Topics In Demand
Notification
New

No notification found.

Edge Computing: Enabling newer technologies at the right time
Edge Computing: Enabling newer technologies at the right time

September 7, 2020

453

0

Edge Computing - Microsoft

Market Timing

Now is the right time to build a computer company.

But unlike the 1970s, this time it’s on the edge!

The edge computing industry is on the rise due to self-driving cars, smart cameras, cybersecurity, smart factories and probably every single ‘new’ industry out there. 

They also account for more than 99% of the new investments in the tech industry.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) predicts that adoption of robots and AI could boost productivity by 30% in many industries over the coming decade, while cutting manufacturing labour costs by between 18% and 33%

To top it all, the recent COVID-19 pandemic has put technology spendings on sixth gear as humans are forced to work from home.

The people building for the edge are benefitting the most, since they are the ‘tool makers’ and ‘platform makers’ in this gold rush. 

From chipmakers to edge cloud platforms to smart sensor manufacturers, the entire edge stack is already ready with real vendors for solving real world problems.

What is edge computing

Today most IoT devices like smart cameras, smart speakers and smart ‘XYZ’ are edge devices which process some part of the data onboard and have interfaces to the outside world. 

A few more examples:

  1. Chrome Dino Screen
    Chrome Dino screen

    The above famous game runs without the cloud and is an edge application that utilizes local processing using JS on the browser page.
  2. wesense.ai edge module
    Wesense Edge Computing SolutionClearhealth - A Health Sense solutionClearhealth features
    The wesense edge compute module for CCTV/cameras is also an example of edge computing where video feed is processed using deep learning models in real-time. 

    Smart cameras are a huge visible part of the edge ecosystem. 

    For AI to become like the new electricity, the ‘transformers’ are nothing but the multitude of smart devices.

    Cybersecurity is another huge area where edge computing is shining and is used by many trusted companies like Blackridge and others.

    For online trust, what  is physically visible to naked eye is more trustworthy than one inside the screen! 

The Edge platforms

Edge Computing Solutions

All public cloud vendors like GCP, Azure, AWS, etc already offer full-stack general purpose IoT platforms. 

But in most real-world projects, people tend to build their custom stacks with components sourced from various vendors for better control.

Broadly one would need:

  1. A remote login provider. Ex: remote.it
  2. A choice of processor and board. Ex: NXP, Jetson series
  3. Discrete or in-built accelerator/GPU for AI applications. Ex: Google Coral, NCS2 
  4. Sensors depending on the needs of the application.
  5. Protocol stack to send events to the cloud. Ex: Hosted services offer MQTT
  6. Server-side event message processing system. Ex: Google pub/sub
  7. NoSQL/Time-Series data storage system. Example: InfluxDB
  8. API and other services built on top of it. Choose serverless to start with.
  9. Device code deployment and OTA capabilities along with heartbeat statuses for debugging.
  10. For AI-based applications, an additional model training pipeline on the server to process cleaned data to build and test new models.
  11. Last but not the least, offline code capabilities for handling all no internet scenarios. It’s more common than you expect.

When starting out at wesense.ai, we built on top of the Intel NUC and later expanded our solution and later went on to build our own hardware modules with code baked in.

On the software side, we built it ground up to handle cameras better.

So the best part is that there are no established standards to follow as the whole industry is evolving and learning. 

This gives immense scope for a lot of startups (both hardware and software) to have a play and build interesting tools and platforms for vertical specific solutions.

Most of the technology trends today like IoT, Digital Transformation, Drones, Industry 4.0, etc actually form a common backbone using edge compute. Most of the growth is coming from the data and digital revolution, especially in businesses.

It is certain that the coming decade will definitely be defined by this technology, just like the last decade was done by smartphones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


That the contents of third-party articles/blogs published here on the website, and the interpretation of all information in the article/blogs such as data, maps, numbers, opinions etc. displayed in the article/blogs and views or the opinions expressed within the content are solely of the author's; and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of NASSCOM or its affiliates in any manner. NASSCOM does not take any liability w.r.t. content in any manner and will not be liable in any manner whatsoever for any kind of liability arising out of any act, error or omission. The contents of third-party article/blogs published, are provided solely as convenience; and the presence of these articles/blogs should not, under any circumstances, be considered as an endorsement of the contents by NASSCOM in any manner; and if you chose to access these articles/blogs , you do so at your own risk.


WesenseAi

© Copyright nasscom. All Rights Reserved.