HPE unveils prototype that puts memory at the heart of computing architecture

Hewlett Packard Enterprise(HPE) has successfully demonstrated Memory-Driven Computing, a concept that puts memory, not processing, at the center of the computing platform to realize performance and efficiency gains not possible today.

The number of connected devices will reach 20.8 billion by 2020, predicts Gartner. This will generate an unprecedented volume of data, which is growing at a faster rate than the ability to process, store, manage and secure it with existing computing architectures.

Developed as part of The Machine research program, HPE’s proof-of-concept prototype represents a major milestone in the company’s efforts to transform the fundamental architecture on which all computers have been built for the past 60 years.

During the design phase of the prototype, simulations predicted the speed of this architecture would improve current computing by multiple orders of magnitude. The company has run new software programming tools on existing products, illustrating improved execution speeds of up to 8,000 times on a variety of workloads. HPE expects to achieve similar results as it expands the capacity of the prototype with more nodes and memory.

“With this prototype, we have demonstrated the potential of Memory-Driven Computing and also opened the door to immediate innovation,” said Som Satsangi, VP & GM, Enterprise Group, Hewlett Packard Enterprise India.

In addition to bringing added capacity online, The Machine research project will increase focus on exascale computing. Exascale is a developing area of High Performance Computing (HPC) that aims to create computers several orders of magnitude more powerful than any system online today.

HPE’s Memory-Driven Computing architecture is scalable from tiny IoT devices to the exascale, making it an ideal foundation for a wide range of emerging high-performance compute and data intensive workloads, including big data analytics.