Edge Computing vs. Computing At The Edge

True edge computing is not economically viable with current technology.

Edge computing entails moving compute to where the data is - and it’s not nearly as straightforward as is sounds.

Edge computing enables an entirely new class of applications.

Every UPS or FedEx vehicle can have a supercomputer on board - managing the real time inventory of every item in their vast, worldwide fleets. The moment an item is removed, inventory is updated to every UPS location in the world.

In a supply chain, the moment a box of paper is sold at Staples, the demand forecast in Brazil is updated - giving true real time, zero latency to your entire supply chain.

Edge computing happened as a need well before current technology could deliver a solution.

Current vendors are falling all over themselves building things that resemble mini-data centers all over the place.

This architecture shares a characteristic - data is captured at the edge, sent to a central processing location, usually the cloud, processed and returned. There is no consideration of a real time inventory for that UPS guy.

This architecture is horrendously expensive. It is inherently unscalable.

No way to put one of those little “data centers” in each truck.

Certainly not in each person’s cell phone!

What this architecture delivers is “computing at the edge,” which is quite different from edge computing.

Edge computing is a new class of application.

Applying 1980s technology to this class gives you 1980s problems, 1980s restrictions and 1980s cost.

IBM is building small computers to connect with their cloud - that’s how a hardware company delivers edge - with hardware!

Fractal solves these limitations in a big way.

Fractal, as you will recall from our earlier conversations, reduces I/O (input output) to such a degree it delivers quantum speed, today, on current hardware.

It also enables any application to be run on a phone, a card, a Raspberry Pi (small, disposable, cheap computer), an Intel NUC or perhaps, if you really need it, a chip.

Here’s a funny story that kind of makes the point.

Our engineers are pretty humble guys most of the time - except when they are in front of a potential huge customer who asks penetrating questions. They become a bit hard to control.

A top exec from the world’s largest, or second largest telco. said he has a billing system costing $1.2 billion a year to produce the bills for 125 million customers. He said it was the biggest billing system in the world. Maybe it is, who knows?

Their data center takes up blocks - like city blocks. They have hundreds of employees. They use billing software from Israel dating back to before many of you were born.

The telco has some pretty sharp elbowed guys on the board who want to take out costs - as in billion of dollars a year.

So his question was, can you replace this billing system?

The answer from one of the engineers was that Fractal could replace their billing system in 90 days, with about $100,000 in hardware, running a “data center” about the size of a two car garage - consuming less energy than a 4 bedroom house.

Instead of their billing system running for 24 days, they would have bills done in an hour.

Most of that $1.2 billion would be returned to those nasty guys on the board.

Because this telco exec is over 65, and he once built what are called “full stack” applications, he knew Fractal could do this - he even volunteered they had been trying to do I/O reduced apps for years - they just could not get it quite done.

Then the second Fractal engineer, a younger guy, chimed in.

He said this telco could do their billing system as a true edge application.

Every cell phone in their 125 million cell phone network was, to Fractal, an edge computer.

They didn’t need a data center at all. Nor did they need to spend that $1.2 billion a year.

They could put a Fractal on every customer’s cell phone, with every customer’s data, and at billing time, customers would get their bill, on their phone, and the telco would in an instant get paid.

The data center was no longer needed.

That is an application for true edge computing.

That was, of course, definitely one drink too many for our telco prospect, but what we learned from it is that the most powerful computer in the world is the cell phone network for every person.

When harnessed, together as one super computer, those cell phones have more compute power than entire sovereign nations. Fractal can do that.

You cannot even posit these possibilities with “computing at the edge.” No data centers in your basement, IBM.

Fractal, and other coming quantum-speed I/O reduction technologies have these capabilities now - and eventually someone will step up and do it.

It may be a gaming application, it may be a supply chain application or it may be Walmart getting tired of getting their lunch eaten by Amazon.

That day is coming, it is an edge application, and the Fractal architecture is likely to play a big role in its delivery.

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Jay@FractalWeb.App

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