Guest Editor's Introduction: Top Picks from the Computer Architecture Conferences of 2009

......This special issue is the seventh in an important tradition in the computer architecture community: IEEE Micro’s Top Picks from the Computer Architecture Conferences. This tradition, started by IEEE Micro’s then editor in chief, Pradip Bose, provides a means for sharing a sample of the best papers published in computer architecture during the past year with the IEEE Micro readership and researchers in the computer architecture community. As might be expected, it is difficult to select only 13 from the many high-quality papers that have already been distinguished by their publication in the proceedings of our field’s top conferences. This year was no different. In any review process there is a degree of uncertainty, but, that aside, this selection of articles is representative of the leading research in the computer architecture field, and the articles in Top Picks remain one of the best introductions to the current state of research in the field.