The Machine By Hewlett Packard Labs

Hewlett Packard are making some pretty big claims with what their ‘Biggest Project’ can achieve.

To understand what HP are trying to do you need to know what a Memristor is. Not to bog you down with all the technical stuff, it is one of the technologies predicted to replace flash memory. HP built the first working memristor in 2008.  If you were using memristors and you pulled the plug out of your computer, you could turn it back on and everything would still be the way you left it. It is best explained like a water pipe, it expands as you push water through it, and if the water stops, it stays expanded until the water is put back on.

‘The Machine’ is not a concept, it has been in development now for many years and a prototype is set to debut this year. Utilizing most (75%) of their best R & D scientists and highly skilled engineers working round the clock to make ‘The Machine’, HP really are throwing the kitchen sink at this and with such bold claims, its no surprise why.

So ‘What is the Machine?’ you might be asking, Well simply put, its throwing 70 years of computer history out the window and redrawing the map to the way HP thinks will make faster and more efficient computers, and that’s putting it mildly.

The Machine is designed to compete with servers that run corporate networks and the services of companies such as Google and Facebook, although 1 day could be incorporated into smaller devices.

Since the 1940’s computers have relied on 2 types of memory, RAM and Hard Drive space. That’s just the way it is, there are no alternatives, until now.

HP claims to be able to join the 2 together and this will be part of what makes the Machine so special.

Instead of moving data back and forth between RAM and HDD, something called Memristors are used.

To make this project a reality HP are still working out the kinks. They have released a software called Linux++ that mimics what the Machines hardware and tools will be able to do, so that software experts and developers can start to test and develop their code against the new operating system. HP say later they will release an operating system made from scratch specifically for ‘The Machine’ called Carbon