HP's The Machine Prototype Coming Next Year, But Is Proving Less Exciting

Earlier this week I was pondering the state of HP's "The Machine" and Linux++ with the Linux++ software platform supposed to come in June of 2015. Not much information has been heard on these experimental projects, but now there's some new information coming out.

It's now being reported that a prototype of The Machine will be ready in 2016, albeit the finished product is at least a half-decade away. The prototype due out next year will reportedly have 2,500 CPU cores and 320TB of memory. However, sadly, the promised memristor technology is still running behind schedule and next year's prototype will rely upon DRAM memory chips.

HP's new non-volatile memory technology was supposed to be one of the big features for The Machine, but it's not going to be ready by 2016. HP expects the phase-change memory to be ready prior to the arrival of memristors. Given the current shortcomings, the 2016 prototype is also expected to be far from energy efficient.

These details about the current state of The Machine were shared at the HP Discover conference this week. More details along with some pictures of a mock-up device can be found at Arnnet.com. While Linux++ wasn't specifically mentioned, it's looking unlikely that it will be released in any form this month.