siliconindia | | May 201819THE CLOUD IS DRIFTING TOWARDS THE EDGEy applying cloud-com-puting technology found in massive data centers to the smaller-scale In-ternet of Things de-ployed in the field, edge computing will revolutionize em-bedded systems. Mouse clicks will be all that will deploy new software. The wealth of data generated by IoT endpoints will be speedily analyzed and acted upon. Systems will be de-ployed quickly and securely man-aged and operated. Edge computing ultimately will enable rapid develop-ment and deployment of novel ser-vices, raising the embedded world's innovation rate. Cloud has undoubtedly transformed information technology (IT). Companies can now provision servers with a click of the mouse instead of physically installing hardware. Software infrastructure such as databases can now be provisioned easily. Big data sets are now easy to handle. Applications can be scaled up and down depending on the load. Cloud computing, for the most part, has been centralized and operated by a specialized cloud service provider, such as Amazon Web Services. Enterprises are starting to explore private clouds for IT workloads, and a hybrid approach joins private and public clouds.In the networking sphere, the idea of placing compute nodes in the access network has been around for a while. At first, people didn't know what to do with the idea. The usually cited use was for caching. If that's the only use, deploying a dedicated caching appliance is much simpler. Subsequently, along came Network Function Virtualization, NFV, which applies cloud technology to implement network functions. These functions can be hosted in a data center meaning in the IT cloud, or in the edge network alongside routers, in the access network, or at customer premises.The term edge computing refers to cloud-style computing at any of these locations outside a big data center, and it's now apparent that it can be used for IoT generally and not only for networking. Cloud management and orchestration technology can be used to provision new applications within the IoT in the same way as IT managers spin up servers in the cloud. An IOT node can access basic services like storage and databases in the same standardized way they're accessed in the cloud. Big data sets generated by IoT nodes can be processed close by, reducing the latency between analysis and action and the amount of data that otherwise would have to flow through fat pipes to a cloud data center. In summary, edge computing is a big deal.The Edge Computing EcosystemEdge computing is a new class of gateways or systems that perform data processing near the source of the data, or at the edge of the network, working in conjunction with the cloud.For Amazon's IoT services, its cloud software can also be extended to run on local devices. One application is that a camera collects data which is sent to an IoT gateway for edge processing before it is sent to the cloud for further analytics.It is also about aggregating IoT data from many users or sensors. In By Sanjay Gupta, Vice President & India Country Manager, NXP SemiconductorCXO INSIGHTSANXP Semiconductors N.V. is a Dutch global semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Eindhoven, Netherlands processing from microcontrollers and processors to sensors, analog ICs and connectivity, with its technologies fueling innovation in automotive, consumer, industrial and networking.
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