Does "The Machine" have any relevancy for computer graphics?

[Irenicus]

Not sure if this is the right location for this topic, but it's definitely related to graphics... potentially.

Here is a highlight of a talk on a project hp is researching now called the machine. It deals with memristors and rethinking the current computing paradigm for memory storage and data transfer using fiber.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcmsby8jDKE


They seem to be focused on improvements and applications to servers, the bread and butter for the business arm of hp, but what about computer graphics?


I'm not sure the memristors can completely replace dram, but they are not talking about unified memory in the sense of the same memory for the gpu/cpu. It seems like they are talking about the same memory for storage/cpu/gpu. And they say there are massive reductions in energy usage.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

If you want to see the full talk and an article here they are:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxn5ru7klUQ


http://www.technologyreview.com/new...a-revolutionary-new-operating-system-in-2015/

Here is a money quote from that article:

"HP’s simulations suggest that a server built to The Machine’s blueprint could be six times more powerful than an equivalent conventional design, while using just 1.25 percent of the energy and being around 10 percent the size."

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

That has VERY little relevance to computer graphics ...

"The Machine" only attempts to improves upon certain aspects of a conventional computer such as eliminating memory hierarchy altogether by unifying positive traits of cache, memory, and storage ...

A lot of graphics programmers do take into consideration to optimize memory access patterns to be GPU friendly so the solution presented by HP becomes moot for the most part.

What you've shown does not even cover computer graphics itself, just something loosely related to it ...