Particularly for latency-sensitive applications, edge computing augments the cloud
Ericsson–and every other telecom infrastructure vendor–are pushing hard to develop the underlying 5G technologies that will support a broad range of applications that leverage the promised ultra high capacity and very low latency promised by the emerging 5G New Radio specification. From hardware to software, a big piece of this is cloud-native design. But, in some cases, transporting data to the cloud isn’t enough. That means compute and processing power has to be moved closer to the end user. Enter edge computing.
Ericsson’s investment arm Ericsson Ventures has invested in a company called Realm, which has developed a mobile platform that focuses on providing real-time support for instantaneous delivery of applications supported by iOS, Android and a variety of cloud environments.
Ericsson Ventures VP Paul McNamara called it the “edge cloud.” Realm CEO Alexander Stigsen discussed the investment as helping to “solve the biggest mobile development challenges, and fulfill the potential of ultrafast 5G networks, powerful mobile devices and limitless developer imagination.”
The big picture here is the simultaneously centralized and decentralized architecture 5G will likely require. Think of a mobile augmented or virtual reality experience. Given the latency requirements of providing that experience in a manner that keeps up with a human’s ability to process imagery–it’s got to be fast otherwise lag can make a user feel nauseous–means a centralized cloud isn’t enough. That processing power has to be at the network edge.
In an industrial context, maybe a remote mining location, powerful edge gateways can collect, process and analyze data more quickly than if that same data were transported back to an off-premise cloud. This speeds up the delivery of actionable data insight, and cuts down on transport costs.
Monica Paolini, Senza Fili Consulting principal, dug into the relationship between mobile edge computing (MEC) and 5G with Debashish Purkayastha of InterDigital. “MEC will hit its potential with 5G, and 5G will hit its potential with MEC,” Purkayastha told Paolini. “They complement each other. MEC is the very foundational element that will allow 5G to live up to its potential. The edge can be at multiple levels of the network. It depends on the use cases or the verticals. In ultra-reliable low-latency use cases, it makes sense for the edge to be defined as what we call the leaf of the network, the extreme edge. It’s not even eNodeB. It may not even be a small cell. It can be the user device itself.”
