In dramatic fashion, computing giant HP has announced that it has created a revolutionary new type of supercomputing system that could change the way we conceive of big data and how it’s processed.

According to HP CEO Meg Whitman, “The secrets to the next great scientific breakthrough, industry-changing innovation or life-altering technology hide in plain sight behind the mountains of data we create every day. To realize this promise, we can’t rely on the technologies of the past, we need a computer built for the big data era.”

The difference between traditional supercomputers and HP's new Memory Driven computer explained.

That computer is “The Machine”, a supercomputing system that contains 160 terabytes of memory and a new architecture that breaks down the bottleneck created by processor-based supercomputers and their tiny onboard memory caches. Aside from its enormous memory bank, The Machine is also built around an optimized Linux OS that can take advantage of “abundant and persistent emory, and state of the art photonics/optical communications links that can switch data rapidly.

HP’s CTO added, “We believe Memory-Driven Computing is the solution to move the technology industry forward in a way that can enable advancements across all aspects of society. The architecture we have unveiled can be applied to every computing category—from intelligent edge devices to supercomputers.”

In the video and infographic below HP lays out their plan to change high performance computing. Can their ideas realize the change that they’re promising?