What is Edge Computing?
Edge computing is an often-used marketing term that attempts to explain a new approach to collecting information, analyzing data, and executing actions with computer and electrical components.
The “edge” refers to a physical location where data is efficiently collected close to the source, Simple calculations and commands based on collected (sensor) data have taken place at the edge for decades. (consider a traffic light) Compute has power quickly grown in the past five years, and the ability to process mass amounts of data have been expanded using AI (Artificial Intelligence), The challenge of moving large amounts of data from the edge to a single sophisticated computer causes issues with wide bandwidth connection cost and lag time in two way communication over the connection.
Edge computing refers to high powered low energy consuming designs that allow data to be processed and resulting actions to be taken without the expense and latency in transferring the data to a high-powered computer. The edge computer does the work near the source of the data.
These lower cost units can communicate with central computers less often and at optimal times. Recent models have utilized a high-powered computer as a learning environment and edge computers to run inference programs to execute actions. They can be in fixed locations or on mobile devices.
