The document discusses edge computing offloading and perspectives. It presents a taxonomy of edge computing applications based on whether data originates from clients or the cloud, and the destination. Examples of offloading, caching, and aggregation are provided. Offloading reduces clients' energy consumption and increases privacy, while caching and aggregation provide significant benefits to network operators through reduced traffic. While computation offloading benefits may diminish as clients' processing power increases, future applications like smart glasses may rely on offloading as their only computational option. More research is needed on mechanisms for devices without on-board computation to access offloading services.

1. Edge computing offloading:
status & perspectives
C. Cicconetti
Ubiquitous Internet research group
http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/

2. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Multi-access edge computing
Three-tier model: cloud + edge + clients

3. A small taxonomy of
edge computing
applications
based on whether the data originates from (client vs. cloud)
and the final destination/consumer is the (client vs. cloud)

4. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Applications
offloading = the application executes entirely on a VM/container in the edge
delegation = the application surrenders (some of its) computations to the edge
OUT: client OUT: cloud
IN: client Offloading / delegation Aggregation
IN: cloud Caching N/A
VM = virtual machine

5. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Examples
• Offloading
• User with mobile phone camera takes a video. The latter usually must be
transcoded before upload to social media. The MNO offers a transcoding
service on the BS, which relieves the mobile phone from the burden of running
computational-intensive (= energy consuming) tasks
• Caching
• MNO hosts content distribution nodes (similar to CDN)
• Aggregation
• User continuously produces data (e.g. sensors running a telemetry
application). Not all data are really needed for historical reasons (e.g. a
humidity sensor producing the same value for hours). Aggregation happens in
the edge (e.g. only changes are sent to the cloud)
MNO = mobile network operator, BS = base station, CDN = content distribution network

6. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Benefits
End user’s perspective
OUT: client OUT: cloud
IN: client
Less energy consumption
(than doing computations
on device)
More privacy/control
(than using a public
cloud)
IN: cloud
Less latency
(than using a remote data
center)
N/A

7. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Benefits
Operator’s perspective
OUT: client OUT: cloud
IN: client Better user analytics (?) Less outbound traffic
IN: cloud Less inbound traffic N/A

8. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Analysis
A. Aggregation / caching
• Firm & significant benefits to the operator
• Less pronounced benefits to the user
B. Computation offloading / delegation
• Direct benefits to the operator are uncertain
• Benefits to the user may vanish in the future (next slide)
Quiz time: which
will be done first?

9. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Extrapolation
• Computational power of servers has reached its peak long ago
• On the other hand, battery-power SoC devices (mobile phones and alike) are still
ramping up, esp. for specialised applications that can benefit from dedicated engines
• Eg. image processing on a server may be more (energy) efficient today, but what
about tomorrow?
• If this benefit disappears, what other reasons could we have to delegate
computations to the edge? Plenty of reasons not to:
• Communication overhead
• Transfer latency
• Risky process (many parties involved)
• Privacy issues

10. Is this the end of
computation offloading/
delegation*?
(spoiler: no)
(*) before it even started properly

11. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
Future applications!
• There are many devices for which outsourcing
computations is the only way to perform non-trivial
operations:
• Smart glasses/contact lenses
• Smart objects
• Smart watches
• <add your own>
Sources: Popular Science (contact lenses); Wikipedia (others)

12. C. Cicconetti, IIT-CNR, Ubiquitous Internet research group, http://cnd.iit.cnr.it/
TL;DR
• Computation offloading / delegation
• The right thing, for the wrong reasons (so far)
• In the future: may be the only option for many device
types / applications
• What should we do then?
• More research on simple plug&play mechanism to
support devices with no on-board computation at all

13. End of presentation