HPE intends to support open source software on its futuristic platform billed as “The Machine.” The company announced its intent to bring The Machine to open source developers very early in the software development cycle.
The Machine, which has been a long-term research project of HP Labs, promises to overturn 60-years of processor-centric platforms with a new paragidm based on memory-centric architecture.
HP said it will start familiarizing developers with its new programming model as well as invite them to help develop the software itself. An initial release of developer tools is expected in the coming month, including the following four contributions of code:
- Fast optimistic engine for data unification services: A completely new database engine that speeds up applications by taking advantage of a large number of CPU cores and non-volatile memory (NVM).
- Fault-tolerant programming model for non-volatile memory: Adapts existing multi-threaded code to store and use data directly in persistent memory. Provides simple, efficient fault-tolerance in the event of power failures or program crashes.
- Fabric Attached Memory Emulation: An environment designed to allow users to explore the new architectural paradigm of The Machine.
- Performance emulation for non-volatile memory bandwidth: A DRAM-based performance emulation platform that leverages features available in commodity hardware to emulate different latency and bandwidth characteristics of future byte-addressable NVM technologies.
HPE is also planning changes to Linux that enable it to run on The Machine, as well as example applications that demonstrate how The Machine can significantly improve application scale and performance.
