Edge computing
Edge computing is a new form of decentralized computing. Edge
computing is done at or near the source of generated data, often in difficult to
reach locations such as wind turbines and oil rigs, as opposed to sending data
to the cloud to be processed and analyzed. Bringing operations closer, at the
edge of a network, reduces the distance and time the data has to travel
between a client and server, and accelerates the data-to-insights process. An
example is implementing IoT devices and sensors to gather more data and
extend the lifetimes of large capital expenditures, such as SCADA systems
and manufacturing lines to modernize their operations. By analyzing data that
companies are gathering from their IoT devices near the source,
Edge computing can also benefit remote office/branch office (ROBO)
environments and organizations that have a geographically dispersed user
base. In such a scenario, intermediary micro data centers or high-performance
servers can be installed at remote locations to replicate cloud services locally,
improving performance and the ability for a device to act upon perishable data
in fractions of a second. Depending upon the vendor and technical
implementation, the intermediary may be referred to by one of several names
including edge gateway, base station, hub, cloudlet or aggregator.
Examples of edge computing use cases include industrial sensors
monitoring factory machines, devices to measure soil moisture in agriculture
fields, and the information processing done by self-driving cars. Across all of
these devices, edge computing makes it possible to process and act on local
data in near real time. Devices used for edge computing can be as simple as a
Raspberry Pi server or as complex as an AI system with FPGA or CPU
hardware—the key characteristic is that the computing is done at or near
where data is generated in a standalone device or small cluster (as opposed to
a full, racked data center).