The LF Edge community comprises a diverse set of member companies and people that represent the IoT, Enterprise, Cloud and Telco Edge. The Member Spotlight blog series highlights these members and how they are contributing to and leveraging open source edge solutions. Today, we sat down with Tina Tsou, Enterprise Architect at Arm and Co-Chair of the Technical Steering Committee for the Akraino Edge Stack, to discuss the importance of open source software, collaborating with industry leaders in edge computing, security, how they contribute to the Akraino Edge Stack project and the impact of being a part of the LF Edge ecosystem.
Can you tell us a little about your organization?
I work for Arm, a semiconductor IP company, as Enterprise Architect in the Infrastructure line of business.
What are your interests in open source projects?
The open source approach allows me to get requirements from customers, understand the solutions from partners, so I can get prepared well for internal design and products, having open source in mind.
What are your thoughts on LF Edge and what sort of impact do you think LF Edge has on the edge, networking, and IoT industries?
I joined the Akraino Edge Stack per a customer’s ask and then the project was merged under the LF Edge umbrella. LF Edge is the de facto standard for the mainstream product and deployment of edge computing including edge servers, network edge, and device gateway.
What do you see as the top benefits of being a community participant of the LF Edge community?
The top benefits include having direct connection with customers that keep me updated on the latest trends of edge computing and collaboration among end to end ecosystems and supply chain as well as validation in CI/CD environments.
What are your top contributions as a community member?
I serve as LF Edge TAC member, Akraino TSC co-chair, contributed Integrated Edge Cloud (IEC) platform (Arm enabler) used by multiple blueprints like the 5G MEC System, the AI Edge, etc. Sample blueprints that I’ve contributed to include:
- The purpose of Public Cloud Edge Interface (PCEI) Blueprint family is to specify a set of open APIs for enabling interworking between multiple functional entities or Domains that provide services needed for implementation of Edge capabilities/applications that require close integration between the Mobile Edge, the Public Cloud Core and Edge as well as the 3rd-Party provided Edge functions. In Release 3 we choose to expose the set of location APIs as defined by the MTSI MEC to showcase the PCEI capability.
- KubeEdge Edge Service Blueprint showcases end-to-end solution for edge services with KubeEdge centered edge stack. The first release will focus on the ML inference offloading use case. It supports multi-arch.
- The Radio Edge Cloud Blueprint is a member of the Telco Appliance blueprint family which is designed to provide a fully integration tested appliance tuned to meet the requirements of the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC). Changes since Release 2 (2019-11-18), include New Features like Arm64 Support! – REC Release 3 supports Arm based CPUs for the first time. Support includes Ampere Hawk and Falcon servers.
- IEC (Integrated Edge Cloud) is a platform that enables new functionalities and business models on the network edge.
- The IEC type 2 mainly focuses on the high-performance computing system of medium and/or large deployment at the data center.
- IEC Type 3 mainly focuses on Android Application running on edge Arm Cloud architecture with GPU/ vGPU Management.
What do you think sets LF Edge apart from other industry alliances?
LF Edge has a pragmatic approach for Practice, Project, Production in a closed loop, which is at production quality and deployable.
What advice would you give to someone considering joining LF Edge?
Start by questioning how you expect LF Edge will be used in your business and then read the end user stories. You will find the right project and perspective that you care about and then take baby steps, for example, try an Akraino blueprint you are interested in, and report any issue you find. The community always has your back. Have fun!
Members of the Akraino TSC at the March 2020 F2F
To learn more about Akraino Edge Stack, click here. To find out more about our members or how to join LF Edge, click here. Additionally, if you have questions or comments, visit the LF Edge Slack Channel and share your thoughts in the #community or #akraino-tsc channels.
