Martin Fink
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HP abandons futuristic tech for its futuristic supercomputer
HP has abruptly changed course on its 'Machine,' a new type of memory-driven computer it thinks will radically alter large-scale data processing. When the company first launched it last year, the plan was to use a new kind of memory chip called the "memristor," which is as fast as DRAM but can permanently store data. The problem is that the tech, which HP expected to commercialize with Hynix in 2013, still isn't ready. Rather than giving up, though, HP has decided to take it in another direction by using both conventional RAM and phase change memory.
HP hopes to make internet more sustainable with three new Moonshot servers
You don't think about it while flipping through your Instagram feed, but your social escapades generate a lot of heat. "We now have to decide if we want to position data centers near the arctic circle to take advantage of cooling," joked HP's Martin Fink, CTO and Director of HP Labs during ArmTechCon's keynote Tuesday. He's talking about the heavy footprint of the internet, and how HP's enterprise customers are complaining that they don't have the room or power to meet the needs of the future. HP's solution, of course, is Moonshot -- its low power server technology. Moonshot promises to fill the needs of the information superhighway with less power, less space and less complexity. The new infrastructure hasn't seen much play outside of HP's own labs, but that's about to change: the company has announced three new ARM-based Moonshot cartridges, available next year with hardware from Calxeda, Texas Instruments and Applied Micro.
