The Machine Architecture

Here's a brief introduction to some of the hardware concepts within The Machine.

As the team at HP that I'm working with are busy working on Linux kernel changes motivated by the hardware, I'm hoping that providing this kind of documentation will help Linux kernel developers outside of HP evaluate that work, and work by others in related areas.

Joining HP and learning about The Machine

In January, I joined HP to work on Linux for The Machine.

I'd watched Martin Fink's video and read other articles on the new hardware coming out of HP labs. I had hints of what they were up to, and the possibilities seemed exciting enough to entice me to go back to HP.

When I arrived at HP, one of the first things I got to read was the external reference specification for The Machine. 170 pages detailing a more significant shift in computer architecture than I had been given any hints of, both in my interviews at HP and from what I could see in the press.

Since then, I've been eager to tell people about what we're doing, and I'm happy to say that we're finally ready to start the conversation with this brief description.

A Short Outline of Storage within The Machine

The basic unit of The Machine is a collection of hardware grouped in a Load Store Domain. A Load Store Domain consists of:

  • Multiple independent Compute Nodes

    • Independent operating systems
    • Local memory
    • Load/store access to shared, in-memory storage

  • Shared byte-addressable persistent memory:

    • Non-volatile wrt operating system life cycle
    • Global address space
    • Hardware access control
    • Accessed with standard CPU load/store instructions

Here's a diagram of how the various bits of the hardware are hooked together:

And, a brief description of the elements within the picture:

  • Compute Node. A set of processing cores, caches and various ancillary peripherals.
  • Local Store. Memory directly connected to the processing cores.
  • Firewall. Hardware access control between the compute node and shared memory.
  • Shared Byte-addressable Persistent Memory. This is the storage within The Machine. It is accessed directly via normal CPU load/store instructions in units as small as one byte.

I've intentionally drawn the shared memory in a large box to emphasize the notion that this machine is more "memory-centric" and less "processor-centric".

The shared byte-addressable persistent memory forms the sole persistent storage within The Machine.

More to Come

I'll continue to publish information about The Machine and our related Linux work as we work on the hardware and software.