Hardware and Software Architecture of The Machine
Channel: Linux.conf.au 2016 -- Geelong, Australia
Date: 2016-02-06

Keith Packard
https://linux.conf.au/schedule/30060/view_talk
Innovations in optical interconnect and storage technologies have
prompted HP to undertake a large-scale development effort called "The
Machine". This radical departure from traditional computer
architectures which we call 'Memory-Driven Computing', where large
scales of heterogenous computation can be brought to bear on a data
set which is accessed not over a traditional network or storage
system, but rather directly from the computational elements using
memory load/store instructions.

This presentation will describe the first implementation of this
architecture, both hardware and software. On the hardware side, this
will include:

 • Heterogenous computation node hardware
 • Memory interconnection fabric
 • Hundreds of terabytes of memory
 • Network interconnect
 • Top of Rack Management Server

The system software for The Machine is based on Debian GNU/Linux.  The
presentation will focus on new and updated software elements while
mentioning some of the existing code that has been particularly useful:

 • Two-level storage allocation system
 • DAX changes needed to support large storage systems
 • Concurrent file system designed for large shared memories
 • Provisioning services
 • The Machine Environment Simulator (TMES)

As with any research project, The Machine asks more questions than it
answers.

 • How should we build data structures for storage where the
   addressable persistent unit is a single byte?

 • What changes are needed in the design of large-data software
   systems to best take advantage of this shift from network-driven
   computing to memory-driven computing?

 • The Linux operating system model drives a huge range of hardware
   these days. Is The Machine different enough to encourage a
   different model?