 

confidence and acceptance of biometric technology.

BIOMETRIC SYSTEM 

OPERATION

A biometric system first records 

a sample of a user’s biometric trait 

using an appropriate sensor—for 

example, a camera for the face—

during enrollment. It then extracts 

salient characteristics, such as 

fingerprint minutiae, from the 

biometric sample using a software 

algorithm called a feature extractor.

The system stores these extracted 

features as a template in a database 

along with other identifiers such as 

a name or an identification number. 

To be authenticated, the user presents another biometric sample to the 

sensor. Features extracted from this 

sample constitute the query, which 

the system then compares to the template of the claimed identity via a biometric matcher. The matcher returns 

a match score representing the degree 

of similarity between the template 

and the query. The system accepts 

the identity claim only if the match 

score is above a predefined threshold.

Anil K. Jain

Michigan State University

Karthik Nandakumar

Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore

While biometric systems aren’t foolproof, the research 

community has made significant strides to identify 

vulnerabilities and develop measures to counter them.

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88 COMPUTER

IDENTITY SCIENCES

attacks (A.K. Jain, A.A. Ross and 

K. Na nda kuma r, “Securit y of 

Biometric Systems,” Introduction 

to Biometrics, Springer, 2011, pp. 

259-306). 

Intrinsic limitations

Unlike a password-based authentication system, which requires 

a perfect match between two 

alphanumeric strings, a biometricbased authentication system relies on 

the similarity between two biometric 

samples. 

Because an individual’s biometric 

samples acquired during enrollment 

and authentication are seldom 

identical, as Figure 3 shows, a 

biometric system can make two 

types of authentication errors. A 

false nonmatch occurs when two 

samples from the same individual 

have low similarity and the system 

can’t correctly match them. A false 

match occurs when two samples 

from different individuals have high 

similarity and the system incorrectly 

declares them as a match.

BIOMETRIC SYSTEM 

VULNERABILITIES 

A biometric system is vulnerable 

to two types of failures, as Figure 2 

shows. A denial of service occurs 

when the system doesn’t recognize 

a legitimate user, while an intrusion

refers to the scenario in which the 

system incorrectly identifies an 

impostor as an authorized user. 

While there are many possible 

reasons for these failures, they 

can be broadly categorized as 

intrinsic limitations and adversary 

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 1. Examples of biometric authentication systems deployed in government and commercial applications. (a) The US-VISIT 

program to regulate international border crossings (www.dhs.gov/files/programs/usv.shtm) records all 10 fingerprints of a visa 

applicant. (b) India’s Aadhaar civil registry system (www.uidai.gov.in) captures the iris and face images in addition to 10 fingerprints. 

(c) Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, uses a fingerprint-based access system to prevent ticket fraud (www.boston.

com/news/nation/articles/2006/09/03/disney_world_scans_fingerprint_details_of_park_visitors). (Photo by Mark Goldhaber; 

www.mouseplanet.com/9797/Walt_Disney_World_Resort_Update#rfid.) (d) Many banks in countries including Japan (www.

theregister.co.uk/2012/04/12/ogaki_palm_scanning_cash) and Brazil (www.bradescori.com.br/site/conteudo/interna/default.

aspx?secaoId=680&idiomaId=2) use palm-vein-based automated teller machines. (Photo courtesy of Bradesco; http://infosurhoy.

com/cocoon/saii/xhtml/en_GB/features/saii/features/economy/2010/03/01/feature-04.)

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(a)

(b)

(c)

NOVEMBER 2012 89

A false nonmatch leads to a denial 

of service to a legitimate user, while 

a false match can result in intrusion 

by an impostor. Because the impostor 

need not exert any special effort to 

fool the system, such an intrusion is 

known as a zero-effort attack. Most of 

the research effort in the biometrics 

community over the past five 

decades has focused on improving 

authentication accuracy—that is, on 

minimizing false nonmatches and 

false matches.

Adversary attacks

A biometric system may also 

fail to operate as intended due 

to manipulation by adversaries. 

Such manipulations can be carried 

out via insiders, such as system 

administrators, or by directly 

attacking the system infrastructure. 

An adversary can circumvent a 

biometric system by coercing or 

colluding with insiders, exploiting 

their negligence (for example, failure 

to properly log out of a system 

after completing a transaction), 

or fraudulently manipulating the 

procedures of enrollment and 

exception processing, originally 

designed to help authorized users.

External adversaries can also 

cause a biometric system to fail 

through direct attacks on the user 

interface (sensor), the feature 

extractor and matcher modules, 

the interconnections between the 

modules, and the template database. 

Examples of attacks targeting 

the system modules and their 

interconnections include Trojan 

horse, man-in-the-middle, and 

replay attacks. As most of these 

attacks are also applicable to 

password-based authentication 

systems, several countermeasures 

like cryptography, time stamps, and 

mutual authentication are available 

to prevent them or minimize their 

impact.

Two major vulnerabilities that 

specifically deserve attention in the 

context of biometric authentication 

Figure 3. Inherent variability between biometric samples of the same individual. 

(a) Variations in fingerprint patterns of the same finger due to differences in finger 

placement on the sensor. (b) Variations in face images of the same person due to 

changes in pose. (c) Variations in iris images of the same eye due to differences in 

pupil dilation and gaze direction.

False nonmatch

False match

Denial of service

Intrusion

Biometric system 

vulnerabilities

Intrinsic limitations

Adversary attacks

Collusion

Coercion

Negligence

Enrollment fraud

Exception abuse

Spoof

attacks

Trojan horse 

attacks

Man-in-themiddle and

replay attacks

Template

leakage

Insider attacks

Attacks on sensor Attacks on 

feature

extractor

and matcher

Attacks on 

interconnections

between

modules

Attacks on 

database

Figure 2. A biometric system is vulnerable to denials of service and intrusions, which 

can be caused by both intrinsic limitations and adversary attacks.

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Figure 4. Example of obtaining a biometric trait by reverse engineering the 

corresponding biometric template: (a) original fingerprint image, (b) minutiae 

template information extracted from the fingerprint image, and (c) fingerprint image 

reconstructed using only the minutiae information. (Adapted from J. Feng and A.K. 

Jain, “Fingerprint Reconstruction: From Minutiae to Phase,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis 

and Machine Intelligence, Feb. 2011, pp. 209-223.)

IDENTITY SCIENCES

90 COMPUTER

and ID cards, it isn’t possible to 

replace stolen templates with new 

ones because biometric traits are 

irrevocable. Finally, the stolen 

biometric templates can be used for 

unintended purposes—for example, 

to covertly track a person across 

multiple systems or obtain private 

health information.

BIOMETRIC TEMPLATE 

SECURITY

A critical step in minimizing the 

security and privacy risks associated 

with biometric systems is to protect 

the biometric templates stored in 

the system database. While the 

risks can be mitigated to some extent by storing the templates in a 

decentralized fashion—for example, 

in a smart card carried by the user—

such solutions aren’t feasible in 

applications requiring deduplication 

capability such as the US-VISIT or 

India’s Aadhaar system.

Although many techniques exist 

for securing passwords including 

encryption/hashing and key generation, they’re predicated on the assumption that passwords provided by 

the user during enrollment and 

authentication are identical. 

Template security 

requirements

The main challenge in developing a 

biometric template protection scheme 

is to achieve an acceptable tradeoff 

among three requirements.

Noninvertibility. It must be 

computationally hard to recover the 

biometric features from the stored 

template. This prevents the adversary 

from replaying the biometric features 

gleaned from the template or creating 

physical spoofs of the biometric trait.

Discriminability. The template 

protection scheme shouldn’t degrade 

the biometric system’s authentication 

accuracy.

Revocability. It should be possible 

to create multiple secure templates 

from the same biometric data that 

aren’t linkable to that data. This 

Researchers have developed 

numerous liveness detection 

techniques—for example, verifying 

the physiological properties of human 

fingers or observing involuntary 

human actions such as blinking of 

the eye—to ensure that the biometric 

trait captured by a sensor indeed 

comes from a live person (K.A. Nixon, 

V. Aimale, and R.K. Rowe, “Spoof 

Detection Schemes,” Handbook of 

Biometrics, A.K. Jain, P. Flynn, and 

A.A. Ross, eds., Springer, 2007, 

pp. 403-424).

Template database leakage refers 

to a scenario where a legitimate 

user’s biometric template information 

becomes available to an adversary. 

This aggravates the problem of 

spoofing because it makes it easier 

for the adversary to recover the 

biometric pattern by simply reverse 

engineering the template, as Figure 4 

shows. Moreover, unlike passwords 

are spoof attacks at the user interface 

and template database leakage. These 

two attacks have serious adverse 

effects on biometric system security.

A spoof attack involves presenting a counterfeit biometric trait not 

obtained from a live person. Examples of spoofed biometric traits 

include a gummy finger, photograph 

or mask of a face, or dismembered 

finger from a legitimate user.

A fundamental tenet of biometric 

authentication is that even though 

biometric traits aren’t secrets—it 

may not be very difficult to covertly 

obtain a photo of a person’s face or 

the fingerprint pattern from an object 

or surface touched by a person—the 

system is still secure because the trait 

is physically linked to a live user. A 

spoof attack, if successful, violates 

this basic assumption and thereby 

greatly undermines the system’s 

security.

(a) (b)

(c)

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NOVEMBER 2012 91

(A. Juels and M. Wattenberg, “A Fuzzy 

Commitment Scheme,” Proc. 6th ACM 

Conf. Computer and Comm. Security

[CCS 99], ACM, 1999, pp. 28-36). The 

fuzzy vault is useful for protecting 

templates that are represented as a 

set of points (K. Nandakumar, A.K. 

Jain, and S. Pankanti, “FingerprintBased Fuzzy Vault: Implementation 

& Performance,” IEEE Trans. Information Forensics and Security, Dec. 

2007, pp. 744-757). 

with a biometric query that closely 

matches the template, it can recover 

both the original template and the 

cryptographic key using common 

error detection techniques.

Researchers have proposed two 

main approaches for generating a 

secure sketch: fuzzy commitment

and fuzzy vault. Fuzzy commitment 

can be used to protect biometric 

templates that are represented 

as fixed-length binary strings 

property not only enables the 

biometric system to revoke and 

reissue new biometric templates if 

the database is compromised, but it 

also prevents cross-matching across 

databases, thereby preserving the 

user’s privacy. 

Template security approaches

There are two generic approaches 

for securing biometric templates: 

biometric feature transformation and 

biometric cryptosystems.

In the case of biometric feature 

transformation, as Figure 5a shows, 

the secure template is derived by 

applying a noninvertible or oneway transformation function to the 

original template; this transformation 

is typically based on user-specific 

parameters. During authentication, 

the system applies the same transformation function to the query and 

matching occurs in the transformed 

domain.

Biometric cryptosystems, as Figure 

5b shows, store only a fraction of 

the information derived from the 

biometric template known as the 

secure sketch. While the secure sketch 

in itself is insufficient to reconstruct 

the original template, it does contain 

sufficient data to recover the template 

in the presence of another biometric 

sample that closely matches the 

enrollment sample.

The secure sketch is typically 

obtained by binding the biometric 

template with a cryptographic key. 

However, a secure sketch isn’t the same 

as a biometric template encrypted 

using standard cryptographic 

techniques. 

In standard encryption, the 

encrypted template and decryption 

key are two separate entities and 

the template is secure only as long 

as the decryption key is secure. A 

secure sketch encapsulates both 

the biometric template and the 

cryptographic key as a single entity. 

Neither the key nor the template can 

be recovered using only the secure 

sketch. When the system is presented 

Figure 5. Securing biometric templates using (a) biometric feature transformation and 

(b) biometric cryptosystems.

System

database

System

database

Noninvertible

transform

Noninvertible

transform

Enrollment

Enrollment

User-specific

parameters

Biometric

template

User-specific

parameters Biometric

query

Biometric

template

Biometric

query

Transformed/ 

protected

template

Transformed

query

Match/ 

(a) nonmatch

(b)

Matching

Authentication

Authentication

Secure 

sketch

generation

Validity

check Recovered 

template and

cryptographic key Match/ 

nonmatch

Cryptographic

key Secure 

sketch

Error

correction

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CSE in education, and emerging technologies in the hard sciences.

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IDENTITY SCIENCES

 92 COMPUTER

There are currently no satisfactory 

practical solutions on the horizon to 

address such questions. 

Biometric recognition provides 

more reliable user authentication than passwords and 

identity documents, and is the only 

way to detect duplicate identities. 

While biometric systems aren’t 

foolproof, the research community 

has made significant strides to identify 

vulnerabilities and develop measures 

to counter them. New algorithms for 

protecting biometric template data 

alleviate some of the concerns about 

system security and user privacy, 

but additional improvements will be 

required before such techniques find 

their way into real-world systems. 

Anil K. Jain is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department 

of Computer Science and Engineering 

at Michigan State University. Contact 

him at jain@cse.msu.edu.

Karthik Nandakumar is a research 

scientist in the Institute for Infocomm 

Research, Singapore. Contact him at 

knandakumar@i2r.a-star.edu.sg.

a feature transformation function 

to the biometric template before 

it is protected using a biometric 

cryptosystem. Such systems, which 

combine feature transformation with 

secure sketch generation, are known 

as hybrid biometric cryptosystems.

THE PRIVACY CONUNDRUM

The irrefutable link between 

users and their biometric traits has 

triggered valid concerns about user 

privacy. In particular, knowledge of 

the biometric template information 

stored in the database can be 

exploited to compromise user privacy 

in many ways. 

Template protection schemes can 

mitigate this threat to some extent, 

but many thorny privacy issues 

remain beyond the scope of biometric 

technology:

t Who owns the biometric data, 

the individual or the service 

providers?

t Will the use of biometrics be 

proportional to the need for 

security in a given application? 

For example, should a fi ngerprint 

be required to purchase a hamburger at a fast food restaurant 

or access a commercial website?

t What is the optimal tradeoff 

between application security 

and user privacy? For example, 

should governments, businesses, 

and other entities be able to use 

surveillance cameras at public 

spaces to covertly track benign 

activities of users? 

Pros and cons

Biometric feature transformation 

and biometric cryptosystems have 

their own pros and cons. 

Matching is often straightforward 

in a feature transformation scheme, 

and it may even be possible to design 

transformation functions that don’t 

alter the original feature space’s 

characteristics. However, finding 

an appropriate transformation 

function that is noninvertible but at 

the same time tolerant to inherent 

intra-user biometric variations can 

be diffi cult.

While secure sketch generation 

t e ch n ique s ba s e d on s ou nd 

information-theoretic principles 

a r e ava i l a ble for biome t r ic 

cryptosystems, the challenge is to 

represent the biometric features 

in standardized data formats like 

binary strings and point sets. 

Therefore, an active research 

topic is designing algorithms that 

convert the original biometric 

template into standardized data 

formats like fixed-length binary 

strings or point sets without any 

loss of discriminative information 

(A. Nagar, K. Nandakumar, and A.K. 

Jain, “Multibiometric Cryptosystems 

Based on Feature-Level Fusion,” 

IEEE Trans. Information Forensics 

and Security, Feb. 2012, pp. 255-268).

Fuzzy commitment and fuzzy 

vault have other limitations, including 

the inability to generate multiple 

nonlinkable templates from the same 

biometric data. One possible way to 

overcome this problem is to apply 

 Selected CS articles and columns 

 are available for free at 

http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

Editor: Karl Ricanek Jr., director of the Face 

Aging Group at the University of North 

Carolina Wilmington; ricanekk@uncw.edu

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SOCIAL COMPUTING

0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society NOVEMBER 2012 93

Customer Service 

2.0: Where Social 

Computing Meets 

Customer Relations

Before the Internet, there 

was the suggestion box. 

Impersonal but effective, 

the box served as the 

bearer of bad (and sometimes good) 

news for businesses from frank 

customers who felt the need to share 

their opinions. Some companies took 

the suggestions to heart, while others 

ignored them if they bothered to read 

them at all. If customers didn’t use 

the box, the business never found out 

what was on their mind.

To d ay, c u s t omer s u s e t he 

Internet, especially social media, 

to complain to or about—as well as 

praise—businesses. Consequently, 

companies are slowly but surely 

expanding their presence on social 

media sites. According to a recent 

survey by CompTIA, an IT industry 

association, 82 percent of responding 

companies had a Facebook page, 

68 percent had a Twitter profile, 

and 68 percent had a LinkedIn 

page (Social Business: Trends and 

Opportunities, 2012). 

As the CompTIA study reveals, 

proper use of social media tools 

can lead to better communication 

with customers, cost savings, brand 

positioning, and other benefits. 

However, many businesses aren’t 

having success using such tools.

To get a first-hand look at this 

issue, we went into the field and spoke 

with numerous business owners, 

managers, and customers. We also 

talked with Christopher Lower, a 

30-year marketing veteran who 

teaches companies how to respond 

to comments and reviews online. 

Lower is the founder of Sterling 

Cross Communications, which has 

specialized in social media marketing 

and online reputation management 

for the past decade. He explained that 

an online reputation—established 

through social media or elsewhere—

can make or break a business.

Even before the emergence of 

social media, aggravated customers 

found ways to complain publicly 

online. Lower cited examples of 

websites dating back to 1996 created 

with a company’s name followed by 

“sucks” in the domain name. And an 

online reputation spreads quickly—so 

quickly and widely that it can cause a 

sudden stock price drop.

In other words, companies can’t 

dismiss negative comments as they did 

in the days of the physical suggestion 

box. “‘Ignore it and it will go away’ 

doesn’t work anywhere, especially 

on social media,” said Lower. He 

cautions businesses that waiting 

24 hours to respond to a negative 

review is too long, especially when 

a Web search can bring the review 

back up. “Whether or not the situation 

was right or wrong, perception wins,” 

said Lower. “The person had a bad 

experience with your brand, and if 

you can’t at least listen to them and 

acknowledge them, that change in 

perception is going to stay.”

Of course, customers also use the 

same social media to share positive 

experiences they’ve had with a 

company or product. 

A BAR CUSTOMERS “LIKE”

Republic, a craft beer bar near 

downtown Minneapolis, doesn’t 

have an advertising budget. Situated 

in an area dense with similar 

establishments that have been around 

longer than the year-and-a-halfold bar, Republic has nevertheless 

Frank Bi and Joseph A. Konstan

University of Minnesota

Social computing is moving customer relations from private 

spaces into the public space.

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SOCIAL COMPUTING

94 COMPUTER

past 40 years. But it was only in the 

past few years that Patel started 

reading and responding to online 

reviews.

“We’re trying to get in touch with 

people on a more personal level,” said 

Patel. “It’s a learning experience for 

us, and we try to evaluate what to do 

to do it better.” Along with monitoring 

comments on TripAdvisor, one of the 

world’s largest travel-related user 

communities, Patel has experimented 

with Facebook by adding former 

customers as friends, although he has 

since scaled that effort back because 

the results didn’t justify the time 

invested.

On TripAdvisor, the hotel has 

received more than 230 reviews 

and is ranked as the number one 

hotel in Millbrae, California. While 

there are more than 110 “excellent” 

reviews, there are also two “terrible” 

reviews. One traveler even called his 

time there the “worst hotel stay ever 

experienced.” Patel responded in 

200 words, explaining the situation 

to potential guests and encouraging 

them to read the hundreds of other 

positive reviews.

“I personally don’t like it when 

somebody for some reason had a 

bad day and they take it out on the 

Internet,” said Patel. “It’s easy to 

slander a business online.”

Customers can and have tried to 

hold a company’s online reputation 

hostage, explained Sterling Cross 

Communications’ Lower, but 

a business can combat this by 

responding respectfully and issuing an 

apology or otherwise making amends. 

THE CUSTOMER’S LAST 

RECOURSE

What happens when customers 

can’t get effective support? In some 

cases, they take their case straight to 

Facebook, Twitter, and other social 

media.

Anna Gallegos of Houston waited 

several hours for a customer support 

representative to install her cable TV 

and Internet service. When no one 

showed up during the appointment 

window, she tried to arrange 

installation through email. After a 

dozen futile attempts, the exasperated 

Gallegos posted a complaint on the 

company’s Facebook page.

Gallegos found she wasn’t alone. 

“People were complaining about 

everything,” she said. By the next 

business day, the company had 

posted a “copy-paste” response to 

all of its customers with a generic 

apology and another email address to 

contact. Gallegos got her appointment 

rescheduled a week after the original 

date, but her perceptions of the 

company took a dive; she’s prepared 

for a fight the next time she has to 

deal with bad service.

One of the authors had a 

similar experience dealing with a 

troublesome Android app, but with a 

happier resolution. 

After five frustrating email 

exchanges with the app company’s 

customer service representatives, he 

felt like he was going in circles. He 

posted a blog message on Google+, 

and almost as an afterthought 

tweeted a pointer to this post with the 

company’s customer support hashtag. 

Within an hour, the company sent 

him a private message and put him 

in contact with someone who took 

ownership of the case. In the end, he 

got more than he’d originally asked 

for, and all within a few hours of 

the tweet. His response moved from 

anger and frustration to surprise and 

delight—so delighted that he posted 

a follow-up blog message applauding 

the service.

quickly earned a solid reputation for 

itself around the neighborhood and is 

soon opening a second location. 

With more than 1,250 likes on 

its Facebook page, social media has 

without a doubt been instrumental 

in the bar’s success, according to 

manager Ryan O’Leary. “We believe 

the product should sell itself,” he said. 

And it has.

A brief glance at the bar’s Facebook 

and Twitter profiles show daily posts 

about Republic and images of its 

offerings. Loyal customers follow 

the Twitter feed almost religiously, 

boasted O’Leary, who added that 

some customers show up almost 

immediately following a post about 

a certain product, such as a prized 

brew about to be made available. 

Most of Republic’s Twitter interactions 

are with beer enthusiasts who 

inquire about select beers or make 

suggestions about what they’d like to 

see, said O’Leary.

Before the advent of social 

media, restaurants and bars limited 

their online presence to a website, 

observed O’Leary. However, Republic 

leads customers to its Facebook 

page, where the user interface is 

more inviting and is familiar to 

most people. “It’s the most unique 

marketing technique I’ve ever seen,” 

said O’Leary, who has worked in the 

restaurant service industry for more 

than 10 years. On social media, “you 

speak to your customers more, and 

you speak to them directly.”

Republic relies on social media 

in other ways. The bar’s owners and 

an off-site employee charged with 

managing social media marketing 

strategies and maintaining the bar’s 

online reputation receive Twitter and 

Facebook update notifications on 

their cell phones, enabling them to 

keep abreast of consumer opinions 

and suggestions in real time. 

HAVING AN IN AT THE INN

Vijay Patel has operated Millwood 

Inn and Suites, a small family-owned 

hotel outside San Francisco, for the 

The suggestion box hasn’t gone away—it has just 

changed.

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Register today! 

ŚƩƉ͗ͬͬŝƐŵ͘ĞĞĐƐ͘ƵĐŝ͘ĞĚƵ

10-12 December 2012

Irvine, CA, USA

ISM 2012 is an international forum for researchers to exchange information 

regarding advances in the state of the art and practice of multimedia computing, 

DVZHOODVWRLGHQWLI\WKHHPHUJLQJUHVHDUFKWRSLFVDQGGHÀQHWKHIXWXUHRI

multimedia computing.

IEEE ISM 2012

14th IEEE International Symposium on 

Multimed a

NOVEMBER 2012 95

i

Editor: John Riedl, Department of Computer 

Science and Engineering, University of 

Minnesota; riedl@cs.umn.edu 

Frank Bi is a computer science and 

journalism student at the University 

of Minnesota. Contact him at frank@

frankbi.com.

Joseph A. Konstan is the Distinguished McKnight Professor of 

Computer Science and Engineering at 

the University of Minnesota. Contact 

him at konstan@umn.edu.

And the fi shbowl is imposing new 

rules. Responding authentically to a 

complaint—whether by apology or 

by supplying explanatory context 

and details—can be good. Keeping 

loyal customers up-to-date through 

social media can also be good. But 

overloading your customers with too 

many posts and boilerplate language 

can be bad. And losing your temper 

online and telling off a customer—

even a rude one—can be very bad. 

The suggestion box hasn’t gone 

away—it has just changed. The box 

is there for all to see, and everyone is 

watching how you handle it. 

Social computing is moving 

customer relations from private spaces into the public 

space. And it’s extending the reach of 

that public space through sites with 

tens of millions of visitors and search 

engine indexing. 

The good news is that a few clicks 

can alert thousands or millions of 

potential customers about your 

new tap beer or bed-and-breakfast 

special. The bad news is that 

customers can just as easily vent 

their frustrations with your service 

to the same number of people. Life 

in a fi shbowl is hard. 

 Selected CS articles and columns 

 are available for free at http://

 ComputingNow.computer.org.

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COMPUTER SOCIETY CONNECTION

 96 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

CS Names 2012 

Tech Award 

Recipients

The I E E E C omp u t er 

S ociet y a nnou nc e d 

the 2012 recipients of 

three technical achievement awards. This year’s Seymour 

Cray Award went to Peter Kogge for 

innovations in advanced computer 

architecture and systems. Klaus 

Schulten and Laxmikant “Sanjay” 

Kale shared the Sidney Fernbach 

Award for outstanding contributions in the application of highperformance computers. 

PETER KOGGE RECEIVES 

SEYMOUR CRAY COMPUTER 

ENGINEERING AWARD

Peter Kogge, 

recipient of the 

2012 Seymour Cray 

Award, has been 

at the forefront of 

several innovations that have shaped 

the computing industry over the past 

three decades. 

Currently the Ted H. McCourtney Professor of Computer Science 

and Engineering at the University 

of Notre Dame and an IEEE Fellow, 

Peter Kogge has been at the forefront 

of several innovations that have 

shaped the computing industry over 

the past three decades. While working on his PhD at Stanford University 

in the 1970s, he invented the KoggeStone-Adder process, which is still 

considered the fastest way of adding 

numbers on a computer. 

During his 26-year career at IBM, 

Kogge designed the Space Shuttle 

I/O processor, one of the fi rst multithreaded computers and the first 

to fl y in space. Kogge also invented 

the world’s fi rst multicore processor, 

Execube, which his IBM team placed 

on a memory chip in an early effort 

to solve the data bottleneck problem.

More recently, Kogge led a team 

of computer professionals for the 

US Defense Advanced Research 

Projects Agency (DARPA) to pioneer 

development of a supercomputer 

capable of executing a quintillion 

mathematical operations per second.

Kog ge’s resea rch interest s 

include massively parallel processing architectures, advanced VLSI 

and nanotechnologies and their 

relationship to computing systems 

architectures, non-von Neumann 

models of programming and execution, and parallel algorithms and 

applications and their impact on computer architecture.

One of the IEEE Computer 

Societ y’s highest awards, the 

Seymour Cray Award recognizes 

innovative contributions to highperformance computing systems that 

best exemplify Cray’s creative spirit. 

The award includes a US$10,000 

honorarium. 

Kogge is scheduled to accept the 

award at the keynote session at SC12 

in Salt Lake City on 13 November.

SIDNEY FERNBACH AWARD 

RECIPIENTS: KLAUS 

SCHULTEN AND SANJAY 

KALE

Klaus Schulten (left) and Sanjay Kale 

(right) received the 2012 Sidney 

Fernbach Award for their development 

of widely used parallel software for 

large biomolecular systems simulation.

Klaus Schulten and Sanjay Kale, 

professors at the University of Illinois 

at Urbana-Champaign, received 

the 2012 IEEE Computer Society 

Sidney Fernbach Award for their 

development of widely used parallel 

software for large biomolecular 

systems simulation.

Schulten, a Swanlund Professor 

of Physics, directs the Center for 

Biomolecular Modeling at the 

Beckman Institute and codirects the 

Center for the Physics of Living Cells. 

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NOVEMBER 2012 97

His research focuses on molecular 

assembly and cooperation in 

biological cells, and he was the first to 

demonstrate that parallel computers 

can be practically employed to solve 

the classical many-body problem in 

biomolecular modeling. Thousands 

of researchers worldwide use his 

group’s visual molecular dynamics 

(VMD) program for displaying, 

animating, and analyzing large 

biomolecular systems and NAMD (Not 

[just] Another Molecular Dynamics) 

program for modeling them on 

personal computers as well as at 

the world’s leading supercomputing 

centers. Schulten and his team 

are presently developing a new 

computational method that assists 

biologists in solving the structures 

of the very large macromolecular 

complexes forming the machinery 

of living cells.

Corecipient Kale is a professor 

of computer science, director 

of the Pa ra llel Progra mming 

Laboratory, and a senior investigator for the Blue Waters project at 

the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. 

His parallel computing work 

focuses on enhancing performance 

and productivity via adaptive 

runtime systems, with research on 

programming abstractions, dynamic 

load balancing, fault tolerance, and 

power management. These efforts 

are embodied in Charm++, a widely 

distributed parallel programming 

system. 

Kale, an IEEE Fellow, collaboratively 

developed the NAMD application 

as well as other applications for 

computational cosmology, quantum 

chemistry, rocket simulation, and 

unstructured meshes. He is a cowinner 

of the 2002 Gordon Bell Award. Kale 

and his team won the HPC Challenge 

Best Performance award at SC11 for 

their entry based on Charm++.

Established in 1992 in memory of 

high-performance computing pioneer 

Sidney Fernbach, the Fernbach 

Award recognizes outstanding 

contributions in the application of 

high-performance computers using 

innovative approaches. The award 

comes with a US$2,000 honorarium.

Kale and Schulten are slated to 

receive the award at SC12. 

New IEEE CS Membership 

Packages Serve Specific 

Technical Interests

I

n an effort to better serve the 

growing audience of global 

computing professionals, the 

IEEE Computer Society is launching 

membership packages to meet specific 

technical focuses and goals.

New and renewing members will 

be able to choose a membership 

package in one of four focus areas—

software and systems, information 

and communication technologies 

(ICT), security and privacy, or 

computer engineering—to provide 

targeted resources for keeping up to 

date in specific technical areas and 

meeting career-development goals. 

“This is just another way the 

IEEE Computer Society is adding 

value and evolving to help serve 

the global workforce of technology 

leaders,” said IEEE Computer Society 

President John Walz. “We hope these 

attractive bundles—featuring the 

Computer Society’s best information 

sources, from webinars and articles to 

magazine subscriptions—will provide 

an easy and attractive means of 

keeping up with the rapidly changing 

technology world.”

Each package includes a monthly 

newsletter covering technology in 

the specific focus area, an electronic 

version of a CS magazine serving that 

interest area, 12 free CS articles of 

the member’s choosing, three free CS 

webinars, and special discounts on 

CS training courses. These package 

benefits are in addition to standard 

CS membership benefits, including 

a subscription to Computer, access 

to thousands of online courses and 

books, and discounts on conferences 

and other products.

Those who sign up for the software 

focus package will receive an 

electronic version of IEEE Software.

ICT focus package subscribers will 

receive IT Pro, security and privacy 

focus package subscribers will 

receive IEEE Security & Privacy, and 

computer engineering focus package 

subscribers will receive IEEE Micro.

To select the focus package 

that meets your interests, visit the 

IEEE Computer Society Join page 

(www.computer.org/portal/web/

membership/join). 

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COMPUTER SOCIETY CONNECTION

98 COMPUTER

The Guide to the Systems 

Engineering Body of Knowledge

(SEBoK) is now available as a 

wiki document at www.sebokwiki.org. 

The SEBoK Guide is the product 

of the Body of Knowledge and 

Curriculum to Advance Systems 

Engineering (BKCASE) project, which 

was organized in September 2009. 

Stevens Institute of Technology and 

the Naval Postgraduate School led 

the project in partnership with the 

International Council of Software 

Engineering, the IEEE Computer 

Society, the IEEE Systems Council, 

ACM, the National Defense Industrial 

Association, and the US Department 

of Defense’s Systems Engineering 

Research Center. 

CS representatives on the project 

were Thomas B. Hilburn, professor 

emeritus of software engineering at 

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, 

and Dick Fairley, principal associate 

at Software & Systems Engineering 

Associates and chair of the IEEE 

Computer Society Professional 

Activities Board Software and Systems 

Engineering Committee. 

The SEBoK Guide represents 

contributions from 70 authors 

around the world and comments 

from hundreds of reviewers. Primary 

funding came from the US Department 

of Defense, with significant contributions in kind coming from the 

authors’ home organizations.

In January 2011, the project opted 

for a wiki-based presentation to 

support the evolution of the document 

with technology and the maturing 

field of systems engineering. Systems 

engineers are invited to use SEBoK 

in their professional efforts and to 

comment on it in the wiki. BKCASE 

expects the SEBoK Guide to receive 

minor updates twice a year and major 

updates every third year. 

IEEE AND IEEE CS LAUNCH TRYCOMPUTING.ORG

I

EEE and the IEEE Computer Society launched a new online computing education portal in September. TryComputing.org makes 

global computing education resources available for pre-university 

teachers, school counselors, parents, and students. The site, intended 

to build on the successes of its counterpart, TryEngineering.org, 

features information about academic and career preparation in 

computing. 

TryComputing.org includes profiles of computing professionals and students, a computing career cloud tool, an accredited 

computing degree program search, and lesson plans. It provides 

information about the wide range of career options available in 

the evolving computing field. Visitors get a glimpse into the life 

and work of everyday computing professionals and undergraduate students, and meet computing heroes who have made 

significant contributions to the field through a series of engaging 

profiles. The computing career cloud tool suggests careers for visitors to explore further on the site according to their personal 

interests.

The portal supports academic preparation in computing through 

descriptions of popular computing majors and a searchable database 

of accredited computing degree programs worldwide. Additionally, it 

offers career preparation guidance by suggesting pre-university 

coursework and listing extracurricular involvement opportunities 

such as competitions and scholarships. 

TryComputing.org includes a series of lesson plans to help preuniversity educators introduce essential computing concepts to 

their students. The plans include all of the information necessary 

for a teacher to successfully implement these activities in the classroom, such as background information on each topic, step-by-step 

instructions, lists of necessary materials, student worksheets, and 

references to education standards. Teachers can also rate and 

review lesson plans featured on the site.

The computing education portal was developed through a partnership between the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Educational 

Activities Board with funding from the IEEE New Initiatives 

Committee.

Systems Engineering Body of 

Knowledge Version 1.0 

Is Available

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CALL AND CALENDAR

0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society NOVEMBER 2012 99

CALLS FOR ARTICLES 

FOR COMPUTER

Computer seeks submissions 

for a June 2013 special issue on big 

data, exploring aspects of discovery, 

productivity, and policy, with a focus 

on their socioethical implications.

This special issue will address 

how deeply personal data, such as 

how often and with whom we communicate using our cell phones or 

other digital devices; our location; 

what products and services we buy; 

where we eat, sleep, and work every 

day; and our photos and videos will 

likely be scrutinized in the context of 

data-driven decision making. In a way, 

we will be trading our privacy for a 

new kind of “surveillance” based on 

the premise of customer care.

The guest editors seek varied perspectives regarding the challenges, 

possibilities, and benefi ts of big data. 

They particularly welcome articles 

that feature qualitative assessments, 

case studies from government agencies, perspectives from Internet search 

companies and other hardware and 

software vendors, predictive studies 

demonstrating paradigm shifts, and 

social impact research. 

Articles should appeal to a broad 

interdisciplinary audience or policy 

professionals in the information and 

communications technology sector. 

The writing should be original, avoiding long discussions about theories, 

theorems, algorithms, or mathematical notations. All manuscripts are 

subject to peer review on both technical merit and relevance to Computer’s 

readership. Accepted papers will be 

professionally edited for content and 

style.

The guest editors for this special 

issue are Katina Michael (katina@

uow.edu.au), an associate professor 

on the Faculty of Informatics at the 

University of Wollongong, Australia, 

and Keith Miller (miller.keith@uis.

edu), a professor in the Department 

of Computer Science at the University 

of Illinois Springfi eld.

Paper submissions are due by 15 

January 2013. Please email the guest 

editors a brief description of the article 

you plan to submit by 15 December 2012. Visit www.computer.org/

computer/cfp6 to view the complete 

call for papers.

For author guidelines and information on how to submit a manuscript, 

visit www.computer.org/portal/web/

peerreviewmagazines/computer.

Computer seeks submissions for an 

October 2013 special issue on multicore memory coherence.

As we enter an era of large multicore systems, the question of efficiently supporting a shared memory 

model has become more important. 

Massively parallel architectures lacking coherent shared memory have 

enjoyed great success in niche applications such as 3D rendering, but 

general programming developers still 

demand the convenience of a shared 

memory abstraction.

Effi ciently using the Message Passing Interface requires that individual 

computation tasks must be relatively 

large to overcome communication 

latencies. It becomes diffi cult to use 

the MPI at the fi ne-grained level when 

fast on-chip communication is available. Higher-level mechanisms like 

MapReduce or shard-based databases 

are popular in particular application 

domains, though researchers have 

not yet effi ciently applied them at the 

chip/node level. 

This special issue will focus on 

approaches to providing scalable, 

shared on-chip memory, paramount 

in a future where individual nodes 

will have on the order of 1,000 cores 

each.

Suggested topics include but are 

not limited to private and shared 

cache hierarchies; scalable memory 

coherence protocols, directorybased and otherwise; data layout and 

placement techniques; on-chip interconnects to support shared-memory 

abstractions; and hardware, software, 

and hybrid approaches.

Articles are due by 1 March 2013.

Visit www.computer.org/computer/

cfp10 to view the complete call for 

papers.

CALLS FOR ARTICLES 

FOR OTHER IEEE CS 

PUBLICATIONS

IEEE Pervasive Computing plans an 

October-December 2013 special issue 

on cloud computing.

SUBMISSION

INSTRUCTIONS

The Call and Calendar section lists conferences, symposia, and workshops that 

the IEEE Computer Society sponsors or 

cooperates in presenting.

Visit www.computer.org/conferences 

for instructions on how to submit conference or call listings as well as a more 

complete listing of upcoming computingrelated conferences.

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CALL AND CALENDAR

100 COMPUTER

Arguably, two of the most important technological developments of 

the past few years are the emergence 

of mobile and cloud computing. By 

shifting the hardware and staffing 

costs of managing computational 

infrastructure to third parties such 

as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, 

cloud computing has made it possible 

for small organizations and individuals to deploy world-scale services; 

all they need to pay is the marginal 

cost of actual resource usage. At the 

same time, the deployment of 3G 

and 4G networks, rapid adoption of 

feature-rich smartphones, and growing integration of computation into 

consumer products such as cars and 

home appliances have brought mobile 

and pervasive computing into the 

mainstream.

This special issue aims to explore 

the intersections of these two trends. 

Mobile and embedded devices make 

it possible for users to access cloudbased services and data anywhere and 

anytime, extending their reach into 

everyday life. Simultaneously, cloud 

computing offers a natural platform 

to remedy the lack of local resources 

in mobile and pervasive devices while 

enabling resource-intensive nextgeneration applications. 

Welcomed are original, highquality submissions addressing all 

aspects of this field, as long as the 

connection to the focus topic is clear 

and emphasized. 

Articles are due 1 December 

2012. Visit www.computer.org/portal/

web/computingnow/pccfp4 to view 

the complete call for papers.

IEEE Internet Computing plans a 

September/October 2013 special issue 

on dynamic collective work.

As the Internet has changed the 

way in which data circulates, we 

have shifted from a world of paper 

documents to one of online documents, databases, and provenance 

systems. This has also increased the 

size and complexity of systems that 

support today’s globally distributed, 

rapidly changing, and agile collaborative enterprises. Such systems are 

becoming increasingly federated and 

are generating a huge amount of data 

at different granularity levels that 

include tweets, blog posts, instant 

messages, Facebook updates, and 

other social media content. These systems and data are fueling explosive 

growth in dynamic collective work in 

the healthcare, insurance, banking, 

and other industries.

Dynamic and collective activities 

are characterized by their flexibility 

and people-driven nature. Automobile insurance claims handling, order 

processing of prescription drugs, hospital patient case management, and 

recovery and response assistance 

during natural disasters are just a few 

examples. In these and other tasks, 

various factors determine the set of 

actions that must be performed and 

the order in which they’re executed, 

including human judgment and document contents. 

This special issue seeks original 

articles describing research efforts 

and experiences concerning Internetsupported dynamic collective work. 

Articles are due 4 January 2013.

Visit www.computer.org/portal/web/

computingnow/iccfp5 to view the 

complete call for papers.

IEEE Micro plans a July/August 

2013 special issue on reliability.

Over the past decade, designers 

have sought better ways to balance 

power, performance, and cost. Of 

these, power has emerged as a firstorder design challenge. In the coming 

era, this challenge may be subsumed 

by that of building robust and reliable 

systems. As technology advances, 

systems are becoming increasingly 

susceptible to transient errors such 

as timing violations, parameter variations, and aging. Without innovations 

in the areas of microprocessor and 

software reliability, future systems 

may face continuous failure. Thus, 

we need new computing paradigms 

that incorporate adaptive techniques 

at both the hardware and software 

layers to ensure resilient execution. 

The system, as a whole, must dynamically detect and recover from errors 

to meet historically established 

high reliability standards without 

exceeding power budgets and cost 

constraints or violating performance 

targets. 

This issue seeks original articles 

on all topics related to reliability that 

span the layers in the system stack, 

from device, circuit, and architecture design to the role of software 

in enabling robust and reliable 

computing.

EVENTS IN 2012 & 2013

December 2012

1-5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MICRO-45

3-6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CLOUDCOM 2012

5-7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RTSS 2012

6-8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . APSCC 2012

10-12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ICIOS 2012

11-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ICDM 2012

17-19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SOCA 2012

17-20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DASC 2012

19-21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HIPC 2012

January 2013

15-18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WACV 2013

28-30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ICOIN 2013

28-31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ICNC 2013

February 2013

23-27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . HPCA 2013

MICRO-45

T he 45th Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture brings 

together researchers and industrial designers in the fields of microarchitecture, 

compilers, and systems. It will cover topics 

such as network-on-chip architectures, 

near-threshold computing, and security 

and privacy.

MICRO-45 takes place 1-5 December 

in Vancouver. Visit www.microsymposia.

org/micro45 for more information.

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High Performance Computing, Pune, 

India; www.hipc.org

JANUARY 2013

15-18 Jan: WACV 2013, IEEE Workshop on Applications of Computer 

Vision, Clearwater Beach, Florida; 

http://cvl.cse.sc.edu/wacv2013/index.

html

28-30 Jan: ICOIN 2013, 2013 Int’l 

Conf. on Information Networking,

Bangkok, Thailand; www.icoin.org

28-31 Jan: ICNC 2013, Int’l Conf. 

on Computing, Networking and 

Communications, San Diego; www.

conf-icnc.org/2013

FEBRUARY 2013

23-27 Feb: HPCA 2013, IEEE Int’l 

Symp. on High-Performance Computer Architecture, Shenzhen, China; 

www.cs.utah.edu/~lizhang/HPCA19/

index.html

6-8: APSCC 2012, IEEE Asia-Pacific 

Services Computing Conf., Guilin, 

China; http://grid.hust.edu.cn/

apscc2012

10-12 Dec: ICIOS 2012, 1st IEEE Int’l 

Conf. on Internet Operating Systems, Irvine, California; http://icios.

wordpress.com

11-14 Dec: ICDM 2012, IEEE Conf. 

on Data Mining, Brussels; http://

icdm2012.ua.ac.be

17-19 Dec: SOCA 2012, 5th EEE Conf. 

on Service-Oriented Computing and 

Applications, Taipei, Taiwan; http://

conferences.computer.org/soca

17-20 Dec: DASC 2012, 10th IEEE Int’l 

Conf. on Dependable, Autonomic 

and Secure Computing, Changzhou, 

China; http://cse.stfx.ca/~dasc2012

19-21 Dec: HIPC 2012, Int’l Conf. on 

Articles are due 8 January 2013.

Visit http://www.computer.org/portal/

web/computingnow/micfp4 to view 

the complete call for papers. 

IEEE Internet Computing plans a 

November/December 2013 special 

issue on smart cities.

Smart cities are currently the 

focus of a broad research community as well as of many government 

and industry innovation agendas. 

The Internet plays a fundamental 

role in communication, information 

sharing and processing, data transfer and analysis, and distributed 

computing in many of today’s cities. 

The rise of the Internet of Things 

and the large-scale adoption of Web 

technologies in urban environments 

have proved that Internet-based solutions can successfully address smart 

cities’ multifaceted, cross-domain 

challenges.

This special issue seeks submissions about recent or ongoing 

research efforts and experiences in 

applying Internet technologies to realize the smart city vision.

Email the guest editors (ic6-2013@

computer.org)a brief description 

of the article you plan to submit by 

15 February 2013. Articles are due 

1 March 2013. Visit www.computer.

org/portal/web/computingnow/iccfp6 

to view the complete call for papers.

CALENDAR

DECEMBER 2012

1-5 Dec: MICRO 2012, IEEE/ACM Int’l 

Symp. on Microarchitecture, Vancouver; www.microsymposia.org/

micro45

3-6 Dec: CLOUDCOM 2012, 4th IEEE 

Int’l Conf. on Cloud Computing Technology and Science, Taipei, Taiwan; 

www.cloudcom.org

5-7 Dec: RTSS 2012, 33rd IEEE RealTime Systems Symp., San Juan, Puerto 

Rico; www.rtss.org

Showcase Your 

Multimedia Content 

on Computing Now!

IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications

seeks computer graphics-related 

multimedia content (videos, animations, 

simulations, podcasts, and so on) to 

feature on its Computing Now page, 

www.computer.org/portal/web/

computingnow/cga.

If you’re interested, contact us at 

cga@computer.org. All content will be 

reviewed for relevance and quality.

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102 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 

WILMINGTON, COMPUTER SCIENCE

(ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, TENURETRACK). Vacancy 13F008 Starts August 2013. Ph.D. in Computer Science or 

closely related area required. Emphasis 

in computer graphics, visualization, animation or closely related area. Details at 

http://uncw.edu/hr/employment-epa.

html Priority consideration date: January 2, 2013. EEO/AA Employer. Women 

and Minorities encouraged to apply.

UNIVERSITY AT ALBANY. Open Rank 

Faculty / Computer Science Dept. The 

Computer Science Department at the 

University at Albany – SUNY is seeking 

candidates for an open rank tenure-track 

faculty position beginning Fall 2013. We 

seek candidates whose research involves 

the design and implementation of data 

analytics techniques or systems that 

can be used in other areas of Computer 

Science and/or in other disciplines. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in Computer 

Science or closely related discipline. 

Candidates for Associate or Full Professor 

positions must also have a strong record 

of funded research. For a complete job 

description and application procedures, 

visit: http://albany.interviewexchange.

com/jobofferdetails.jsp?JOBID=35201.

Questions regarding the position may 

be addressed to search2013@cs.albany.

edu. The Computer Science Department 

at UAlbany offers B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science. For additional information about the department, 

please visit http://www.cs.albany.edu.

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. 

LOUIS, FACULTY POSITIONS. The 

Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Washington University in 

St. Louis seeks outstanding tenure-track 

faculty in all areas of computer science 

and engineering at the assistant professor level. Exceptional candidates at the 

associate and full professor levels will 

also be considered. The department 

plans to grow its faculty size by 50% in 

the coming years. We seek multiple talented and highly motivated individuals 

who will build transformative research 

programs, both through work in the 

core disciplines of computer science 

and computer engineering and through 

interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers in areas such as biomedicine, 

engineering, and the sciences. Successful candidates must show exceptional 

promise for research leadership and 

a strong commitment to high-quality 

teaching. Candidates will be expected to 

publish their research in peer-reviewed 

journals, to teach, and to participate in 

department and University service. For 

full information about this search and 

application instructions, please visit: 

http://cse.wustl.edu/aboutthedepartment/Pages/OpenFacultyPositions.aspx. 

Applicants should hold a doctorate in 

Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field. Washington 

University in St. Louis is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer 

and invites applications from all qualified candidates. Employment eligibility 

verification required upon employment.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER

SCIENCE. The School of Engineering 

at the University of California at Merced 

invites applications from distinguished 

scholars and teachers for a tenured or a 

tenure-track faculty position in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. 

We are seeking candidates with demonstrated excellence in the areas of theory 

of computing, software engineering, 

and programming languages. However, 

exceptionally qualified candidates in 

other areas of Computer Science and 

Engineering will also be considered. A 

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field and 

demonstrated excellence in research are 

required. To apply, or for more information, please visit our website: http://jobs.

ucmerced.edu/n/academic/position.

jsf?positionId=4263 AA/EOE.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 

TECHNOLOGY, FACULTY POSITIONS. The Department of Electrical 

Engineering and Computer Science 

(EECS) seeks candidates for faculty positions starting in September 2013. Appointment will be at the assistant or 

untenured associate professor level. In 

special cases, a senior faculty appointment may be possible. Faculty duties 

include teaching at the graduate and 

undergraduate levels, research, and supervision of student research. We will 

consider candidates with backgrounds 

and interests in any area of electrical 

engineering and computer science. 

Faculty appointments will commence 

after completion of a doctoral degree. 

Candidates must register with the EECS 

search website at https://eecs.mit.edu/

Computer, and must submit application 

materials electronically to this website. 

Candidate applications should include a 

description of professional interests and 

goals in both teaching and research. 

Each application should include a curriculum vita and the names and addresses 

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

Assistant, Associate or Full Professor of Computer Science 

The Department of Computer Science seeks a productive scholar and dedicated teacher for a tenured or tenure-track position beginning August, 2013. The 

ideal candidate will hold a terminal degree in Computer Science or a closely 

related field and demonstrate scholarly capability and an established and active independent research agenda in one of several core areas of interest, including, but not limited to, game design and development, software engineering, computational biology, machine learning and large-scale data mining. A 

successful candidate will also exhibit a passion for teaching and mentoring 

at the graduate and undergraduate level. For position details and application 

information please visit: http://www.baylor.edu/hr/index.php?id=81302

Baylor, the world’s largest Baptist university, holds a Carnegie classification as a “high-research” institution.  Baylor’s mission is to educate men and 

women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community.  Baylor is 

actively recruiting new faculty with a strong commitment to the classroom 

and an equally strong commitment to discovering new knowledge as Baylor 

aspires to become a top tier research university while reaffirming and deepening its distinctive Christian mission as described in Pro Futuris (http://www.

baylor.edu/profuturis/).

Baylor is a Baptist university affiliated with the Baptist General Convention 

of Texas. As an AA/EEO employer, Baylor encourages minorities, women, 

veterans, and persons with disabilities to apply.

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NOVEMBER 2012 103

of three or more individuals who will 

provide letters of recommendation. Letter writers should submit their letters 

directly to MIT, preferably on the website or by mailing to the address below. 

Please submit a complete application by 

December 15, 2012. Send all materials 

not submitted on the website to: Professor Anantha Chandrakasan, Department 

Head, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute 

of Technology, Room 38-401, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. 

M.I.T. is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer.

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO. 

Computer Science and Engineering at 

UNR invites applications for a tenuretrack assistant professor faculty position 

starting July 1, 2013. More information 

can be found www.cse.unr.edu. Candidates with interest and expertise in 

big data/cloud computing, embedded 

systems, or computer games may be 

given preference. Applicant should be 

strongly committed to quality research 

and teaching, expect to develop a robust 

externally funded research program, supervise MS and PhD students, and participate in service and outreach. Review 

of applications will begin on January 15, 

2013. To apply https://www.unrsearch.

com/postings/11551. EEO/AA.

LEAD DEVELOPER. White Plains, NY. 

Develop application software for int’l 

rail travel provider. Master’s deg in Computer Science & 1 yr exp in job offered 

or as Java Developer req’d. Strong exp in 

Java, Servlets, JSP, JDBC, Spring, XML, JavaScript, Perl, HTML, DHTML req’d. Exp in 

AJAX, RSS & Web 2.0 technologies, SOAP 

technology, MySQL,Oracle & Eclipse 

req’d. Resumes to: Rail Europe, 44 S 

Broadway, 11th Fl, White Plains, NY 10601 

or email resumes to HR_Resources@

raileurope.com.

PROGRAMMER ANALYST. Dsgn, dvlp, 

test & implmt , Java, J2EE, Struts2, Tapestry, Oracle Spatial, Oracle intermedia, 

AWK, Oracle 9i/10g/11g , RAC, Req MS in 

Comp Sci, Engg or rel. Freq travel reqd. 

Mail resumes to Sunmerge Systems Inc, 

15 Corporate Place South, Ste 430, Piscataway, NJ 08854.

PROGRAMMER ANALYST. Iselin, 

NJ: Travel to multiple client locations 

nationwide to create, modify, maintain stored procedures for processing 

business logic (financial domain) for 

different modules according to user 

requirements using Sybase (T-SQL), 

Rapid SQL, PERL, JavaScript in multiplatform environment. Work with Oracle, PL SQL, DB2. Test, troubleshoot, 

The Department of Computer Science (CS@VT) at Virginia Tech seeks applicants for tenuretrack faculty positions in the following areas:

Associate Professor in Cybersecurity

The successful candidate will contribute to the research and graduate programs in the National

Capital Region (NCR) and collaborate with faculty at Virginia Tech’s campus in Blacksburg, VA.

This position adds to the collaboration in cybersecurity between the Department of Computer

Science and the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Candidates

should have research interests in systems and network security, trustworthy systems, software

security, information security and privacy, or other topics relevant to national critical infrastructure.

Candidates should have a record appropriate to an associate professor rank in scholarship,

leadership, and interdisciplinary collaboration in cybersecurity. Ideal candidates combine

cybersecurity with existing departmental strengths. See www.cs.vt.edu/FacultySearch for

additional information. 

The department collaborates with ECE in the newly established Ted and Karyn Hume Center for

National Security and Technology (www.cnst.ictas.vt.edu) and the NCR Program in Information

Assurance with an associated Executive Master's degree and a graduate certificate program. The

NCR campus (www.ncr.vt.edu) is located near the Washington D.C./Falls Church area and houses

the Virginia Tech Research Center (www.ncr.vt.edu/arlington) in Arlington, VA, enabling significant

research opportunities in cyber-security. The new facility is within walking distance of the NSF,

ONR, AFOSR, DARPA, and other agencies. 

Applications must be submitted online to https://jobs.vt.edu reference posting #0122357 or use

this direct link (listings.jobs.vt.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=196077). Applicant screening

will begin December 31, 2012 and continue until the position is filled. Inquiries should be directed

to Dr. Dennis Kafura, Search Committee Chair, kafura@cs.vt.edu.

Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

Blacksburg, VA

Full-time tenure-track position, at the rank of Assistant Professor, from candidates with

expertise in artificial intelligence having specific emphasis on machine learning or reasoning

under uncertainty. The department is in the process of making multiple hires over multiple years

in this area. Candidates should have a record of scholarship, leadership, and collaboration in

computing and interdisciplinary areas; demonstrated ability to contribute to teaching at the

undergraduate and graduate levels in AI and related subjects; sensitivity to issues of diversity in

the campus community; and the skills to establish and grow a multidisciplinary research group.

Early applications are encouraged. Applications must be submitted online to https://jobs.vt.edu

for posting #0122414.

The department is home to the Discovery Analytics Center (dac.cs.vt.edu), a university-wide

effort that brings together faculty with strengths in machine learning, big data, and data mining

applied to problems of national interest. There also are rich opportunities in a highly

collaborative department with strengths in HCI, HPC, computational biology and

bioinformatics, information retrieval, software engineering, CyberArts, and CS education.

Beyond the department, there are opportunities for collaboration in machine learning with

faculty in ECE and Statistics. Research on security and personal health informatics is possible

in collaboration with the VT-Carilion Research Institute associated with the VT-Carilion School

of Medicine. Applicant screening will begin December 31, 2012 and continue until the position

is filled. Inquiries should be directed to Dr. Doug Bowman, AI/ML Search Committee Chair,

bowman@vt.edu.

Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor in Systems

Blacksburg, VA

Candidates with research breadth and depth across several areas of computer systems, including

architecture, operating systems, and networking are sought and researchers in the areas of

compilers, run-time systems, and parallel and distributed systems are especially encouraged to

apply. Candidates should have a record of scholarship and collaboration in computing and

interdisciplinary areas; demonstrated ability to contribute to teaching at the undergraduate and

graduate levels; and sensitivity to issues of diversity in the campus community. Applications

must be submitted online to https://jobs.vt.edu for posting #0122413. Applicant screening will

begin December 31, 2012 and continue until the position is filled. Inquiries should be directed

to Dr. Kirk W. Cameron, Search Committee Chair, cameron@cs.vt.edu.

The Department of Computer Science (CS@VT) has 35 tenure-track research oriented faculty

including 12 NSF CAREER award winners, Ph.D. production among the top 30 in the USA, and

annual research expenditures exceeding $6.5 million. CS@VT is in the College of Engineering

whose undergraduate program was ranked 16th among all accredited engineering schools, and

sixth among public universities and whose graduate program was ranked 24th by US News &

World Report in fall 2012. In 2010, CS@VT was ranked 5th in the recruiting quality of

computer science undergraduate majors by the Wall Street Journal. Recently, the department has

attracted high-profile research funding including several multi-million dollar awards from

diverse sources, e.g., IARPA, NSF, DOE, and ARO.

Salary for suitably qualified applicants is competitive and commensurate with experience. 

Virginia Tech is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.

Faculty Positions Available in the

Department of Computer Science

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104 COMPUTER

maintain existing code. Reply to: Magnum Infotech, Inc., 33 Wood Avenue S, 

#600 Iselin NJ 08830.

CONSULTANT. F/T (Poughkeepsie, 

NY) Position involves travel to various 

unanticipated worksites up to 100% of 

the time anywhere in the United States. 

Must have Bach deg or the foreign equiv 

in Technology, Comp Sci & Engg, Comp 

Engg, or related with two (2) yrs of exp 

building dynamic websites, web applications and web services using ASP.Net, 

C#.Net, VB.Net, XML, Telerik Controls and 

SQL Server 2005. Send resume: Indotronix Int.l Corp., Recruiting (RS), 331 Main 

St, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.

ETL/DATA STAGE DEVELOPER sought 

by GSPANN Technologies, Inc. in Milpitas, CA w/ Master’s in Comp Sci or 

related. Responsibilities incl providing 

professional comp consulting services in 

form of systems analysis, dsgn & dvlpmt, 

systems integration &/or testing consulting. Mail resumes to 362 Fairview Way, 

Milpitas, CA 95035 attn: HR.

PRINCIPAL SYSTEMS ARCHITECT 

sought by Nexius Solutions Inc. (Allen, 

TX) w/ Comp/Electronic Engg or rltd 

deg w/ 5 yrs exp. Job duties: To decide 

on core network mgmt technological 

choices for wireless & telecommunications networks; identify product & technical reqmts & work w/potential suppliers. Lead dsgn, implmtn & integration of 

element mgmt systems & network mgmt 

system for devise. Possible relocation to 

Fairfax, VA. Mail Resumes to 1301 Central 

Expressway S., Ste 200, Allen, TX 75013. 

Attn HR coordinator.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER. (Vienna, VA) 

Analyze, dsgn, dvlp, test & implmt data 

warehouses, web based applics & applic 

systems & s/w using Oracle 8, Perl, C++, 

XML, ASP, Cold Fusion, WebSphere, Korn 

Shell Scripts, HTML, DHTML, JSP, JDBC, 

Using JumpStart, SunInstall, WebStart, 

KickStart & Symantec, Unix & Windows 

98/00/NT. Reqs MS Sci, Comp Sci or Business. Mail resumes to SMK Soft Inc., 8230 

Boone Blvd, Ste 430., Vienna, VA 22182

SOFTWARE ENGINEER, TEST ENGINEERING - Dev. framework for testing 

next-gen. Visual Analytics and Collaboration suite of software. Reqs BS or foreign equiv. deg. in Comp. Sci., Engg., or a 

rltd. field + 5 yrs of prog., post-bacc. exp., 

which includes 3 yrs of exp. in testing 

computer software utilizing a high-level 

programming language; designing and 

implementing automation frameworks; 

developing and maintaining automated 

tests; testing and profiling large-scale 

C++ systems; testing highly scalable Java 

and/or Ruby server systems that back 

dynamic, highly interactive web experiUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Illinois at 

Urbana-Champaign invites applications for faculty positions at all levels and in all areas of 

electrical and computer engineering, but with particular emphasis in the areas of bioinformatics and systems biology, controls, energy and power systems, nanoelectronics, nanophotonics 

devices, circuits and systems, computer systems, parallel computing, reliable computing, and 

distributed systems. Applications are encouraged from candidates whose research programs are 

in traditional as well as in nontraditional and interdisciplinary areas of electrical and computer 

engineering. The department is engaged in exciting new and expanding programs for research, 

education, and professional development, with strong ties to industry.

Applicants for positions at the assistant professor level must have an earned Ph.D. or equivalent degree, excellent academic credentials, and an outstanding ability to teach effectively at 

both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Successful candidates will be expected to initiate 

and carry out independent research and to perform academic duties associated with our B.S., 

M.S., and Ph.D. programs. Senior level appointments with tenure are available for persons of 

international stature.

Faculty in the department carry out research in a broad spectrum of areas and are supported 

by world-class facilities, including the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Information Trust 

Institute, the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, as well as several industrial centers and programs that foster international collaborations. The department has one of the leading programs in the United States, 

granting approximately 350 B.S. degrees, 100 M.S. degrees, and 60 Ph.D. degrees annually.

In order to ensure full consideration by the Search Committee, applications must be received 

by December 15, 2012. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications. Preferred starting date 

is August 16, 2013, but is negotiable. Applications can be submitted by going to http://jobs.

illinois.edu and uploading a cover letter, CV, research statement, and teaching statement, along 

with names of three references. For inquiry, please call 217-333-2302 or email ece-recruiting@

illinois.edu.

Illinois is an Affirmative Action /Equal Opportunity Employer and welcomes individuals with 

diverse backgrounds, experiences, and ideas who embrace and value diversity and inclusivity 

(www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu).

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY

Lecturer of Computer Science

The Department of Computer Science seeks a dedicated teacher and program advocate for a lecturer position beginning August, 2013. The ideal 

candidate will have a master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a 

related area, a commitment to undergraduate education, effective communication and organization skills, and industry/academic experience in 

game development, especially with graphics and/or engine development. 

For position details and application information please visit: http://www.

baylor.edu/hr/index.php?id=81302

Baylor, the world’s largest Baptist university, holds a Carnegie classification as a “high-research” institution.  Baylor’s mission is to educate men 

and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic 

excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community.  Baylor 

is actively recruiting new faculty with a strong commitment to the classroom and an equally strong commitment to discovering new knowledge 

as Baylor aspires to become a top tier research university while reaffirming and deepening its distinctive Christian mission as described in Pro 

Futuris (http://www.baylor.edu/profuturis/).

Baylor is a Baptist university affiliated with the Baptist General Convention 

of Texas.  As an AA/EEO employer, Baylor encourages minorities, women, 

veterans, and persons with disabilities to apply. 

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NOVEMBER 2012 105

ences; and creating test specifications 

and test plans. Any suitable combination 

of education, training, or experience is 

acceptable. Position at Tableau Software 

in Kirkland, WA. To apply, please e-mail 

resume and cover letter to jobstableau@

tableausoftware.com.

QUALITY ASSURANCE ANALYST - Use 

of SQL to test custom built s/ware applics to ensure bug fixes & new features 

work per specifications; create & manage 

tickets using co. ticket tracking system 

for in-house applics; provide training to 

existing/new users, applic support team 

& dvlpmt members on existing applics/

features; lead the applic support team & 

assist w/solving issues reported via the 

applic support ticketing system; & automate existing test cases. Min. req. MS in 

Info Technology. Resumes to Job Location: InnerWorkings, Inc. 600 W. Chicago 

Ave., Ste 850, Chicago, IL 60654.

SERVICES CONSULTANT (Islandia NY & 

locs throughout US). Understand client’s 

bus. needs & collaborate w/ architect to 

prep dsgn docs. Dvlp, implmt & config 

CA Clarity PPM solution. REQS: Bachelor’s or foreign equiv in Comp Sci, Math, 

Engg (any field), Bus. (any field) or rel + 2 

yrs exp in job &/or rel occup; must have 

exp w/ Implmntg & configuring CA Clarity PPM solution; Engaging in customerfacing prof services consulting; Certified 

as CA Clarity PPM Bus. Analyst &/or CA 

Clarity PPM Professional; Frequent travel 

reqd; Work from home benefit available. Send resume to: Althea Wilson, CA 

Technologies, One CA Plaza, Islandia, NY 

11749, Refer to Requisition #29522.

PROGRAMMER ANALYSTS (multiple 

positions): Analyze, dsgn, dvlp, test & support applications/systems based on bus./

Nominations and applications are being

solicited for the position of Head of the

Bradley Department of Electrical and

Computer Engineering (ECE). Candidates

should have demonstrated leadership and

management skills to lead the department to

become one of the premier ECE departments

in the nation. Candidates must qualify for

tenure at the rank of professor and should have

achieved distinction in university-level

teaching and research and have a record of

superior scholarship, administrative ability,

and leadership. 

Complete position information, application

procedures, and the review process are

available at 
	. Please

apply online at 


	, posting

.

EO/AA

DEPARTMENT HEAD

Florida International University is a multi-campus public research university 

located in Miami, a vibrant, international city. FIU is recognized as a Carnegie engaged university. Its colleges and schools offer more than 180 bachelor’s, 

master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as computer science, engineering, 

international relations, architecture, law, and medicine. As one of South Florida’s anchor institutions, FIU is worlds ahead in its local and global engagement, 

finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes 

research as a major component of its mission and enrolls 48,000 students in two 

campus and three centers including FIU Downtown on Brickell and the Miami 

Beach Urban Studios. More than 160,000 alumni live and work in South Florida. 

For more information about FIU, visit http://www.fiu.edu/.

The School of Computing and Information Sciences seeks exceptionally qualified candidates for multiple tenure-track and tenured faculty positions at all levels as well as non-tenure track faculty positions at the level of Instructor.

TENURE TRACK/TENURED POSITIONS (JOB ID# 505004)

We seek well-qualified candidates in all areas of Computer Science and researchers in the areas of programming languages, compilers, databases, information 

retrieval, computer architecture, scientific computing, big data, natural language 

processing, computational linguistics, health informatics, and robotics, are particularly encouraged to apply. Preference will be given to candidates who will 

enhance or complement our existing research strengths. 

Ideal candidates for junior positions should have a record of exceptional research 

in their early careers. Candidates for senior positions must have an active and 

proven record of excellence in funded research, publications, and professional 

service, as well as a demonstrated ability to develop and lead collaborative research projects. In addition to developing or expanding a high-quality research 

program, all successful applicants must be committed to excellence in teaching 

at both graduate and undergraduate levels. An earned Ph.D. in Computer Science 

or related disciplines is required.

NON-TENURE TRACK INSTRUCTOR POSITIONS (JOB ID# 505000)

We seek well-qualified candidates in all areas of Computer Science and Information Technology. Ideal candidates must be committed to excellence in teaching 

a variety of courses at the undergraduate level. A graduate degree in Computer 

Science or related disciplines is required; significant prior teaching and industry 

experience and/or a Ph.D. in Computer Science is preferred.

Florida International University (FIU), the state university of Florida in Miami, 

is ranked by the Carnegie Foundation as a comprehensive doctoral research university with high research activity. The School of Computing and Information 

Sciences (SCIS) is a rapidly growing program of excellence at the University, 

with 36 faculty members and over 1,500 students, including 75 Ph.D. students. 

SCIS offers B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, an M.S. degree 

in Telecommunications and Networking, and B.S., B.A., and M.S. degrees in 

Information Technology. SCIS has received approximately $17.5M in the last 

four years in external research funding, has six research centers/clusters with 

first-class computing infrastructure and support, and enjoys broad and dynamic 

industry and international partnerships.

HOW TO APPLY:

Applications, including a letter of interest, contact information, curriculum vitae, academic transcript, and the names of at least three references, should be 

submitted directly to the FIU Careers website at https://jobsearch.fiu.edu; refer 

to Job ID# 505004 for tenure-track or tenured positions and to Job ID# 505000

for instructor positions. The application review process will begin on January 

7, 2013, and will continue until the position is filled. Further information can 

be obtained from the School website http://www.cis.fiu.edu, or by e-mail to 

recruit@cis.fiu.edu.

FIU is a member of the State University System of Florida and is an Equal Opportunity, Equal Access Affirmative Action Employer.

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106 COMPUTER

end user reqmts utilizing knowl of & exp 

w/Oracle 10g/11g; SQL Server 2005/2008; 

SQL; PL/SQL; JAVA; J2EE; Web Sphere; 

Web Services; SOA; XML; TOAD; SQL DEVELOPER; HTML; Apache; IIS; Java Script; 

CSS; DHTML; Windows NT/XP; & UNIX. 

Travel req. to unanticipated client sites in 

USA. Min. Req. MS in Comp Sci, Eng. discipline, or related. Resumes to Job Location: Aarkay Technologies Inc., 852 Gold 

Hill Rd., Ste. 205, Fort Mill, SC 29708.

BUSINESS ANALYST needed to develop and maintain financial databases and 

computer software systems. Job located 

in Midland, TX. Mail resumes to Midland 

Central LLC, 1203 N. Lamesa Road, Midland, TX 79701. No walk-ins.

DBA LEADS Troy, MI area. Work w/ database system clusters on mainframes, db2 

UDB, & IMS w/ COBOL, CICS & JAVA apps. 

Plan & execute database related projects 

like database system upgrades, data migration, normalization, performance tuning, high-availability & disaster recovery. 

Must possess a MS in Software Engg, 

Computer Engg, Computer Sci or related 

+ 36 months as a Computer Software Professional. Travel/reloc as req. Send res to 

Unified Business Technologies, Inc. and 

designate position to 3250 West Big Beaver Rd, Ste 329, Troy MI 48084.

Department of Electrical Engineering 

and Computer Science

University of Kansas: 

Computer Science/Computer Engineering Faculty

The University of Kansas (KU) Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer 

Science (EECS) seeks outstanding individuals for three tenure track positions in the 

disciplines of computer engineering or computer science. Successful candidates are 

expected to contribute to the development of academic and research programs and 

to contribute to the research community. Successful candidates must have an earned 

doctorate or equivalent in computer science, computer engineering, or related fields 

at the time of joining the department.

EECS leads the KU School of Engineering with 36 faculty members and a research 

volume of over $10 million per year. The EECS department offers undergraduate 

and graduate degrees in electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, interdisciplinary computing, and information technology. The department has 

approximately 450 undergraduate and 250 graduate students. The EECS faculty 

collaborate on research opportunities that cross language, compiler, architecture, 

high-performance computing, and scientific computing topics, among others, within and outside the department.

Operating Systems

We are interested in those candidates exploring new ideas in advanced operating systems, distributed systems, file and storage systems, embedded systems, resilient systems, virtualization, and multi-core computing, with the focus on computer systems.

Three letters of recommendation and questions should be sent separately to Dr. 

Prasad Kulkarni, by emailing to prasadk@ku.edu.

Bioinformatics

This search is focused on those with expertise in machine learning, data mining, 

statistical learning, distributed databases, big data analytics; all focused on computational life sciences problems. Other areas of computer science focused on computational life sciences maybe considered for exceptional applicants. Candidates 

are sought for assistant and associate professor level. Demonstrated research and 

academic leadership is required for the senior rank. KU strongly supports leading 

life sciences research in all aspects. There are many interdisciplinary collaboration 

opportunities involving different schools at KU using high throughput sequencing, 

high content screening, mass spectrometry, and brain imaging, to name a few examples. KU Medical Center is an NIH designated Cancer Center. Three letters of 

recommendation and questions should be sent separately to Dr. Jun Huan by emailing to EECS_bio_search@ku.edu.

High Performance Computing

This search is focused on those with expertise in high performance computing 

(HPC), including parallel computing on HPC systems employing multi-core, GPU, 

or special-purpose architectures, parallel and distributed algorithms, and dataintensive computing. Exceptional candidates in related areas of computer science/

engineering focused on computational science may also be considered. Candidates 

are sought for the assistant professor level. There are many collaboration opportunities with established language, compiler, architecture, and scientific computing 

researchers both within and outside the department. There are many interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities involving different schools at KU with high performance computing needs, such as the KU Medical Center, a NIH designated Cancer 

Center. Three letters of recommendation and questions should be sent separately to 

Dr. Joe Evans by emailing to evans@ku.edu.

The KU School of Engineering is rapidly expanding and plans to add thirty new 

faculty lines in the next 5 years with expand research and teaching facilities. The 

University of Kansas is focused on four key campus-wide strategic initiatives: (1) 

Sustaining the Planet, Powering the World; (2) Promoting Well-Being, Finding 

Cures; (3) Building Communities, Expanding Opportunities; and (4) Harnessing Information, Multiplying Knowledge. For more information, see http://www.provost.

ku.edu/planning/themes/. Successful candidates will address KU’s themes.

The appointment will be effective as negotiated. Applications and nominations 

should be submitted at http://www.ku.edu/employment/ under faculty. Applications 

should include a letter of application, curriculum vita, a statement of research interests and future plans, a statement of teaching interests and future plans. Applications will be reviewed beginning December 1, 2012 and will be accepted until the 

position is filled. Equal Opportunity Employer M/F/D/V

THE UNIVERSITY

OF MINNESOTA–

TWIN CITIES 

The University of Minnesota – Twin 

Cities invites applications for faculty 

positions in Electrical and Computer 

Engineering from individuals with a 

strong background in core areas of ECE, 

particularly (1) power and energy systems 

and (2) systems, communications, and 

controls, with interests in bio- or medicalimaging, big data, information processing, 

or systems biology. Women and other 

underrepresented groups, and those 

with strong interdisciplinary interests, 

are especially encouraged to apply.  An 

earned doctorate in an appropriate 

discipline is required. Rank and salary 

will be commensurate with qualifications 

and experience.  Positions are open until 

filled, but for full consideration, apply at 

http://www.ece.umn.edu/ by January 

4, 2013. The University of Minnesota 

is an equal 

opportunity 

employer and 

educator.

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NOVEMBER 2012 107

BT AMERICAS, INC. has an opening 

for Sr. Security Systems Engineer in El 

Segundo, CA to provide support in life 

service Security & Network solutions. Requires MS degree + 2 yrs exp. less than 

5% domestic/int’l travel. Apply online at 

www.btamericascareers.com Job Code 

#3822. EOE. 

SR. SOFTWARE DEVELOPER. IT Company in Calabasas, CA has an opening 

for Sr. Software Developer. Define the 

software system architecture which include high level design, coding, defining 

test strategy and security restrictions, 

among others. F/T, requires Bachelor’s 

Degree plus 5 yrs. Experience in job or 

related occupation. If interested please 

send this ad and your resume to Pro Softnet Corp., Attn: HR 26115 Mureau Rd. Ste. 

A, Calabasas, CA 91302.

ENGAGEMENT MANAGER. Jacksonville, FL: Future Technology Associates 

seeks Engagement Manager to oversee 

overall planning, investment brief authoring, budgeting, resource allocation, 

design, development & resource mgmt 

for all phases; Understand & apply complex concepts from computer science 

in business context for solving business or operational issues; Req Master’s 

degree in Info Systems Mgmt or related 

field & 2 yrs exp in each of the following: Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite; 

Implementing best practices in systems 

development; SDLC best practices; Enterprise data mgmt concepts, designs & 

implementations; Agile Methodologies; 

Project Mgmt. Also requires travel &/or 

relocation to client sites at unanticipated locations anywhere in the U.S. Worker 

may telecommute 1-2 days/wk. Email resume to trendell@fta-llc.com.

IT PROFESSIONALS. TechDemocracy, 

LLC has multiple openings for the following positions at its office in Edison, NJ, 

and unanticipated sites throughout the 

U.S.: § Software Engineers - Gather and 

analyze user requirements, design and 

develop new software. Handle systems 

development of life cycle. Experience 

Required. § Computer Programmers/ 

Programmer Analysts - Work under supervision or independently, gather data 

prepare requirements and specifications, 

design detailed flowcharts and generate 

standardized code. Test, debug, and install the operating programs and procedures. Experience required. § Technical 

Systems Architects -Perform architectural design and integration for complex, 

cross-functional systems. Identify opportunities for improvements to meet 

customer needs. Experience required. 

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Faculty Positions

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, 

HKUST (http://www.cse.ust.hk/) has more than 40 faculty 

members, recruited from major universities and research 

institutions around the world, and about 800 students 

(including about 200 postgraduate students). The medium 

of instruction is English. In 2012, we were ranked 13th

among all Computer Science and Engineering Departments 

worldwide according to QS World University Ranking, and 

26th according to Academic Ranking of World Universities.

The Department will have at least one tenure-track faculty 

opening at Assistant Professor/Associate Professor/Professor 

levels for the 2013–2014 academic year. We are looking for 

candidates with interests in Security, or Systems. Strong 

candidates in core computer science and engineering research 

areas will also be considered. Applicants at Assistant Professor 

level should have an earned PhD degree and demonstrated 

potential in teaching and research.

Salary is highly competitive and will be commensurate with 

qualifications and experience. Fringe benefits include medical 

and dental benefits and annual leave. Housing benefits will also 

be provided where applicable. For appointment at Assistant 

Professor/Associate Professor level, initial appointment will 

normally be on a three-year contract. A gratuity will be 

payable upon completion of contract.

Applications should be sent through e-mail including a cover 

letter, curriculum vitae (including the names and contact 

information of at least three references), a research statement 

and a teaching statement (all in PDF format) to csrecruit@cse.

ust.hk. Priority will be given to applications received by 28 

February 2013. Applicants will be promptly acknowledged 

through e-mail upon receiving the electronic application 

material.

(Information provided by applicants will be used for recruitment and 

other employment-related purposes.)

Department of 

Computer and 

Information Sciences

Temple University

Tenure Track Faculty

Applications are invited for tenuretrack, open rank, faculty positions in the 

Department of Computer and Information 

Sciences at Temple University. 

The junior position is in the software 

systems area, which includes 

r Software Engineering and 

Applications, 

r Database Systems, and 

r Programming Languages.

The senior position for Associate or Full 

Professor is open to all areas of computer 

science/engineering. Applicants for the 

senior position are expected to have an 

outstanding track record. 

Please submit applications with all 

requested information online at 

http://academicjobsonline.org.

For further information check 

http://www.cis.temple.edu or send email 

to search committee chair Dr. Eugene 

Kwatny at gkwatny@temple.edu. Review 

of candidates will begin on January 2, 

2013 and will continue until the positions 

are filled. Temple University is an equal 

opportunity, equal access, affirmative 

action employer.

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108 COMPUTER

§ Management Systems Analysts- Develop, implement design of system level 

requirements. Finalize systems requirements and application architecture. Build 

process and code migration on various 

platforms. Experience required. § Security Analysts- Plan, coordinate and implement security measures for information 

systems. Analyze and develop appropriate responses to computer security 

breaches. Experience required. Attractive compensation. Travel and relocation 

possible. Please mail resume, with salary 

history and position applied for to: TechDemocracy, LLC, 499 Thornall Street, 3rd 

Fl., Edison, New Jersey 08837. Attention: 

Human Resources.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER (Columbus, 

OH) Dsgn, implmt, test & maintain applications using Oracle SQL, PL/SQL, 

JAVA Oracle 11g, 10g, 9i, Performs Oracle Application 11i & R12 admin tasks, 

Backup & Recovery using Rman, Rac, 

Asm, Dataguard, Streams, Oracle Forms, 

Perl, Shell scripts, Unix & Windows 

XP/2000/2003/2008. Must be willing to 

travel & reloc. Reqs MS Comp Sci, Eng 

or rel. Mail resumes to Technology Software, 1505 Bethel Rd, Ste 301, Columbus, 

OH 43220.

SIEMENS PLM SOFTWARE INC. has an 

opening in Shoreview, MN for Software 

Engineer Adv. to design, develop, modify & implement software programming 

for products. Requires BS & 3 yrs. exp. in 

prof. software development. Email resumes to PLMCareers@ugs.com & refer 

to Job code UGS97. EOE.

SIEMENS PLM SOFTWARE INC. has 

an opening in Plano, TX & various unanticipated worksites thru-out the U.S. for 

Solution Architect to implement, deploy 

& consult on Teamcenter solutions. Requires BS & 5 yrs. exp. & 75% domestic 

travel. Email resumes to PLMCareers@

ugs.com & refer to Job code UGS99. EOE.

SIEMENS PLM SOFTWARE INC. has an 

opening in Milford, OH for Software Engineer to work on NX Modeling software 

development projects. Requires MS or 

completion of degree reqs towards MS 

& Graduate coursework. Email resumes 

to PLMCareers@ugs.com & refer to Job 

code UGS117. EOE.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER UI/UX (N. 

Reading, MA) Must hv BS in CS, Engg, 

s/ware dvlpmt, math or info systems or 

foreign equiv & 3 yrs exp in job offd or 

in s/ware dvlpmt including 1 yr of user 

interface dvlpmt in Flex; or a MS in CS, 

Engg, s/ware dvlpmt, math or info systems or foreign equiv & 2 yr exp in job 

offd or in s/ware dvlpmt including 1 yr 

of user interface dvlpmt in Flex. Send 

resumes to Mary Beth Christopher, Kiva 

Systems, Inc., 300 River Park Dr., N. Reading, MA 01864 or to mchristopher@kivasystems.com. Refer to job#003.

SENIOR DB2 DEVELOPER. Miami, FL. 

MSc or BSc plus 5 yrs exp req’d. AIX/UDB, 

Unix, stored DB2 procedure & SQL exp 

req’d. Architectural knwldg & exp of IBM 

systems w/ multi-partitioning environment at Enterprise level req’d. Strong 

data modeling & analytical exp req’d. 

TracFone Wireless, resumes only via 

email to: PMurphy@tracfone.com.

PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT - New York, 

NY. Assess the security properties of 

computer applications, networks, frameworks, embedded devices, and mobile 

applications and devices like Android, 

Windows Phone, iOS, RIM BlackBerry, 

Apache and IIS servers, thick clients, and 

Class B corporate networks, and develop 

exploits for the same. Analyze cryptographic properties of software, modules, 

and algorithms, and test for design and 

implementation flaws affecting security. 

Reverse engineer and modify software 

applications for platforms including Android, Windows Phone, iOS, Java, .NET, 

and native languages (C/C++). Perform 

manual source code reviews and develop applications in the following languages: Assembly , C/C+ +, .NET, Java, 

Objective-C, Groovy, SQL, HTML. Will use 

a wide range of tools including Mallory, 

Burp, IDA Pro, Nessus, nmap, sqlmap, 

Backtrack, Peach, ILSpy, gdb efficiently 

for a variety of assessments.Travel may 

be required. Required: Master’s degree 

in Science, Information Technology or 

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

CLASSIFIED LINE AD SUBMISSION DETAILS: Rates are 

$400.00 per column inch ($600 minimum). Eight lines per column inch and average five typeset words per line. Send copy at 

least one month prior to publication date to: Marian Anderson, 

Classified Advertising, Computer Magazine, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, Los Alamitos, CA 90720; (714) 821-8380; fax (714) 821-

4010. Email: manderson@computer.org.

www.cisco.com

Cisco Systems, Inc. is accepting resumes for 

the following position in

Irvine, CA:

IT Program Manager

(Ref#: IRV11)

Manage and lead strategic and global IT programs 

that have a significant impact across a large client 

base.

Please mail resumes with reference number to 

Cisco Systems, Inc., Attn: B51M, 170 W. Tasman 

Drive, Mail Stop: SJC 5/1/4, San Jose, CA 95134. No 

phone calls please. Must be legally authorized to 

work in the U.S. without sponsorship. EOE. 

www.cisco.com

Cisco Systems, Inc. is accepting resumes for 

the following position in

Chicago, IL:

Network Consulting 

Engineer

(Ref#: CHI1)

Responsible for the support and delivery of 

Advanced Services to company’s major accounts.

Please mail resumes with reference number to 

Cisco Systems, Inc., Attn: J51W, 170 W. Tasman 

Drive, Mail Stop: SJC 5/1/4, San Jose, CA 95134. No 

phone calls please. Must be legally authorized to 

work in the U.S. without sponsorship. EOE. 

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NOVEMBER 2012 109

MIS. Bachelor’s degree in related field 

and 5 years of experience is acceptable 

in lieu of Master’s degree in related field. 

Any suitable combination of education, 

training and experience would be acceptable. Send resume to Intrepidus 

Group, Inc., 119 Fifth Avenue, Suite 702, 

New York, NY 10003.

PROGRAMMER ANALYSTS (mult positions) dsgn & dvlp Microsoft C#.Net, 

WCF Services, SharePoint & SQL D/base 

Stored Procedures; perform unit & integration testing; & create web applic(s) 

using ASP.NET & C#. Req. MS in Comp Sci. 

or Engg. Travel req. to unanticipated client sites in USA. Resume to Job Loc: InfoLogitech Inc., 50 Cragwood Road, Ste 

209, South Plainfield, NJ 07080.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER req. by software development co. w/ BS in rltd Comp 

Sci field to provide applics, dsgn solutions & feasibility assessments. Lead & 

mentor co. teams. Perform maintenance. 

Support & analyze s/ware issues. Dsgn 

solutions for s/ware framework, algorithms, & code structure. Program & create test cases for quality control. Implmt 

technologies & maintain networks. Job 

loc: Sterling, VA. Send res to Spurgetech 

LLC, 21580 Atlantic Blvd., Ste # 220B Sterling, VA 20166.

PEOPLESOFT DEVELOPER. App 

maintenance & devel., enhancem., new 

module installation etc. for PeopleSoft 

v9.x Financial/Supply Chain sys (GL, AP, 

AM, PO, EXP, ePro). Assist production 

support resol., project, sys test & validation. Devel. tech docs for all phases 

of PeopleSoft SDLC. Use SQL, PL/SQL, 

PeopleSoft devel. & Reporting tools, 

Oracle dbases. Travel 5%. MS CS or 

Engg + 3 yrs relevant exp or BS +5 yrs. 

Email Rasha.Kamel@laureate.net w/ 

Job #9131 in subj. line. Laureate Education, Inc. 650 S Exeter St. Balto. MD 

21202. EOE.

DIRECTOR, RECRUITING. IT Consulting company based in Portland, Oregon 

has an opening for a “Director, Recruiting”. This position is a member of the 

executive team responsible for planning, staffing, managing, personnel, 

process and procedure development 

and providing day to day leadership 

of geographically diverse, fast-paced 

recruiting team. Requires Bachelor’s 

Degree or equivalent plus 5 yrs. progressive experience in job or related 

occupation. Travel required with expenses paid by the employer. If interested please send this ad and your resume to C3G, Attn: Linda Welsh, 121 SW 

Salmon St. #1100, Portland OR 97204.

TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITION IN THE DEPARTMENT 

OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING 

AT THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The George 

Washington University invites applications for a tenure-track position at 

the Assistant/Associate Professor Rank in the area of High-Performance 

Computing or Computer Hardware Systems for Biomedical Engineering, 

Bioinformatics, or Computational Biology. Successful candidates may start 

as early as the Fall semester 2013.

The department has well-established graduate and undergraduate programs 

in Electrical, Biomedical, and Computer Engineering. In addition, the 

University has initiatives designating Biomedical Engineering, Energy, 

High Performance Computing, and Nano-Technology as areas of 

excellence. Under construction is a 500,000 sq. ft. Science and Engineering 

Hall that will open in 2015 and house state-of-the-art clean rooms, imaging 

facilities, and research and instructional laboratories (http://www.gwu.edu/

scienceandengineeringhall/). The George Washington University is located 

in the nation’s capital near many federal funding agencies and government 

research laboratories. 

Responsibilities: The successful candidate for this position will be expected 

to develop externally-sponsored research programs, supervise graduate 

students, and contribute to the teaching and academic advising of students 

at all levels. Teaching responsibilities include developing and delivering 

both undergraduate and graduate courses and laboratories in areas that may 

include some combinations of digital design, embedded systems, biomedical 

engineering, and computational biology and bioinformatics. The successful 

candidate will undertake interdisciplinary research in computer engineering 

and biomedical engineering aimed at using high-performance computing, 

reconfigurable computing, and embedded systems to advance biomedical 

engineering in areas such as computer and robotics assisted surgery, 

computational biology, imaging, and/or bioinformatics. 

Basic Qualifications: Applicants for the Associate Professor Rank 

are expected to have a Ph.D. in Biomedical, Computer, or Electrical 

Engineering, or a closely related field. They should have strong records of 

attracting research funding, peer-reviewed publications, and teaching, as 

evidenced by teaching evaluations and recognition of teaching excellence.

Applicants for the Assistant Professor Rank must complete all degree 

requirements for the Ph.D. in Biomedical, Electrical, or Computer 

Engineering, or a closely related field, before September 1, 2013, to be 

appointed as an assistant professor. In addition, applicants must: 1) 

demonstrate strong research potential, as evidenced by peer-reviewed 

publications; and 2) demonstrate substantial potential to attract extramural 

research funding.

Applicants are expected to have significant experience in designing and 

implementing experimental cross-disciplinary systems, and to have a 

demonstrated commitment to the responsibilities listed above.

How to Apply: To be considered, applicants must complete an online 

faculty application specific to the rank of interest and upload (i) a brief 

statement of interest, (ii) a curriculum vitae, (iii) a statement of research and 

teaching interests, (iv) a sample of three publications, (v) a representative 

sample of course evaluations or teaching assessments, if applicable, and (vi) 

complete contact information for at least five references.

For Associate Rank, please visit https://www.gwu.jobs/postings/11953.

For Assistant Rank, please visit https://www.gwu.jobs/postings/11952.

Review of applications will begin on 1/1/2013 and will continue until the 

position is filled. 

The George Washington University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Fujitsu Network 

Communications, Inc. 

has a job opportunity available in

Sunnyvale, CA

Software 

Development 

Engineer

(Req #FNC02017)

Responsible for the requirement 

analysis, design, development and 

support of Network Management 

System product suite developed to 

manage Fujitsu Network Elements. 

Submit resume to Fujitsu Network 

Communications, Staffing Department, 2801 Telecom Pkwy, 

Richardson, TX 75082. Must reference Req. #FNC02017.

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110 COMPUTER

Apple is looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail your resume to 1 Infinite Loop, 

M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy of ad. Job site & interview, Maiden, NC Principals only. 

EOE. 

Senior Systems Engineer (3 Openings) 

[Req. #13966804] 

Responsible for day-to-day standard administration (e.g., account creation, system audits, third-level troubleshooting) and 

engineering duties (e.g., patch installation, operating system upgrades and installs). Req’s Bachelor’s degree, or foreign 

equivalent in Electronic Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics or related. Five (5) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Professional experience must be post-baccalaureate and 

progressive in nature. Must have academic background or professional experience with: Enterprise-level UNIX system 

administration/engineering; Linux platforms; writing support documentation for Linux on x86-based software; system 

startup/shutdown mechanics; kickstart; grid computing RPMs; Perl, shell, C programming; Apache HTTPD, PHP, or MySQL; 

virtualization technologies: KVM, Xen or VMware; grid computing; package management (installation and building 

Resource Package Managers). May require 5-10% of domestic travel time.

Apple is looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail your resume to 1 Infinite Loop, 

M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy of ad. Job site & interview, Austin, TX. Principals only. 

EOE. 

Physical Design Engineer 

[Req. #21309883]

Responsible for physical design of high speed large blocks, about 1 million instances, floor planning, placement, timing 

optimization, clock tree synthesis, routing, and post route optimization. Requires Bachelor’s degree, or foreign equivalent, 

in Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, or related field plus five (5) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Professional experience must be post-baccalaureate and progressive in 

nature. Must have professional experience with: physical design of a block in the chip; closing timing at block level in a 

chip, deep sub-micron circuit phenomena including cross talk, temperature inversion, sub-threshold conductance and 

impact on leakage current and power; performing Engineering Change Order (ECO) on the physical design; performing 

Design Rule Checks (DRC) and Layout versus schematic (LVS) checks. Requires 4% international travel.

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NOVEMBER 2012 111

Appleis looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail your resume to 1 

Infinite Loop, M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy of ad. Job site & interview, Cupertino, CA Principals only. EOE. 

Siri Software Engineer [Req. #20704874] Responsible for designing and implementing natural language interactions and work flow that provide for intelligent user assistance. Req.’s Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent 

in Computer Science, or related degree plus five (5) years experience in job offered or related occupations. Professional experience must be post-baccalaureate progressive in nature. Must have professional experience with: 

development experience with server-side Java and web services; object-oriented programming and design skills; 

Writing multi-threaded code; persistence datastores (relational databases, NoSQL etc.) and data model/schema 

design; production-quality software release and testing.

Software Engineer (2 Openings) [Req. #20529090] Responsible for building first-class open source compiler 

tools and apply them in new and innovative ways. Req’s Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer 

Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or related field. Must have academic knowledge or professional experience with: high-level programming languages including C and C++ programming; 

compiler design and implementation; performance analysis; software testing; computer architecture; ability to 

understand and debug computer assembly code. 

Software Engineer [Req. #20528591] Develop, extend, execute, and analyze regression. Provide functional, 

performance test plans and automation for networking components in iOS and Mac OS X. Req’s Master's degree, 

or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, or related field. One (1) year professional experience in job offered or 

in a related occupation. Must have academic background or professional experience with: trace route; tcpdump; 

network analyzers; coding in C, shell and/or python; modern networking protocols including: Transmission 

Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Network Address Translation (NAT) 

and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) protocols.

ASIC Design Engineer (2 Openings) [Req. #20749988] Work within a team that designs and implements 

various Apple chips. Requires Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Electrical Engineering, Electronics and 

Communication Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field plus five (5) years professional experience in 

job offered or in a related occupation. Professional experience must be post-baccalaureate and progressive in 

nature. Must have academic background or professional experience with: algorithms of static timing analysis of 

complex integrated circuit designs; hands-on experience with industry standard static timing analysis (STA) tool 

(Primetime suite including PT, PT-SI, PT-PX); scripting language with at least one of the following languages: Tcl, 

Perl, Python; hands on experience generating engineering change orders for fixing timing paths.

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112 COMPUTER

Apple is looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail your resume to 1 Infinite 

Loop, M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy of ad. Job site & interview, Cupertino, CA Principals 

only. EOE. 

Technical Program Manager [Req. #20750099] Drive technical operational issues related to liquid crystal display (LCD) 

and final assembly processes, ensuring effective closure of technical issues and smooth process flow through the new 

product introduction cycle and mass production phase. Requires Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Materials 

Science, Engineering, or related field plus five (5) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. 

Professional experience must be post-baccalaureate progressive in nature. Must have professional experience with: LED 

and LCD display development and mass production; technical and manufacturing processes for mass production; LED and 

LCD display quality requirements and performance standards; quality assurance reviews; new LCD manufacturing process 

evaluation and setup; LCD process capability improvement. Requires up to 30% international travel.

Software Integration Engineer [Req. #20750246] Drive development and delivery of mission-critical graphics components for Apple's world-class computer products. Req’s Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, 

Electrical Engineering, or related field. Five (5) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. 

Professional experience must be post-baccalaureate and progressive in nature. Must have academic background or professional experience with: software development in computer graphics drivers or development on complex driver stack; 

technical leadership; management of cross-functional teams and external vendors; identification of potential solutions to 

complex technical issues; development of risk/benefit analysis for feature development options and introduction of late 

development changes into a program; communicating complex technical issues both verbally and written for consumption 

at all levels of management and engineering; management of multiple issues simultaneously and quickly adjusting to 

change in schedules and/or requirements for assigned programs.

Software Engineer [Req. #19020790] Responsible for understanding WiFi/BT CoExistence technology on a single 

antenna solution in 2.4GHz ISM band. Req.’s Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Electrical Engineering, Computer 

Science or related degree plus two (2) years experience in job offered or related occupations. Must have professional 

experience with: testing WLAN and/ or Bluetooth; understanding of WLAN and Bluetooth CoExistence; reading WLAN and 

Bluetooth traces; debugging and finding issues in CoExistence; in-depth understanding of OS X, Windows and/or Unix; 

owning a complete functional area of an application or product; understanding of SQA methodologies and practices.

Web Application Developer [Req. #20981046] Enhance our device management solutions and tools for Apple devices 

running iOS and OS X. Bachelor’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, or related 

field. Five (5) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Professional experience must be 

post-baccalaureate progressive in nature. Must have professional experience with: developing modern, event driven web 

applications using AJAX technologies; developing consumer oriented GUI applications; ey/value observing and binding; 

object oriented design and analysis skills; understanding of the full lifecycle development process including understanding 

business and functional requirements, developing detailed technical designs, and implementing testable solutions.

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NOVEMBER 2012 113

Apple is looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail your resume to 1 Infinite 

Loop, M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy of ad. Job site & interview, Cupertino, CA Principals 

only. EOE. 

Software Development Engineer [Req. #21053093] Design and implement modular components of a distributed data 

processing and management infrastructure that spans multiple technologies. Requires Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, or related degree plus two (2) years experience in the job offered or 

in a related occupation. Must have academic background or experience with: Java Programming (design & architecture, 

algorithms); designing and implementing systems that collect, store and analyze many Terabytes of data using Hadoop; 

MapReduce, HDFS, Hive, HBase Or Cassandra, ZooKeeper; using serialization, compression codecs and file-based data structures (sequence file and map file); Python and Bash Scripting; high throughput and scaleable applications etc.; Oracle 10g, 

11g databases.

Senior Software Engineer [Req. #21058542] Work on large-scale, server-side web applications using Java, MySQL and 

Oracle with the Structured Query Language (SQL), Extensible Markup Language (XML), HyperText Markup Language (HTML) 

and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). Req.’s Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, Electronic 

Engineering, or related plus five (5) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Professional 

experience must be post-baccalaureate and progressive in nature. Must have academic background or professional experience with: Java; MySQL/Oracle; Markup Language (XML); JavaScript Object Notation (JSON); Apache SOLR; J2EE (Java 2 

Enterprise Edition)/WebObjects.

Lab Software Quality Assurance Engineer [Req. #21057893] Responsible for executing cellular telephony tests protocol tests used for carrier acceptance such as those defined for AT&T. Requires Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in 

Electrical Engineering or related field plus two (2) years of experience in the job offered or in a related occupation. Must 

have professional experience with: understanding of 3GPP (3rd generation partnership project) technologies such as UMTS 

and GSM. Familiar with RLC (Radio Link Control), MAC (Medium Access Control) and RRC (Radio Resource Control); testing 

cellular telephony features such as voice call flow, audio on voice calls, TTY, SMS(short message service), cellular packet 

data services, supplementary services and end-to-end signaling; AT&T Carrier Acceptance testing and IOT(Interoperability 

Testing).

Engineering Project Planner [Req. #21103081] Coordinate all engineering development activities (Electrical, mechanical, operational) related to the design, Hardware integration, testing, and implementation of new products in the Input 

Device space. Requires Master's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial 

Engineering, or related field plus two (2) years professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Must have 

academic or professional experience with: the full life cycle of new product development from concept through production release; developing and driving daily and weekly project schedules; developing and executing presentations regarding 

project to upper management; consumer electronic product manufacturing processes; remotely communicating project 

plans and to managing activities of 3rd party overseas suppliers. 20% international travel required.

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114 COMPUTER

Apple is looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail your resume to 1 

Infinite Loop, M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy of ad. Job site & interview, 

Cupertino, CA Principals only. EOE.

System Design Engineer [Req. #21106087] Work on radiated performance of wireless portable devices. 

Requires Master’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Telecommunication, or related field plus one (1) year professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. 

Must have professional experience with: RF characteristics and requirements for modern wireless communication systems such as GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 802.11, Bluetooth, including the corresponding system level specifications (e.g. ETSI 51.010, 51.05); radiation performance, antenna and wave propagation; regulatory requirements 

and process for wireless consumer devices, including FCC, PTCRB, CTIA, ETSI, TIA/EIA; programming skills in C, 

C++. May have direct reports. Requires up to 10% domestic travel.

Software Engineer [Req. # 21106235] Build rich media advertising content and software using Apple’s 

mobile operating system, iOS, and Apple’s iAd Platform technologies. Requires Bachelor's degree, or foreign 

equivalent, in Information Technology, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Engineering, Mathematics, 

Graphic Design, Media Arts and Sciences, or related field plus two (2) years professional experience in job 

offered or in a related occupation. Must have academic background or professional experience with: objectoriented design and programming; constructing rich media ad units including elements of video, audio, and 

producing Visual Assets using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator; programming with JavaScript; programming 

with Hypertext Markup.

ASIC Design Engineer [Req. #21106290] Perform Verilog coding, modeling, simulation and debug. Requires 

Master’s degree, or foreign equivalent, in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science or Engineering, or related 

field plus two (2) years experience in the job offered or in any related occupation. Must have academic background or professional experience with: Computer architecture; languages (Verilog or VHDL); Scripting and/or 

programming languages (awk, perl, python, C/C++); EDA design tools – synthesis, simulation, timing analysis, 

place and route; logic/circuit design.

Audio Electrical Engineer [Req. #21225782] Responsible for Development of prototypes to evaluate new 

designs. Req.’s Bachelor's degree, or foreign equivalent, in Electrical Engineering or related plus five (5) years 

professional experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Professional experience must be postbaccalaureate and progressive in nature. Must have academic background or professional experience with: 

Audio codec’s, amplifiers, speakers and microphones; Audio test equipment (Audio Precision); Schematic 

Drawing; Board Layout.

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Apple is looking for qualified individuals for following 40/hr/wk positions. To apply, mail 

your resume to 1 Infinite Loop, M/S: 104-1GM, Attn: LJ, Cupertino, CA 95014 with Req # and copy 

of ad. Job site & interview, Cupertino, CA Principals only. EOE.

Software Engineer [Req. #21106011] Develop OpenCL framework for CPUs and GPUs in Mac 

OS X including the OpenCL runtime APIs and OpenCL language built-in functions. Req’s Master's 

degree, or foreign equivalent, in Computer Science, or related field. Five (5) years professional 

experience in job offered or in a related occupation. Must have academic background or professional experience with: programming languages including C, C++; GPU architecture, CPU vector 

ISAs such as Intel SSE and AVX; parallel programming and performance tuning of parallel algorithms for CPUs and/or GPUs; software design, problem solving and debugging skills; OpenCL.

System Design Engineer [Req. #21310162] Evaluate the latest iPad, iPhone and iPod HW 

systems in the field. Perform very early evaluations of Prototypes and HW Systems on different 

wireless technologies. Requires Master’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, 

Electrical Engineering, System Engineering or related field. Must have academic background or 

professional experience with: C, C++, Python and Matlab; Communication systems, spread spectrum and communications theory; & RF Background in UMTS/HSPA C2K/EVDO. May have direct 

reports. Travel required approximately 50% of time.

Sr. Software Engineer/Tech Lead [Req. #21483719] Provide design, development and cross 

functional interaction across multiple projects. Requires Master’s degree, or foreign equivalent, 

in Marketing, Engineering, Computer Science or related degree and six (6) years experience in 

the job offered or in a related position. In the alternative, will accept a Bachelor’s degree, or 

foreign equivalent and eight (8) years of post-baccalaureate progressive experience. Must have 

professional experience with: application development and design; variety of development 

tools and languages, such as Java/J2EE, JSP, Spring, Hibernate, Tomcat / WebSphere / JBoss, 

HTML; Oracle and performance tuning; Eclipse, XML, JSON, SVN, Maven, UML, design patterns; 

development in Linux environment; Object Oriented design and analysis skills; developing 

server side software using Java; working in a team environment; technical documentation.

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116 COMPUTER

Applied Materials, Inc. is accepting resumes for the following positions in Santa Clara/Sunnyvale, CA: 

Senior GIS Service Management Analyst (SCSTA): Analyzes functional requirements and recommends technical solution to stakeholders. 

Manages the lifecycle of IT services recommending patching, point releases and major upgrades.

Account Technologist (SCHSU): Designing, performing, collecting data, analyzing, and compiling reports on difficult process engineering 

experiments within safety guidelines. Position may be assigned to work at unanticipated international worksites as determined by headquarters (50%).

Process Support Engineer (SCAKA): Executes Process Engineering projects to qualify or improve the process performance of company's 

products. Position may be assigned to work at unanticipated worksites throughout the US as determined by headquarters (10%).

Please mail resumes with reference number to Applied Materials, Inc., 3225 Oakmead Village Drive, M/S 1217, Santa Clara, CA 95054. No phone 

calls please. Must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship. EOE. 

www.appliedmaterials.com

Advertising Personnel

Marian Anderson

Sr. Advertising Coordinator

Email: manderson@computer.org

Phone: +1 714 816 2139

Fax: +1 714 821 4010

Sandy Brown

Sr. Business Development Mgr.

Email: sbrown@computer.org

Phone: +1 714 816 2144

Fax: +1 714 821 4010

Advertising Sales Representatives (display)

Central, Northwest, Far East:

Eric Kincaid

Email: e.kincaid@computer.org

Phone: +1 214 673 3742

Fax: +1 888 886 8599

Northeast, Midwest, Europe,

Middle East:

Ann & David Schissler

Email: a.schissler@computer.org, 

d.schissler@computer.org

Phone: +1 508 394 4026

Fax: +1 508 394 1707

Southwest, California:

Mike Hughes

Email: mikehughes@computer.org

Phone: +1 805 529 6790

Southeast:

Heather Buonadies

Email: h.buonadies@computer.org

Phone: +1 973 585 7070

Fax: +1 973 585 7071

Advertising Sales

Representative

(Classified Line)

Heather Buonadies

Email: h.buonadies@computer.org

Phone: +1 973 585 7070

Fax: +1 973 585 7071

Advertising Sales

Representative (Jobs Board)

Heather Buonadies

Email: h.buonadies@computer.org

Phone: +1 973 585 7070

Fax: +1 973 585 7071

RadiumOne, Inc. !$6%24)3%23!,%3).&/2-!4)/.s./6%-"%2

has the following 

job opportunity available in

San Francisco, CA:

Lead Software 

Developer

Develop front-end components 

of the system based on J2SE and 

J2EE technologies that provide 

internal and external users with 

features and functionality to 

manage advertising campaigns, 

monitor their performance, 

provide reporting and allow 

targeting and optimization of 

campaigns. 

Submit resume by mail to: Attn: 

HR Services, RadiumOne, Inc., 

55 Second Street, 18th Floor, San 

Francisco, CA 94105. Must reference job code AG103.

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______________

_______________

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NOVEMBER 2012 117

It’s work that matters. It's what we do at Symantec. Symantec is the world leader in providing solutions to help individuals and 

enterprises assure the security, availability, and integrity of their information. In essence, we protect the free flow of information in a 

connected world. As the fourth largest independent software company in the world, Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries 

with 475 out of Fortune's global 500 companies using our solutions. 

People look to us to safeguard the integrity of their information, ensuring it is secure and available. Achieving this ambitious goal is only 

possible through the combined efforts of the innovators and visionaries that Symantec continuously attracts. Symantec draws the very 

best people with a variety of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives and provides them with a work environment where uniqueness 

is valued and empowered. The creative people we attract help define the spirit of innovation at Symantec. Symantec is proud to be an 

equal opportunity employer. 

We currently have openings for the following positions (various levels/types): 

Bellevue, WA

Software Engineers: (Job ID #SWEWA1012) Responsible for analyzing, designing, debugging and/or modifying software; or evaluating, 

developing, modifying, and coding software programs to support programming needs

Culver City, CA

Software Engineers: (Job ID #SWECC1012) Responsible for analyzing, designing, debugging and/or modifying software; or evaluating, 

developing, modifying, and coding software programs to support programming needs.

Software QA Engineers: (Job ID #SQACC1012) Responsible for developing, applying and maintaining quality standards for company 

products. Develop and execute software test plans. Analyze and write test standards and procedures.

Engineering Managers: (Job ID #EMCC1012) Direct and supervise team of engineers (QA and/or development teams); Develop 

standards for products and/or oversee development and execution of software and/or analysis of test results.

Sr. Manager, Development(Job ID #DEVCC1012) Responsible for working with development team to produce functional specification, 

architectural documents and engineering plans for software products. Responsible for technical development and management of 

multiple teams for complex projects.

Heathrow, FL

Software Engineers: (Job ID #SWEFL1012) Responsible for analyzing, designing, debugging and/or modifying software; or evaluating, 

developing, modifying, and coding software programs to support programming needs.

Submit resume to JOBADS@symantec.com . Must reference position & Job ID# listed above. EOE. For additional information about 

Symantec and other positions visit our website at http://www.symantec.com. 

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118 COMPUTER

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___________

__________
NOVEMBER 2012 119

It’s work that matters. It's what we do at Symantec. Symantec is the world leader in providing solutions to help individuals and enterprises assure the 

security, availability, and integrity of their information. In essence, we protect the free flow of information in a connected world. As the fourth largest independent software company in the world, Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries with 475 out of Fortune's global 500 companies using our solutions. 

People look to us to safeguard the integrity of their information, ensuring it is secure and available. Achieving this ambitious goal is only possible through the 

combined efforts of the innovators and visionaries that Symantec continuously attracts. Symantec draws the very best people with a variety of backgrounds, 

experiences and perspectives and provides them with a work environment where uniqueness is valued and empowered. The creative people we attract help 

define the spirit of innovation at Symantec. Symantec is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. 

We currently have openings for the following positions (various levels/types): 

Herndon,VA

Engineering Managers: (Job ID #EMVA1012) Direct and supervise team of engineers (QA and/or development teams); Develop standards for products and/or 

oversee development and execution of software and/or analysis of test results.

Lindon, UT

Technical Support Engineers: (Job ID #TSEUT1012) Provide technical assistance and support to internal and/or external computer systems users and clients. 

Provide level 3 support to customers with issues on assigned product (Symantec Endpoint Management Products).

Roseville, MN

Software Engineers: (Job ID #SWEMN1012) Responsible for analyzing, designing, debugging and/or modifying software; or evaluating, developing, modifying, and coding software programs to support programming needs.

San Francisco, CA

Software Engineers: (Job ID# SWESF1012) Responsible for analyzing, designing, debugging and/or modifying software; or evaluating, developing, modifying, 

and coding software programs to support programming needs.

Software QA Engineers: (Job ID# SQASF1012) Responsible for developing, applying and maintaining quality standards for company products. Develop and 

execute software test plans. Analyze and write test standards and procedures.

Engineering Managers (Job ID# EMSF1012) Direct and supervise team of engineering (QA and/or development teams). Develop standards for products 

and/or oversee development and execution of software and/or analysis of test results.

Manager, Development (Job ID# DEVSF1012) Manage Anti-Spam Core Development Team. Design and architect solution to share the Anti-Spam code base 

across Symantec products. Design and architect solution to share the Anti-Spam code base across Symantec products.

Technical Directors (Job ID# TDSF1012) Define and drive the strategic direction of technology for business and products. Research product prototypes and 

investigate new technologies. Review and drive continuous improvement in products, infrastructure and development practices. Define architecture and 

product specifications, and determine new product life cycles.

Submit resume to JOBADS@symantec.com . Must reference position & Job ID# listed above. EOE. For additional information about Symantec and other positions 

visit our website at http://www.symantec.com. 

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120 COMPUTER Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

FORWARD SLASH

Love the Show!

What part of building engineering’s 

reputation is accomplishment, and what 

part is theatrics? 

//DAG// The other end of the table 

was the first to recognize the television host in the restaurant. One 

moment, we were a group of technologists talking about predictive 

analytics and Bayesian nets, and the 

next, we were giddy fans who were 

enthused by a celebrity in our midst. 

“Rock star!” shouted Ahmed. Serge 

added, “Love the show!”

But the moment quickly passed. 

The celebrity nodded his head to 

acknowledge our attention and then 

left the restaurant with his entourage. 

We returned to our conversation. The 

benefits of a brush with fame, if there 

were any to be had, didn’t linger with 

us.

Time and again, I receive suggestions about how we might make 

software engineering more appealing 

to the youth of today, all of which are 

well intentioned. They’re offered by 

people who are honestly concerned 

about the field’s future. Many of them 

suggest that we should promote a 

young engineer, a rock star of the 

technological work. In the process, 

they overlook that such a strategy 

requires the potential rock star to have 

the skills required to identify, build, 

and hold mass market appeal.

//EDD// Brace yourself for what 

you’re about to read: there are some 

problems that engineered approaches 

can’t solve, and building a reputation—a problem of marketing and 

people—is one of them. Most of us 

learned the lesson in high school that 

hard work plus talent doesn’t always 

equal popularity.

A confession: I was one of those 

annoying, backward-walking campus 

tour guides at my university. I talked 

about class size and residence halls, 

student life, and professors. My job 

was to sell the school, but those who 

trained me told me to also focus on 

my own experiences. If I piqued the 

interest of a prospective student with 

a story from my internship or a fun 

night out with friends on campus, the 

potential student might be more likely 

to listen to the “boring” application 

requirements. All I had to do was talk 

about my experiences, one carefully 

crafted anecdote at a time.

The problem for engineering is one 

of communication, not of reputation. 

People appreciate engineering 

accomplishments, they just don’t 

always know about them. The recent, 

risky landing of a massive rover on 

Mars, for example, was the talk of 

both blogs and mainstream news 

cycles. It even had its own rock star, 

a NASA JPL program manager with a 

Mohawk hairdo.

//DAG// Engineers might not fit 

naturally into the world of mass popularity: to appeal to a mass market, 

you need to study that market, learn 

the aspirations of the group, and test 

ideas to engage those aspirations. If 

you (or your manager) don’t spend 

time trying to engineer your ideas for 

the crowd, you’re relying on nothing 

more than the luck of the draw.

I had a few friends who tried to 

make a career in popular music. All 

of them quickly learned the lesson 

that they needed talents beyond 

the ability to sing well, look good in 

spandex, or write a compelling lyric. 

None really mastered the skill of rock 

stardom, though the most innovative 

of my friends, Danny, got his picture 

on a national magazine cover and was 

popular in four or five major college 

towns. When he finally concluded that 

he wasn’t going to become a true rock 

star, he was more relieved than sad. 

He remarked that he would no longer 

have to force his body into jeans that 

were too tight or press his music into 

ears that wanted to hear something 

else. 

At the restaurant, our group 

wasn’t that interested in the power of 

celebrity. None seemed very interested 

in building mass recognition. All had 

moved onto new projects. “We work 

with technology,” said one, “and we 

do it very well.” 

David Alan Grier is an IEEE Fellow 

and author of the forthcoming book 

The Company We Keep. Contact him 

at grier@gwu.edu or on Twitter @

dagrier.

Erin Dian Dumbacher is a research 

director and consultant in Washington, DC. You can reach her at erin.

dumbacher@fulbrightmail.org or 

follow her on Twitter @erin_dian.

David Alan Grier and Erin Dian Dumbacher

There are some problems that engineered approaches can’t 

solve, and building a reputation—a problem of marketing and 

people—is one of them.

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