The Machine by HP 2018

Technology: No RAM, no storage memory, no copper: the new architectural project presented by HP wants to shake up habits. But for now, The Machine is still just a research project.

During the HP Discover conference, the R & D department presented the project that has been running the majority of its resources and time for two years now. Soberly named "The Machine", this new architecture is based on highly innovative technologies to meet the new challenges posed by big data and the evolution of uses.

For now, the project is not yet out of labs HP Labs, and nothing concrete is still available at the moment. At the conference, Martin Fink, HP's technical director, presented the different components that will make up The Machine.

Promises only, but beautiful promises: as reported by Bloomberg, The Machine aims to "replace the computer park of a datacenter with a computer the size of a fridge. "

To achieve this feat, HP is focusing its research on two very promising technologies: photonic buses and memristors.

Welcome to the future

Behind these barbaric names lie the two cornerstones of The Machine's architecture. Memristors are passive electronic components, whose existence was theorized in 1971. Since then, their existence was purely theoretical, we thought the thing possible without really knowing how. But in 2008, the HP Labs team managed to make its first physical models of memristors.

These electronic components have the ability to act both as a fast access memory and as a storage memory. HP began developing its first memory modules based on this technology, known as Reram .Other companies including Samsung are currently working on variants of this technology, whose performance is dreaming.

In addition to using these memristors to create a unified memory for the computer, HP also relies on light for information transfer between the various components of The Machine. A technology that has been known for some time, since it is the one implemented in the deployment of optical fiber for internet connections.

HP intends to miniaturize this type of optical connection to incorporate it into the heart of its architecture, increasing the speed of information exchange, and replacing the traditional physical connections in copper.

This radically different new architecture will obviously require a radically different operating system. HP started working on the issue, developing its new OS from a Linux kernel.

Nothing concrete, but figures

According to HP, this new architecture promises performance that has something to think about. The company had fun comparing the specifications of its new architecture to Fujitsu K, the Fujitsu supercomputer. And the comparison is without appeal: for a consumption of 160 kW, about 100 times less than the Fujitsu K, The Machine would benefit from a computing power 6 times higher.

HP could therefore hit a big blow if the reality of The Machine was well up to what the manufacturer advance. But it will take a few more years to judge: according to the firm, the first computers based on this architecture should be delivered by 2020.