A Case for Elevating the Edge to be a Peer of the Cloud

Over the last 20 years, mobile computing has evolved to encompass a wide array of increasingly data-rich applications. Many of these applications were enabled by the Cloud computing revolution, which commoditized server hardware to support vast numbers of mobile users from a few large, centralized data centers. Today, mobile's next stage of evolution is spurred by interest in emerging technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), the Internet of Things (IoT), and Autonomous Vehicles. New applications relying on these technologies often require very low latency response times, increased bandwidth consumption, and the need to preserve privacy. Meeting all of these requirements from the Cloud alone is challenging for several reasons. First, the amount of data generated by devices can quickly saturate the bandwidth of backhaul links to the Cloud. Second, achieving low-latency responses for making decisions on sensed data becomes increasingly difficult the further mobile devices are from centralized Cloud data centers. And finally, regulatory or privacy restrictions on the data generated by devices may require that such data be kept locally. For these reasons, enabling next-generation technologies requires us to reconsider the current trend of serving applications from the Cloud alone.