Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has hit a new milestone in its plans to reinvent the computer.

The company says it has finally built a working prototype as part of its ongoing research project, The Machine. HPE ultimately hopes to revolutionize the way computers are built so they can process data much faster than is possible now.

“We have achieved a major milestone with The Machine research project—one of the largest and most complex research projects in our company’s history,” HPE executive vice president Antonio Neri said in a statement.

HPE’s the Machine research group is attempting nothing less than a total redesign of how computing works, one that would mean radical changes to the way computer servers are built. As explained by Keith Packard, Distinguished Engineer at HP, on SiliconANGLE’s online TV show theCUBE last year, the Machine will use a technology called silicon photonics, which transmits data using light, to allow processors to access data from memory chips much faster than is currently possible.

The Machine would be focused on memory as opposed to today’s computers, which are more focused on processors. Such a radical redesign means HPE would also have to rebuild its servers, the chips it uses, and the way they’re constructed.

Kirk Bresniker, an HPE chief architect and vice president, explained to the Wall Street Journal that the Machine was essentially turning current computing concepts on their head. Whereas processors are the focal point of system design in today’s computers, it would be the other way round with the Machine. Today’s computers are clumsy, as they break up big calculating jobs so they can crunched by individual processors, which have to retrieve data from disk drives or memory chips. But Bresniker explained that this approach is inefficient, as the processors are often forced to wait while data is copied and transferred to them.

The Machine, if it’s ever built commercially, will make those data transfers redundant, Bresniker explained. With the new design, thousands of processors would be able to simultaneously tap into data that’s stored in a vast memory pool, which could be a single server or a cluster of servers.

The proof-of-concept prototype, which HPE demonstrated at its labs in London on Monday, is based on redesigned servers that sport long, drawer-like modules that contain 8 terabytes of memory. That’s around 30 times the memory found in conventional servers, HPE said. In the future, its servers could contain several hundred terabytes to deliver the kind of computing power HPE says the Machine will be able to offer.

Still, a prototype is all that the Machine is for now. In order for its plans to come to fruition, HPE is pinning its hopes on an experimental kind of memory chip called memristor that has been in development for some years. Memristors can be thought of as chips that can perform both memory and storage tasks on the computer. The technology can keep data stored even when the power is switched off, which will allow the Machine to offer vast pools of nonvolatile memory for storing data. These pools will be connected via silicon photonics, which allows for data to be processed at a much faster rate, while reducing power consumption.

HPE has struggled for years to bring memristors to market, however, and after failing to meet a number of deadlines in the past has stayed quiet about the technology’s progress. For now, HPE’s prototype Machine uses more conventional DRAM memory instead, which means it’s still nowhere near as powerful as the envisaged final product will become.

“With this prototype, we have demonstrated the potential of Memory-Driven Computing and also opened the door to immediate innovation,” HPE’s Neri added. “Our customers and the industry as a whole can expect to benefit from these advancements as we continue our pursuit of game-changing technologies.”

HPE’s Keith Packard explains in greater depth how The Machine works in the video clip below: