Edge Computing: Explained (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from The Verge, written by Paul Miller: In the beginning, there was One Big Computer. Then, in the Unix era, we learned how to connect to that computer using dumb (not a pejorative) terminals. Next we had personal computers, which was the first time regular people really owned the hardware that did the work. Right now, in 2018, we're firmly in the cloud computing era. Many of us still own personal computers, but we mostly use them to access centralized services like Dropbox, Gmail, Office 365, and Slack. Additionally, devices like Amazon Echo, Google Chromecast, and the Apple TV are powered by content and intelligence that's in the cloud -- as opposed to the DVD box set of Little House on the Prairie or CD-ROM copy of Encarta you might've enjoyed in the personal computing era. As centralized as this all sounds, the truly amazing thing about cloud computing is that a seriously large percentage of all companies in the world now rely on the infrastructure, hosting, machine learning, and compute power of a very select few cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM.

The advent of edge computing as a buzzword you should perhaps pay attention to is the realization by these companies that there isn't much growth left in the cloud space. Almost everything that can be centralized has been centralized. Most of the new opportunities for the "cloud" lie at the "edge." The word edge in this context means literal geographic distribution. Edge computing is computing that's done at or near the source of the data, instead of relying on the cloud at one of a dozen data centers to do all the work. It doesn't mean the cloud will disappear. It means the cloud is coming to you. Miller goes on to "examine what people mean practically when they extoll edge computing," focusing on latency, privacy and security, and bandwidth.

Comments

I want my privacy back

[Anonymous Coward]

It is inevitable that as computers get more capable, these cloud services will become less attractive. Things I want private: Information Search, speech recognition, personal assistance, geographical services, etc.

Re:I want my privacy back

[phantomfive]

That's not going to happen.

Basically what it means is that Google will manage the software that is running on your devices. They will run whatever software they want on your devices without telling you what is going on. Besides "managed OS for IoT devices" this also means things like Google docs that can work in offline mode, that do most of their work on your device, but also sync with the cloud (as opposed to doing everything on the server thrrough rest APIs).

There is nothing new about this at all, but now there is a name for it, and people are building frameworks so even the dumbest programmers around can do it.

Re:I want my privacy back

[Anonymous Coward]

Information Search, speech recognition, personal assistance, geographical services, etc.
10 years from now, some company is going to make a killing selling me a device that can do those things and not have to connect. This is how Google falls.
                       

Edge computing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the only thing people used Edge for was to download Chrome.

Poe's Law

[phantomfive]

These are the first two lines from the article:

Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have proven to us that we can trust them with our personal data. Now it’s time to reward that trust by giving them complete control over our computers, toasters, and cars.

There is no way anyone is crazy enough to write those lines in all seriousness.

Re:Poe's Law

[StormReaver]

Can you show a deliberate act where those 3 parties have abused or failed to secure your data?

Each of those companies have abused and failed to secure people's data many thousands of times a year, and those are just the ones they are legally allowed to tell us about. Microsoft just fought and lost a years-long battle over this very thing, as Congress now mandates that those companies abuse and fail to secure our data as a matter of law.

What makes your toaster so important?

Because we in the U.S. have a right to protect our toasters from unreasonable searches and seizures. Putting all of your stuff onto someone else's computers is being interpreted by our Judicial branch as voluntarily waiving those rights.

So thanks, but no thanks.

Re:Poe's Law

[gaspyy]

Of course not. Read the conclusion of the article:

When the devices in your home and garage are managed by Google Amazon Microsoft Apple, you don’t have to worry about security. You don’t have to worry about updates. You don’t have to worry about functionality. You don’t have to worry about capabilities. You’ll just take what you’re given and use it the best you can. In this worst-case world, you wake up in the morning and ask Alexa Siri Cortana Assistant what features your corporate overlords have pushed to your toaster, dishwasher, car, and phone overnight. In the personal computer era you would “install” software. In the edge computing era, you’ll only use it.

The Cloud is Overrated

[rossz]

A lot of people have swallowed the "container in the cloud" kool-aid by the gallons. Espousing it has the cure-all for all your computing needs. I'm far less enthusiastic about it. I can see it being very useful for many things, but is not the final answer. Unfortunately, I'm dealing with the zealots on a daily basis.

Haven't we been here before?

[Stomper_Stoddard]

examine what people mean practically when they extoll edge computing," focusing on latency, privacy and security, and bandwidth."
This sounds suspiciously like returning data from the cloud to my personal computer and the pendulum is swinging back again. In the 80's we had dumb terminals, in the 90's we had thin clients and then in the 2000's we got the cloud, all of these things were more or less the same thing. Dumb terminals and thin clients failed because of latency and bandwidth, the cloud will fail because of privacy and security.

Definition

[SuperKendall]

It's when your computation is juuuuusut about done, but then you stop the processor suddenly but leave the caches full.

Re:The bullshit cycle

[swb]

I read an interesting comment the other day where it was theorized that once the cloud gets past some tipping point, on-premise hardware will lose its economies of scale due to less adoption and few organizations will be able to go back on premise because the equipment will be too expensive. OEMs will be mostly producing parts for custom cloud provider designs and they won't be useful for on-prem purposes.

I don't know that I buy it completely, but found it thought provoking. You would think that virtualization would have also had this effect -- even small companies I work for used to have 3-4 physical servers and now only have 1-2 for their workloads, yet server prices haven't gone though the roof, although it may just be that aggregate growth is so good that it covers up for it or even reduces demand-side inflation.

It does kind of make me wonder what economies of scale would have done for physical server prices if virtualization hadn't been widely adopted and organizations that buy 4 servers for their 100 VMs were still buying a nearly equivalent number of physical servers. We'd probably be doing what we used to do, cramming a bunch of unrelated services onto the same OS box wherever there wasn't a service/port/utilization conflict rather than splitting out services into single-service VMs.

Every once in a while I still run into a random client with a shitload of physical servers and it's kind of staggering. The last one was a company that had the same CFO and IT director for 20 years and an AS/400 shop with a really old-school IBM commitment.