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With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

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Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#51

Post by TkTech »

viraptor wrote: post #34
sliverstorm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software grows to match the hardware. If storage goes up 100x, data will grow to accommodate. Some things won't grow, to be sure. Anything text-based, for example. But movies, music, pictures... would probably all explode in fidelity and thus size.

Would movies and music really explode? Music hit the ceiling long time ago - nobody's going to go for higher resolution / sampling rate than the current "uncompressed" sound. Big publishers are intentionally sacrificing the quality for loudness anyway. Movies can practically scale up to retina-equivalent on wall-size equivalent only. Even then not many people will want TVs bigger than they can look at without moving…

Sensor data is one I would guess. Modern cell phones have an incredible number of sensors in them, but usually don't log the data when it's quickly sampled (accelerometers, background mic), or sample it rarely/slowly (GPS, barometer, ambient lighting) when it is logged. I would personally love to have days, weeks, or months of raw data sampled frequently.

Edit: I'd imagine this is due both to a limited amount of storage, a limited number of writes to current sold-state mediums, and energy usage, all of which this technology appears to solve.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#52

Post by yeukhon »

sp332 wrote: post #23
cliveowen wrote: post #8

I so much want this to be true, I can't wait for it. Not having a layered memory architecture means no VM, everything has be rethought from the filesystem down. On a related note: "Operating systems have not been taught what to do with all of this memory, and HP will have to get very creative." Anyone knows what this could possibly mean?

Well, you wouldn't have to save files. You could just use a data structure in main memory because it's non-volatile. But how would you share data between programs when there's no disk? And you could execute binaries directly from storage without "loading" them into memory first. But you'd have to keep an original copy somewhere in case it modifies itself as it runs.

What's the issue with RAM disk to address your concern about "no disk"?

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#54

Post by danmaz74 »

sp332 wrote: post #23
cliveowen wrote: post #8

I so much want this to be true, I can't wait for it. Not having a layered memory architecture means no VM, everything has be rethought from the filesystem down. On a related note: "Operating systems have not been taught what to do with all of this memory, and HP will have to get very creative." Anyone knows what this could possibly mean?

Well, you wouldn't have to save files. You could just use a data structure in main memory because it's non-volatile. But how would you share data between programs when there's no disk? And you could execute binaries directly from storage without "loading" them into memory first. But you'd have to keep an original copy somewhere in case it modifies itself as it runs.

I think there would still be a need for "files", ie, a way to store a self-contained document format in memory that is independent from the code that is working on the data at one exact moment: to allow moving documents between computers, but also to allow updating the software in a safe way (ie without losing data), to save older version of a document, but most importantly IMHO to be able to create snapshots that can be safely reloaded in case of a system crash. We're not ready to have systems that can't be rebooted.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#55

Post by LaikaF »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
valarauca1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means we might be able to make a literal version of the hitchhikers guide. All of human knowledge in your hand, no network connectivity needed.

You'd need the network connectivity anyway just to stay 'in sync'. But in off-line mode life would be a lot easier.

It could reduce the amount of data a smartphone needs. I'd like to keep a copy of my local area in my google map and then have it check in once a week to look for changes.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#56

Post by swalsh »

viraptor wrote: post #34
sliverstorm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software grows to match the hardware. If storage goes up 100x, data will grow to accommodate. Some things won't grow, to be sure. Anything text-based, for example. But movies, music, pictures... would probably all explode in fidelity and thus size.

Would movies and music really explode? Music hit the ceiling long time ago - nobody's going to go for higher resolution / sampling rate than the current "uncompressed" sound. Big publishers are intentionally sacrificing the quality for loudness anyway. Movies can practically scale up to retina-equivalent on wall-size equivalent only. Even then not many people will want TVs bigger than they can look at without moving…

Think about the oculus rift, movies/media might become a lot more complicated as VR or VR like technology comes of age. Or if its not VR there might be some other technology.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#58

Post by swalsh »

aragot wrote: post #37
sliverstorm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software grows to match the hardware. If storage goes up 100x, data will grow to accommodate. Some things won't grow, to be sure. Anything text-based, for example. But movies, music, pictures... would probably all explode in fidelity and thus size.

> Software grows to match the hardware. You mean XML for instance?

Not sure why he was downvoted, xml is a trade off for developer convenience. A trade off we were willing to make because we had disposable bits.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#59

Post by DelwinAmber »

TkTech wrote: post #51
viraptor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would movies and music really explode? Music hit the ceiling long time ago - nobody's going to go for higher resolution / sampling rate than the current "uncompressed" sound. Big publishers are intentionally sacrificing the quality for loudness anyway. Movies can practically scale up to retina-equivalent on wall-size equivalent only. Even then not many people will want TVs bigger than they can look at without moving…

Sensor data is one I would guess. Modern cell phones have an incredible number of sensors in them, but usually don't log the data when it's quickly sampled (accelerometers, background mic), or sample it rarely/slowly (GPS, barometer, ambient lighting) when it is logged. I would personally love to have days, weeks, or months of raw data sampled frequently. Edit: I'd imagine this is due both to a limited amount of stor…

Energy usage is the huge one - if this is applied to computing and not just storage then maybe.

Re: With 'The Machine,' HP May Have Invented a New Kind of Computer

#60

Post by DelwinAmber »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #31
valarauca1 wrote: post #13

A memristor is the 4th fundamental circuit component, along with capacitors, resistors, and inductors. The important part of memristors is that they can be arranged to form a crossbar latch, which acts like a transistor. This crossbar latches are very very small, and very low power. HP plans on achieving data density of 100GB/cm^2 [1] with read write speeds approximately 100x faster then flash memory while using 1% o…

Not only that but it has the potential to change our entire model of computing, and simplify it tremendously. The unification of storage and computing.

CPU's may end up looking more like GPU's with thousands of registers.
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