HP Enterprise unveils 'Single Memory Computer'

[Master Disaster]

HPE have just unveiled their latest data crunching behemoth, its a computer which moves away from traditional CPU based processing and moves into Memory based number crunching running 160TB of RAM and a custom Linux build designed to prioritise memory heavy tasks.

Quote

A prototype computer with 160TB of memory has been unveiled by Hewlett Packard Enterprises.

 

Designed to work on big data, it could analyse the equivalent of 160 million books at the same time, HPE said.

 

The device, called The Machine, had a Linux-based operating system and prioritised memory rather than processing power, the company said.

HPE claim going down this route could lead to 'a near limitless pool of memory' for data crunching

Quote

HPE said its Memory Driven Computing research project could eventually lead to a "near-limitless" memory pool.

 

"The secrets to the next great scientific breakthrough, industry-changing innovation or life-altering technology hide in plain sight behind the mountains of data we create every day," said HPE boss Meg Whitman.

 

"To realise this promise, we can't rely on the technologies of the past, we need a computer built for the big data era."

Here's what a professor from Southampton Uni had to say:

Quote

Prof Les Carr, of the University of Southampton, told the BBC The Machine would be fast but big data faced other challenges.

 

"The ultimate way to speed things up is to make sure you have all the data present in your computer as close to the processing as possible so this is a different way of trying to speed things up," he said.

 

"However, we need to make our processing... not just faster but more insightful and business relevant."

"There are many areas in life where quicker is not necessarily better."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39936975

 

I find this article a little confusing and lacking in information tbh. The benefits of this route are pretty obvious, RAM is much quicker than disk based storage but I'm not 100% sure what the goal of this machine is?

[leadeater]

8 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I find this article a little confusing and lacking in information tbh. The benefits of this route are pretty obvious, RAM is much quicker than disk based storage but I'm not 100% sure what the goal of this machine is?

The article is extremely light on information, surely there something more special going on and not just a server with a bucket load of memory and a way to pool memory between servers? Maybe I'm expecting too much and that's all it is?

[laminutederire]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The article is extremely light on information, surely there something more special going on and not just a server with a bucket load of memory and a way to pool memory between servers? Maybe I'm expecting too much and that's all it is?

Isn't it supposed to be oriented towards data science with huge data sets, with no data swap between memory and disk so that the entire data set access is facilitated?

[cluelessgenius]

9 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

.. but I'm not 100% sure what the goal of this machine is?

going through pepople's personal data predicting human behaviour, market prediction, threat assessment just name a few. i can think of a lot of scenarios for computing big data but sadly just a few of them i find positive.e.g. uk already has some form of crime prediction running if i remember correctly.

[porina]

In tradition high performance computing, IO bottlenecks are highly significant and often holds back the system from the peak power the processing nodes might offer. The question then is, how did they implement their memory pool? Is it a variation of existing off the shelf ideas, or is there something new in there?

[leadeater]

Info dump:

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/hpe-the-machine-prototype-computer-big-data-2017-5?r=US&IR=T

https://news.hpe.com/memory-driven-computing-explained/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3197054/hardware/hpe-shows-off-the-machine-prototype-without-memistors.html

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/16/hpe_labs_manufactures_monster_memory_machine_system/

https://www.labs.hpe.com/the-machine

https://venturebeat.com/2017/05/16/hp-enterprise-unveils-single-memory-160-terabyte-computer-the-machine/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/24/hpes_machinations_to_rewrite_server_design_laws/

https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/01/04/drilling-down-into-the-machine-from-hpe/

[leadeater]

Is it just me or is some of this tech similar to Gen-z?

 

Edit:

HPE is a member of Gen-z so I guess that isn't surprising.

[BloodyWaters]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The article is extremely light on information, surely there something more special going on and not just a server with a bucket load of memory and a way to pool memory between servers? Maybe I'm expecting too much and that's all it is?

I thought it was pretty cool. But I see your point. 

[Misanthrope]

Hey now, this is all fine and good HP but you better not cause another RAM shortage and fuck up my prices anymore.

[ScratchCat]

"The Machine"

Looks like someone at HPE marketing has been watching too much Person of Interest.

[Sauron]

Seems like big data analysis. In other words, they're looking for better ways to process the mountains of data they collect from us, making it easier and faster to spy us and target advertisements.

 

Cinicism aside, there may be some useful statistics coming from something like this.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

"The Machine"

Looks like someone at HPE marketing has been watching too much Person of Interest.

More like they have no imagination

[leadeater]

Quote

The Machine is also ready for futuristic technologies. Slots in The Machine allow the addition of photonics connectors, which will connect to the new fabric linking up storage, memory, and processors. The interconnect itself is an early implementation of the Gen-Z interconnect, which is backed by major hardware, chip, storage, and memory makers.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3197054/hardware/hpe-shows-off-the-machine-prototype-without-memistors.html

 

Slightly off topic but AMD's Infinity Fabric is also based off Gen-Z, wonder what future lies with that. Maybe second generation Naples might make really good storage servers for this HPE cluster all talking native protocols.

[Technomancer__]

7 minutes ago, ScratchCat said:

"The Machine"

Looks like someone at HPE marketing has been watching too much Person of Interest.

better name it memorycruncher or something cool like that

[Lazmarr]

1 hour ago, laminutederire said:

Isn't it supposed to be oriented towards data science with huge data sets, with no data swap between memory and disk so that the entire data set access is facilitated?

Exactly this. Scientific research is based on data. However one team of scientists can collect only so much data on a individual basis. The next research may base it on the previous data. The next research the same again. The trouble is that they may not analyse the previous data. One group may come along and want to perform a cohort analysing the previous research with their own and maybe the results of fifty other groups of scientists.

If the group of scientists analysed the previous groups of data, which had say 30 samples each (quite low really), and their own 30 samples together they would generate a large set of data. Now they're working as a cohort with 50 other groups of scientists, who could be analysing 6 times as much data each, they end up with a huge amount of data that needs to be analysed; which usually involves testing individual samples with each other, across individual groups and those groups with each other.

Humans make errors, especially more so when you have huge sets of data. This Machine would allow the cohort, who will likely be in varying countries, to send the data to be stored and analysed when needed with much more precision and accuracy.

[Dylanc1500]

42 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

How many Chrome tabs can it open?

All of them.