HP Want To Change The Game!

HP Labs are making some pretty big claims about their ‘Biggest Project’ (their words) which has 75% of their R & D team dedicated to this.

I’m not going to sex up what HP are trying to do, but it is a very very very very very very big deal if they can pull it off.

It’s called ‘The Machine’ and HP boast it will be able to handle large companies (Google/Facebook/Amazon) network requirements at a fraction of the cost and space. They say instead of having large equipment filled warehouse sized data centres, you can have a computer the size of a fridge instead.

Set to change the future of computer architecture that has been the same for 60 years.

This isn’t a concept and HP claim to be able to debut the first prototype this year, and later releasing a dynasty of computers based on this. Last year they released Linux++ which aims to let developers test their code as it mimics the hardware and tools that ‘The Machine’ will deliver when it has its own (from scratch) operating system, called Carbon.

The Machine’ works by utilizing memristors, which I will explain in a second, as well as swapping out copper wiring for fibre optic and something called silicon photonics.

A computer has RAM and HDD. Your files are on the HDD and when you want to do something like write a Word Document or play Solitaire, the processor transfers your program from the HDD to the RAM so you have fast efficient access to it.

 A memorister is a nanoscale chip. It consists of  a grid wires with a stack of thin layers of materieals at each intersection. When a current is applied to the wires, the materials’ resistance is alterd, and this state can be held after the current is removed. Hence remembering all the 1’s and 0’s. They can be built memristers with traditional semi conducting equipment.

A memrister will be both your RAM and HDD. HP built the first working one in 2008. A Memorister simply put is what makes the whole thing work. Using fibre-optic instead of copper allows for light speed transfer (literally) of 1’s and 0’s.

Imagine that your hard drive was pure ram, sat on the motherboard next to the processor for instant access to all your files.

Facebooks Data centre                                          Replaced with ‘The Machine’

‘The Machine’ is a whole new concept of computer and will require a new Operating System to match. Current applications are designed to wait for data, where as this new system, there will be no waiting.

It’s going to be a huge effort but since OS for Android are also being worked on we guess this will trickle down to phones and tablets.

Experts around the world are all paying close attention to this because they realise this may very well be the biggest leap in computing, since the stone age. Exciting stuff