Is Hewlett-Packard’s “The Machine” the Future of Computing? (Part I)


TheMachineThe tech world gives us something new and revolutionary to talk about almost every day – new supercomputers, printers that create human skulls, televisions that think for themselves and phones that can out think Stephen Hawking himself. With so much changing and evolving it’s often difficult to spot when a true technological revolution is upon us. Well, it seems that Hewlett-Packard may be about to do just that with the announcement of their latest invention, The Machine.

TheMachine1The Machine is more than just a server; it is not your basic workstation or PC, it goes beyond simply being a functional smart device and instead strives to be an amalgamation of all of these things. Designed with the main goal in mind of creating a type of technology that could handle the masses of data produced by the Internet of things, The Machine can handle vast amounts of data while using far less power. To be exact, the hardware itself is six times more powerful than existing servers while consuming 80 times less energy. For you super nerds out there, it is estimated that the server could address 160 petabytes of data in only 250 nanoseconds – that’s supercomputing. Before you tune out, assuming that this will be a tool used only by data centers and supercomputers, HP has big plans to shrink the technology down to a working form for laptops and smartphones as well. During a keynote speech given at Discover this week, chief technology officer for HP Martin Fink explained that if the technology was scaled down, smartphones could then be fabricated with 100 terabytes of memory. If that still leaves you unimpressed, let me break it down into terms anyone will understand – if The Machine lives up to its hype, it could potentially replace the equipment that currently fills an entire data center with a single machine the size of a refrigerator.

TheMachine2So how will HP pull this off? First of all, rather than using energy-consuming copper wires to link everything together, silicon photonics will take their place. This not only reduces energy consumption, but the new material also allows room for the creation of non-traditional, three-dimensional shapes – the old distance limits will no longer apply. As for handling the masses of data, rather than using a small number of generalized cores, HP has implemented a series of specialized cores designed for the task at hand. Additionally, the new technology will feature memristors – resistors able to store information even after power loss.

TheMachine3The gravity of this shift in the way that we may now view computing was not lost on HP; in fact, it has spurred them to go as far as writing their own operating system from scratch just to handle the new capabilities that The Machine will offer. This is one of the many reasons that the current timeline for production of The Machine runs all the way through 2020 - and even that may be optimistic. First of all, HP won’t have samples of the necessary memory until 2015, and the first devices slated to use The Machine aren’t expected to ship until 2018. Given that, plus all the related technology that will have to stay on track throughout the process, and 2020 starts to feel like it’s right around the corner. To be fair, they are completely re-thinking the very architecture of computing – but realistically, can they do it? Tune in tomorrow for Part II where we’ll take a look at some of the things that may stand in their way.

Topics: Technology News Gadgets & Peripherals HP Inventions & Innovations

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