The Machine (computer architecture)

The Machine was envisioned to be a rack-scale computer initially with 80 processors and 320 TB of fabric attached memory, with potential for scaling to more enclosures up to 32 ZB.

[4] Since traditional locks need cache coherency, hardware was added to the bridges to do atomic operations at that level.

[4] The whole fabric attached memory of The Machine is too large to be mapped into a processor's virtual address space (which was 48-bits wide[4]).

[4] According to The Register, HPE's partnership with SK Hynix to develop memristor-based NVRAM ran into funding and directional problems and they were working with Sandisk on Resistive RAM (ReRAM) for The Machine.

[17] An experimental version of Linux called Linux++[18] with all the necessary enhancements to configure the hardware and work with traditional programming models.

In parallel, a new operating system (OS) called Carbon[20][21] was announced that would be designed from first principles to take full advantage of an NVRAM based computer.

[22][23][24] Primary workloads for The Machine included in-memory database, Hadoop-style software, and real-time big data analytics.

[25][26] HPE claimed that a memory-driven computing design like The Machine could "improve speeds by up to 8000x compared to conventional systems".

[22] Speaking to Bloomberg, HP says it would commercialize The Machine within a few years, “or fall on its face trying.”[35] Kirk Bresniker served as Chief Architect, and Keith Packard was hired to work on the Linux enhancements.

[40] Fink's retirement announcement also said that Hewlett Packard Labs staff would be moved into the Enterprise product group to "align our R&D work on The Machine with the business".

[45] In 2018, HPE stated that the project had reached the stage where it needed commercial applications from customers in the next step of its evolution.