HP driving hard to launch the Machine in 2016

Martin Fink, HP CTO and EVP of HP Labs presented to the attendees of the 2014 Nth Symposium. Beyond the Cloud: “The Machine” and other industry-changing innovations and another presentation at Software Freedom Law Center’s 10th anniversary conference.

Martin Fink discusses developing OpenStack-Based Clouds and HP’s new hardware platform, “The Machine.” Fink outlines HP’s vision for flexible and automated data centers and speaks on HP’s new platform, The Helion Cloud. This Cloud brings the combination of open source benefits and Cloud deployment variability. Additionally, he discusses future plans for HP’s Helion Development Platform and Network System.

HP has stated that a Machine-like computer could offer six times the performance requiring 80 times less power. Fink expects that the first prototype that HP is working on will have 150 compute nodes with 157 petabytes of addressable memory.

Such a machine would require an entirely new operating system, Fink said. Most of the work an OS involves copying data back and forth between memory and disk. The Machine eliminates the notion of data reads or writes.

HP Labs is working on what Fink called a “clean sheet” OS, called Carbon. The company will publish open-source code as early as next year. It is also modifying a version of Linux, tentatively called “Linux++,” to help users transition from the Von Neumann style of computing.

The Machine uses new types of memory, computer chips, and operating system and shrinks a data center to the size of refridgerator, drinking just a tiny bit of energy.

Whitman and HP Labs leader Martin Fink view it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and up to 75% of HP Labs employees are reportedly working on it.