The Machine: An Architecture for Memory-centric Computing

By the end of the decade we expect over 30 billion intelligent devices connected to the Internet, resulting in unprecedented amounts of data. At the same time, scaling of today's foundational memory technologies will significantly slow down. We will need to transform the ways in which we collect, process, store, and analyze that data. "The Machine" is a new architecture from HP Labs that brings together byte-addressable non-volatile memory, photonic interconnects, and specialized SoCs for computing at multiple scales, ranging from handhelds to rack-scale to data center-scale. As part of this initiative, we are building hardware, a new OS, new data stores, and new analytics platforms, with the plan to open source various parts of the software stack. This talk will discuss the technologies that comprise The Machine and their implications for systems software and application programs, as well as describe the work we are doing at HP to address some of these challenges.