PRIVACY AND SECURITY

It might be weird to think of it this way, but the security and

privacy features of an iPhone are well accepted as an
example of edge computing. Simply by doing encryption and
storing biometric information on the device, Apple offloads a
ton of security concerns from the centralized cloud to its
diasporic users’ devices.

But the other reason this feels like edge computing to me,
not personal computing, is because while the compute work
is distributed, the definition of the compute work is
managed centrally. You didn’t have to cobble together the
hardware, software, and security best practices to keep
your iPhone secure. You just paid $999 at the cellphone
store and trained it to recognize your face.

The management aspect of edge computing is hugely

important for security. Think of how much pain and suffering
consumers have experienced with poorly managed Internet of
Things devices.

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.

Amazon, the largest by far of these “public cloud” providers

(as opposed to the “private clouds” that companies like
Apple, Facebook, and Dropbox host themselves) had 47
percent of the market in 2017.

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.”

So, what is 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.

That said, let’s get out of the word definition game and try to
examine what people mean practically when they extoll
edge computing.

LATENCY
One great driver for edge computing is the speed of light. If
a Computer A needs to ask Computer B, half a globe away,
before it can do anything, the user of Computer A perceives
this delay as latency. The brief moments after you click a
link before your web browser starts to actually show
anything is in large part due to the speed of light.
Multiplayer video games implement numerous elaborate
techniques to mitigate true and perceived delay between
you shooting at someone and you knowing, for certain, that
you missed.

EDGE COMPUTING HAS PRIVACY BENEFITS, BUT THEY

AREN’T GUARANTEED

Voice assistants typically need to resolve your requests in

the cloud, and the roundtrip time can be very noticeable.
Your Echo has to process your speech, send a compressed
representation of it to the cloud, the cloud has to
uncompress that representation and process it — which
might involve pinging another API somewhere, maybe to
figure out the weather, and adding more speed of light-
bound delay — and then the cloud sends your Echo the
answer, and finally you can learn that today you should
expect a high of 85 and a low of 42, so definitely give up on
dressing appropriately for the weather.

So, a recent rumor that Amazon is working on its own AI chips

for Alexa should come as no surprise. The more processing
Amazon can do on your local Echo device, the less your
Echo has to rely on the cloud. It means you get quicker
replies, Amazon’s server costs are less expensive, and
conceivably, if enough of the work is done locally you could
end up with more privacy — if Amazon is feeling
magnanimous.

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.

Allow me to introduce you to “edge” computing.

Edge is a buzzword. Like “IoT” and “cloud” before it, edge

means everything and nothing. But I’ve been watching some
industry experts on YouTube, listening to some podcasts,
and even, on occasion, reading articles on the topic. And I
think I’ve come up with a useful definition and some
possible applications for this buzzword technology.

WHAT IS EDGE COMPUTING?

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.