GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society JUNE 2012 23

Certainly, it is well known that China has become the largest manufacturer of electronic devices, including note-book computers, iPads, and tablet PCs. Many examples confirm recent advances in the Asian computing industry. For example, the phenomenal growth in genomic research at the Beijing Genomics Institute exemplifies the favor-able environment for computing in Asia, including lower costs and abundant human resources, compared with developed countries such as the US. As another example, according to the November 2011 TOP500 list, the world’s two fastest supercomputers are the Japanese K computer and the Chinese Tianhe-1A (www.top500.org/lists/2011/11). It is important to emphasize that these are not isolated or random examples of success. Based on unprecedented achievements in the computing sector, both China and Japan continue to increase not only the number of their supercomputing systems on the TOP500 list but also their aggregate computing power.

IN THIS ISSUEThe contributions from prominent research centers

included in this theme issue provide an overview of com-puting advances in several regions in Asia.

In “Internetware: A Software Paradigm for Internet Computing,” Hong Mei, Gang Huang, and Tao Xie from Peking University discuss the need for a new Internet com-puting paradigm and summarize the results of substantial research and development efforts by the Chinese soft-ware community in this area. Due to the global network

C omputing in Asia has come a long way. However, while some well-developed nations such as Japan have a higher concentration of IT installations and skilled IT workers, such capabilities are not

yet evenly distributed in developing countries. Just as Asia is characterized as having diverse people, languages, and cultures, its computing endeavors are also diverse, covering a wide spectrum of research and development activities that stem from regional economic concerns and priorities.

COMPUTING AS AN ECONOMIC FACTORTo some extent, because of the relative immaturity of

their fixed IT facilities, Asia-Pacific economies might be well-positioned to take on the emerging challenges associ-ated with moving to the next big thing in computing—the cloud computing paradigm.1 A good analogy is the rapid buildup of high-speed rail in China: beyond financial con-cerns and policy controversies, there seems to be ample opportunities for thinking clearly and acting quickly to solve related problems. However, poor alignment of na-tional legal and regulatory policies could cast a shadow on Asia-Pacific regions where computing serves as an eco-nomic catalyst.

The recent phenomenal growth in research activities has provided a favorable environ- ment for computing advances in Asia.

Carl Chang, Iowa State University

Vladimir Getov, University of Westminster, London

Kelvin Sung, University of Washington Bothell

Computing in Asia: A Sampling of Recent Success Stories

GUEST EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

24 COMPUTER

environment’s open, dynamic, and ever-changing nature, software on the Internet must demonstrate features that make it autonomous, cooperative, situational, evolvable, emergent, and trustworthy. Designing and supporting these features presents several challenges for developers of software technologies.

Sponsored by a national research program, researchers in China have proposed addressing these challenges by introducing the Internetware software paradigm. The au-thors describe Internetware’s main characteristics and key technologies and outline the corresponding infrastructure support. They present this paradigm from four impor-tant aspects: the software model (what Internetware is), the runtime platform (how it operates), the engineering approach (how to design and develop it), and quality as-surance (how well it all works). The article summarizes the progress and status of Internetware research and predicts future trends in this exciting new area.

“Computing for the Next-Generation Automobile,” by Mikio Aoyama of Japan’s Nanzan University, begins with a description of how crowdsourcing using in-car navigation systems assisted in the mapping of passable operational routes after the devastating earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. Having established the potential and impor-tance of computing resources in automobiles, the author discusses the state of three important areas of automo-tive computing: making vehicles greener, making them smarter, and merging transportation and information networks.

On the environmental front, the article surveys the cur-rent state of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicles, outlining the architecture and computing requirements for controlling and coordinating electrical and mechanical systems. The author frames the smarter vehicle discus-sion based on two safety modes: passive (mitigating the damage incurred in an accident) and active (intending to avoid an accident). The merging of traffic and information networks to create the ultimate cloud-based intelligent transport system is a work in progress with the goal of providing context-aware information based on location, traffic updates, and driving status. Soon your car will be able to send you tweets updating its status while you share traffic information with other drivers.

In “Computer-Assisted Audiovisual Language Learn-ing,” Lijuan Wang and her colleagues from Microsoft

Research Asia discuss the technologies underlying Engkoo, an innovative Web-based computer-assisted audiovisual language-learning service that combines two emerging speech processing technologies—talking head and pho-netic similarity search. The system incorporates advanced speech, language, and multimedia technologies as a virtual tutor that 10 million people in China use to learn Eng-lish on the Web. Engkoo’s tutoring interaction is modeled on karaoke, a favorite pastime in China, and users learn from a photorealistic lip-synced talking head within a search and discovery ecosystem. The authors describe the text-to-speech architecture, which supports real-time video and audio rendering, and discuss Engkoo’s solution to detecting and correcting input errors due to phonetic mispronunciation.

In “Cloud Computing in Taiwan,” William Cheng-Chung Chu and his colleagues from several Taiwanese univer-sities provide a comprehensive summary of the recent development in cloud computing in Taiwan. They describe the emerging industry based on different system levels, including software as a service, platform as a service, and infrastructure as a service, and discuss relevant open source efforts in support of cloud computing. The authors survey the major Taiwanese cloud computing projects and systems and explain the country’s strategy to further the local cloud computing industry and its collaboration with companies worldwide. The article provides up-to-date information about the technology, policies, trends, and international collaborations in Taiwan’s cloud computing research and development program.

In “Bioinformatics Applications in Genomics,” Wing-Kin Sung of the National University of Singapore describes how computing technology researchers are collaborating with world-class biologists to advance the multidisciplinary study of genomics. Coupling bioinformatics with biotech-nologies makes it possible for researchers to evaluate genome-wide data consisting of hundreds of billions of bits of raw data. They are using next-generation sequenc-ing technology to reconstruct genomes and understand the gene-expression control mechanisms. This article in-troduces to Computer’s general audience the importance of big data analytics in bioscience fields, emphasizing the significance of such research projects in improving our understanding and management of life-critical issues such as disease control.

“Fault Localization Based Only on Failed Runs” by Zhenyu Zhang, W.K. Chan, and T.H Tse introduces an ef-fective program debugging technique. As the article notes, any measurable improvement in software developers’ productivity in program testing and debugging would be enticing as more than 50 percent of software costs can be attributed to such activities. The authors present FOnly, a novel fault-localization method based on trend estimation with statistical means that uses failed runs but disregards

Researchers and professionals in Asia are working diligently to develop the technologies needed to meet the challenges of next- generation computing.

JUNE 2012 25

Using the Cloud as Part of Your Disaster Recovery Planning – what you need to know

Cloud computing offers organizations of all sizes the ability to embrace and implement business continuity and disaster recovery plans at far less cost than traditional approaches, and organizations that move workloads to the cloud often do so in order to take advantage of the capabilities of their cloud providers to ensure continuous availability of service. As with most things, though, there are challenges that must be overcome in order to safely embrace the cloud as part of your disaster recovery planning. In this webinar, experts Shan-non Bearly and John Howie will discuss what you need to know in order to avoid pitfalls, and to successfully embrace cloud computing as part of your disaster recovery planning.Date: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 18:00 GMT (Duration: 1 hour) computer.org/webinars/06122012

IEEE Computer Society Network Webinar Series Stay current and learn from leading industry experts as they explore important technology developments

and trends Interact with presenters through a live Q&A following each live webinar.

NETWORKAccelerating Collaboration Across Communication EcosystemThis webcast will show how collaboration amongst CSPs and their suppliers can be managed through an agile approach so that stakeholders across the mobile ecosystem have a clear un-derstanding of what products and services are being delivered to their customers and why. Available now!computer.org/webinars/05222012

Conquer Complexity With Effective ALM and a Focus on Design

Complexity is the biggest challenge faced by companies looking to deliver innovative applications, products and solutions while managing costs. Available Now! computer.org/webinars/05172012

Selected CS articles and columns are available for free at http://ComputingNow.computer.org.

passed runs, and which performs better or on a par in comparison with known techniques. Interested readers are encouraged to contact the authors to gain more insight into their technique and perhaps provide challenging cases for them to consider in future research.

A lthough these articles provide only a small-scale sampling of advances in computing in Asia, they offer a glimpse into the landscape in which comput-

ing researchers and professionals are working diligently to develop the technologies needed to meet the challenges of next-generation computing.

Reference 1. S.S. Yau and H.G. An, “Software Engineering Meets Ser-

vices and Cloud Computing,” Computer, Oct. 2011, pp. 47-53.

Carl Chang is a professor and chair of computer science at Iowa State University. His research interests include re-quirements engineering, software architecture, software evolution, and successful aging. He is a Fellow of IEEE

and a Fellow of AAAS. Formerly, he was president of the IEEE Computer Society (2004), the editor in chief of IEEE Software (1991-1994), and editor in chief of Computer (2007-2010). Contact him at chang@iastate.edu.

Vladimir Getov is a professor of distributed and high-performance computing at the University of Westminster, London. His research interests include parallel architectures and performance, autonomous distributed computing, and high-performance programming environments. He is a senior member of IEEE, a member of ACM, a Fellow of the BCS, and Computer’s area editor for high-performance computing. Contact him at v.s.getov@westminster.ac.uk.

Kelvin Sung is a professor in the computing and software systems program at the University of Washington Bothell. His research interests focus on studying the role of technol-ogy in supporting human communication. His recent work is in the areas of serious games and topics related to teach-ing and learning foundational concepts in programming based on computer games. Sung is the editor of Computer’s Entertainment Computing column. Contact him at ksung@uw.edu.