In the manufacture of computers, there are essentially two considerations for the computing architecture: memory and processing power. And when Hewlett Packard Enterprises (HPE) focused on the former, it produced a computer having the world’s largest single memory.
Called The Machine, the computer goes with a Linux-based operating system running on ThunderX2, with 160 terabytes (TB) of memory.
That memory is equivalent to 160 million books or five times the data held in every book in the Library of Congress.
HPE intended the computer for big data, which it hopes could lead to a “near-limitless” memory pool.
It has never been possible to hold and manipulate whole data sets of this size in a single-memory system, and this is just a glimpse of the immense potential of Memory-Driven Computing, HPE said.
Source: HPE
In a statement, Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise shared, “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.”
“To realize this promise, we can’t rely on the technologies of the past, we need a computer built for the big data era,” she added.
The California-based company is not stopping at 160 TB. It envisions a computer with a memory-based system up to 4,096 yottabytes of data, equivalent to more than 250,000 times the size of today’s digital universe. That’s reaching infinity already.
Given that huge memory, HPE said it will be possible to simultaneously work with every digital health record of every person on earth, every piece of data from Facebook, every trip of Google’s autonomous vehicles, and every data set from space exploration all at the same time — getting to answers and uncovering new opportunities at unprecedented speeds.
“We believe Memory-Driven Computing is the solution to move the technology industry forward in a way that can enable advancements across all aspects of society,” said Mark Potter, CTO at HPE and director, Hewlett Packard Labs.
“The architecture we have unveiled can be applied to every computing category—from intelligent edge devices to supercomputers.”
Source: HPE
