Guest Editors' Introduction: Top Picks from the Computer Architecture Conferences of 2007

......This special issue represents the fifth anniversary of an important tradition in the computer architecture community: IEEE Micro’s Top Picks from the Computer Architecture Conferences. This tradition, initiated by IEEE Micro’s former Editor in Chief, Pradip Bose, attempts to share with the IEEE Micro readership a sampling of the top papers published in computer architecture in the past year. In choosing these papers, we ask ourselves, ‘‘For our colleagues who were not able to attend any conferences this year, which few papers would we recommend that they read?’’ We select these papers on the basis of the novelty of the work and its potential impact on industry—either short-term or long-term. As always, it is a difficult task to select only 10 from the many high-quality papers that have already been distinguished by being published in the proceedings of our field’s top conferences. This year was no different.