More Details On HP's "The Machine" Finally Emerge

It has been a while since hearing much anything about HP's "The Machine" computing architecture and its associated Linux++ project, but that changed this past week.

While we're still waiting to see if HP's The Machine prototype will be delivered this year, Keith Packard who has been working at the project spoke about it at this year's Linux.Conf.Au 2016 event. In fact, it was sadly just one of a few sessions from this year's LCA2016 that I found really interesting.

In his 45 minute presentation he talked more about both the hardware and software aspects of The Machine. While the initial Linux++ code is also past due, Keith notes that among the Linux modifications made by HP are support for fabric-attached memory, file-system abstractions for FAM, various kernel changes, a "Librarian File System" for maintaining shared data, remote virtual memory access, extensions to configuration and management capabilities, and more.

Without spoiling his presentation, you can learn more about The Machine's software and hardware via this YouTube video. For those short on time, unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the slide deck anywhere short of the video.