HPE Opens New HQ, Highlights Lab Research Advances

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, the HP that produces enterprise IT systems but not printers, laptops or workstations, showed off its new headquarters here in the heart of Silicon Valley on April 30. The event included a media tour of its wide-ranging research facilities. Among other projects, the tech giant is looking to vastly improve data center performance by replacing copper wire with photonics that can send transfer data at the speed of light. “Copper has its limits in reach. With photonics, 1km reach is easily attainable,” said Ashkan Seyedi, a senior research scientist at Hewlett-Packard Labs. He also said the technology requires as little as 1/50th the power of a traditional data center interconnect. Security research was also highlighted, including servers and other products HPE is already shipping with advanced protections. “Today we are building in protection and recovery to all devices, so you don’t have to pay ransomware,” said Gary Campbell, Vice-President of Hewlett Packard Labs and Director of the Security Lab.