HPE Shows Single-Memory Computing Breakthrough

Broad range of applications

The company said it isn’t planning to produce a single product directly out of its research, but rather to apply its findings to numerous types of systems.

“The architecture we have unveiled can be applied to every computing category – from intelligent edge devices to supercomputers,” said HPE chief technology officer and HP Labs director Mark Potter.

The prototype uses a Linux-based operating system running on ThunderX2, a second-generation dual socket-capable ARMv8-A system on a chip produced by Cavium.

Key to making its in-memory focus work are the high-performance fabric protocol, photonics/optical communications links, including a new X1 photonics module, and software programming tools designed to take advantage of large amounts of persistent memory.

Cavium, the chip maker who manufactured the system’s ARM-based chip, said the system architecture could be used for next-generation data centre, cloud and high-performance computing applications.

The announcement comes a day after HPE introduced compute, storage and networking software packages running SAP’s in-memory HANA database, which likewise takes advantage of in-memory computing to address large amounts of data.

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