Running head: JOURNALS IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING 1

Journals in Computer Engineering

Author Name

California State University, San Bernardino

NSCI 306.1

Assignment Due Date

Professor Mandy Taylor

JOURNALS IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING 2

Abstract

This paper contains information relating to the current trends in peer reviewed journals in the

Computer Engineering field. Specifically this is about the analysis of the yearly Sustainable

Computing journal and its research trends and topics, and how it relates to Computer

Engineering as a whole. Before an accurate examination of the journal can be performed, some

of the common goals of computer engineering as a field must be defined for context in order to

show how the journal meets these principles. For the journal analysis itself, I first had to ensure

that the journal I analyzed is scholarly and contains content that further advances the previously

defined goals of computer engineering. Several trends could be readily seen from the content of

the journal, most notable was the publication of research that lead to better management of

existing resources, and how new and innovative thoughts can be applied to computer systems to

reduce energy costs. Most of the published research originates from small teams or individuals,

indicating that this specific field is still in its infancy.

JOURNALS IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING 3

Journals in Computer Engineering

Computer engineering is the combination of both computer science and electrical

engineering, whose members are versed in both abstract programming and component level

circuitry design. Computer engineers provide the framework to facilitate communication

between an electrical engineers and computer scientists. They provide the translation of what a

computer scientist can dream of, to what an electrical engineer can build. The Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers best describes computer engineering as field that is

“dedicated to advancing technological innovations and excellence for the benefit of humanity.”

(IEEE, 2014) Being able to meet such noble goals involves being able to meet and exceed

requirements of a projects at any stage of development, and even find ways to improve the

original design. This indicated that a computer engineer is often exposed to many types of

computers and electronics and is required to handle any task ranging from designing transistors

to inventing communication protocols. As with any great field, computer engineering has many

different sub disciplines, and each sub discipline has its own focus.

Despite the differences in focuses of sub disciplines, most computer engineers are

primarily concerned with writing programs that directly operate on electronic hardware. This is

a type of programming is known embedded programming, which produces a code layer between

hardware and software known as hardware driver. Hardware drivers are used by software

engineers to interface with hardware to run their applications, and hardware engineers to

interface with software. Driver level programming is a technique of coding that is highly

specialized and challenging due to the constraints placed on the developer. In typical

programming practices a programmer can assume an unlimited amount of resources are available

JOURNALS IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING 4

to execute their program, and can write their software with no knowledge of the underlying

hardware system. A computer engineer must write code that is highly optimized with a firm

limits on the available resources of the system they are working with. This different model of

programming has led to an emergence of a new specialized field of study that pushes the limits

of efficiency and optimization of designs known as sustainable computing. This new coding

style lends itself naturally to creating lower power usage and efficiency computing system that

will help humanity to continue advancing computers in the future, while providing little to no

extra burden on our limited available resources. An academic journal which best explores these

concepts is the accurately titled journal Sustainable Computing, which effectively complies with

the general goals of the sustainable computation, and contains a wealth if interesting information

for the purpose of this paper.

The focus of Sustainable Computing is on high efficiency computing, which is the quest

to continue to push the advancement of technology while simultaneously reducing the energy

footprint of its usage. Achieving these goals results in an ultimately more sustainable future. In

an era where computers are infiltrating our every aspect of life, the cost to continue producing

and running electronics will increase unless we find more efficient ways to evolve our

technology. To solve some of these important problems, Sustainable Computing focuses on

smart sensor monitoring networks and performance optimization of existing technologies. These

goals can be achieved at many stages of computer design, spanning the entire spectrum of

interests of computer engineers, potentially allowing anyone with any level of interests to

participate. For example at the academic level, the use of environment monitoring hardware

nodes will help theorize more efficient algorithms for sustainability. At the software level of

design, the use of power-aware software and scheduling systems can help manage power usage.

JOURNALS IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING 5

At the firmware level design, real time systems can be created to have power-efficient

architectures and directly implement energy harvesting techniques. And at the circuitry level of

design, circuits can be created that have reduced power leakage and faster application specific

devices for certain tasks, instead of using power hungry general purpose machines.

Research of similar topics like these are critical for continued advancement of sustainable

computing technologies and can come from many different sources. Sometimes research is

done by large scale corporations with commercial interests, but the majority of research

submitted to Sustainable Computing comes from small teams of less than five researchers. This

is likely due to its extreme specialization and recent formation of this specific field. The journal

is written for an expert in the field, using many extremely technical concepts and specialized

language from the field. For example, in each subsection of the articles there are easy to

understand graphs and images with clear and simple descriptions of the information in that

related section it pertains to, but the section itself contains detailed descriptions of the research

findings. (Majumder, Pande, & Kalyanaraman, 2013, p. 36-46) The concepts are generalized

enough to be easy accessible, and is organized in such a way that the reader may be able to glean

the meaning of the article, but technical enough allow the expert researcher to gain new ideas.

The submission process to the journal is fairly straight forward. On the host website of the

journal, there is a guide dedicated to potential authors who want to submit.

This guide outlines many different aspects that should be observed when forming the

research article, including the ethics and conflicts of interests for the journal. Given the nature of

the journal, it is important that the author has the aim of the journal in mind when submitting

research. There are many aspects of computer engineering that allows for faster or smaller

computers, but rarely are there advancements in power reduction or sustainability in mind.

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Therefore, an author who submits must have this primarily in mind because the aim of the

journal can be easily distorted and changed. Furthermore, the ethics of submitting an article can

be important. Through the disclosure of interest in the subject and the source of funding can

reveal biases in research allowing for the potential inclusion or exclusion of research.

Additionally for acceptance the author most provides an abstract of their research, which enables

future researchers to access their information more quickly. (Sustainable Computing, 2014)

This journal is a good example of the application of computer engineering, because it

applies to many aspects of computer systems as whole. Through the careful analysis of

computers in their entirety we can make careful observations about ways computers operate, we

can continue to advance the field while still providing distinct benefits to humanity. Through

reducing the energy costs of humanity, we can continue to grow as a whole and advance into

newer and greater eras of computation while preserving what we already have.

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References

IEEE (2014). IEEE – About IEEE. Retrieved January 17, 2014, from

http://www.ieee.org/about/index.html

Majumder, T., Pande, P., & Kalyanaraman, A. (2013). High-throughput, energy-efficient

network-on-chip-based hardware accelerators. Sustainable Computing, 3(1), 36-46.

Sustainable Computing (2014). Guide for authors | Sustainable Computing | 2210-5379 |

Elsevier. Retrieved January 18, 2014, from http://www.elsevier.com/journals/sustainable-

computing/2210-5379/guide-for-authors#5000

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Bibliography

Topic #1 Energy Efficiency

Alahmad, B., & Gopalakrishnan, S. (2011). Energy efficient task partitioning and real-time

scheduling on heterogeneous multiprocessor platforms with QoS

requirements. Sustainable Computing, 1(1), 314-328.

Bergamaschi, R., Piga, L., Azevedo, R., Araújo, G., & Rigo, S. (2012). Data center power and

performance optimization through global selection of P-states and utilization

rates. Sustainable Computing, 1(1), 198-208.

Huang, H., Quan, G., & Fan, M. (2013). Thermal aware overall energy minimization scheduling

for hard real-time systems. Sustainable Computing, 3(4), 274-285.

Topic #2 Sustainable Computing

Berezecki, M., Frachtenberg, E., Paleczny, M., & Steele, K. (2012). Power and performance

evaluation of Memcached on the TILEPro64 architecture. Sustainable Computing, 2(2),

81-90.

Johnson, M., Bar-Noy, A., Liu, O., & Feng, Y. (2011). Energy peak shaving with local

storage. Sustainable Computing, 1(3), 177-188.

Sookoor, T., Holben, B., & Whitehouse, K. (2013). Feasibility of retrofitting centralized HVAC

systems for room-level zoning. Sustainable Computing, 3(3), 161-171.