An interesting paradox has emerged during the past few years. Ever more computing infrastructure is embedded in the cloud, which tends to put the computing smarts further away from users. At the same time, however, an increasing portion of services and applications that consumers and businesses use requires instantaneous reactions that can’t be handled in far-away clouds.
That can be a big problem. For instance, autonomous vehicles have to react to road conditions in real time. The cloud is not built for this level of interaction. The time it takes for signals to go from the vehicle to the control equipment and back almost certainly is too long. In addition to the distance the signals must traverse, time is spent working through network congestion and other impediments. And, to top it all off, the longer the distance, the greater the chances that a problem occurs. That isn’t a good thing when an AV wants to know whether to brake or not.
Read more at IT Business Edge.
