"Edge computing" has become the core keyword of 5G

How fast is 5G? The upgrade from 4G to 5G is comparable to the change from 1G to 4G. As the new infrastructure presses the "fast forward button" for the development of 5G in my country, edge computing has become one of the core keywords of 5G.

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Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Development of Industrial Big Data", which clearly proposed to promote the deployment and integration of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and edge computing; China Unicom released a MEC (mobile edge computing) large-scale commercial network, and will complete the construction of thousands of edge nodes in key cities across the country in 2020; Liu Jinglei, chief researcher at China Mobile Research Institute, also said that edge computing is an important part of China Mobile's 5G+.

A new species facing challenges

5G has given the whole society a greater imagination space. A number of "new species" that have emerged and are about to explode - intelligent manufacturing, AR/VR, smart home, high-definition video, smart medical care, autonomous driving, etc., will have a more profound impact on our lives as 5G becomes popular. 5G, together with new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, will give rise to various new applications and new formats, and then form an unprecedented new 5G ecosystem.

Imagine that in a 5G environment, we can watch 8K videos at home, feel the atmosphere of a football game without going to the scene, enjoy smart medical care in the community, feel the convenience of assisted driving on the road, and use various smart city services outdoors.

Chen Yanling, deputy general manager of Inspur's server product line, said that these emerging applications under 5G not only need to process a large amount of data, but also have very high real-time requirements for data processing, and even require data processing speeds of "milliseconds". Moreover, they must be online at all times and data must not be delayed. This poses an unimaginable challenge to cloud computing power, and only edge computing close to the terminal can complete the low-latency response, and the combination of cloud, edge, and terminal can solve the different demands for computing power in the 5G era.

In the 5G era, edge computing will become an indispensable supplement to cloud computing. Edge computing can shorten the communication distance between terminals and servers, making their real-time interaction possible. There are 50 billion terminal devices in the world, with a data volume of about 44 ZB. If all this data is transmitted to the cloud for calculation and storage, it will bring huge bandwidth consumption and calculation delay. Edge computing can solve these problems well. In the future, more than 85% of the data will not be transmitted back to the cloud data center, but will be directly analyzed and processed at the edge.

The “disappearing” traditional data center

In fact, some new applications did not just appear today, but in the 3G and 4G eras, without the underlying technology to support them, it seems a bit "out of place" for us to talk about various applications. The "China 5G Economic Report 2020" shows that the five major 5G pioneer industries in the future are: mobile terminals, pan-entertainment, industrial Internet, medical health and automobiles.

Only with the arrival of 5G can emerging applications be truly implemented and become a timely new trend. Edge computing is an indispensable computing power for 5G, so embracing 5G also means embracing edge computing.

According to Gartner's forecast, in 2020, 50% of large enterprises will include edge computing in their plans, and more than 50% of industrial IoT analysis and processing will be performed at the edge; in 2022, more than 50% of enterprise data will be generated or processed outside the data center or cloud. In the future, traditional data centers will shift to hyperscale data centers + edge data centers, IT infrastructure will be distributed, and data centers will be ubiquitous.

The changes in data centers mean that IT infrastructure will also undergo tremendous changes. As the core part of IT infrastructure, servers that provide computing power will inevitably face a round of changes. According to an IDC report, by 2023, the global edge server shipments will account for 17.8% (10.6% in 2018), and the global edge storage shipments will account for 11.7% (7.5% in 2018). Data is gradually moving from the center to the edge, and edge infrastructure will become a better data service provider and carrier.

In order to better adapt to the location of the infrastructure and specific work requirements, edge computing servers require new designs, including compact form factor, low-power power supply, ruggedness for extreme environments, and computing power that matches the application scenarios. Only a few IT manufacturers can achieve mass production of such technical requirements. Such a "threshold" makes edge computers a scarce resource.

"Edge" breaks the boundaries of the future

In China, 5G base stations will see real large-scale construction in 2020, and edge computing has just started. However, with the explosion of 5G, its prospects are immeasurable. The number of edge applications alone will increase by 800% by 2024. As one of the top three server manufacturers in the world and the first in China, Inspur has insight into the new opportunities brought by edge computing in the 5G era and seized the initiative in the blue ocean of edge computing.

Inspur is the only server supplier that has joined the three major global open computing organizations, ODCC, OCP, and Open19. It accelerates innovation through openness and promotes the technological evolution of 5G and edge computing. In early 2019, Inspur released the first edge computing server NE5260M5 that meets the OTII standard of the ODCC organization. It is designed for 5G and can undertake 5G application scenarios such as the Internet of Things, MEC, and NFV. It is suitable for the harsh environment of edge computer rooms. In October of the same year, this product successfully won the bid for the procurement of edge computing server equipment for the Research Institute of China Mobile Limited, mainly used in edge computing pilot and testing business scenarios.

Shen Rong, general manager of Inspur's server product line, introduced that Inspur is also actively cooperating with the medical, retail, automotive and other industries to launch customized edge computing products for different application scenarios, such as: developing communication edge servers for communication operators; developing in-vehicle edge computing servers for smart cars and unmanned driving; developing home servers/home gateways for smart homes, etc.

It is foreseeable that once edge computing meets the computing power requirements of 5G and opens up the application layer, society will complete a comprehensive evolution of "no traffic jams, safer food, and more comfortable life". To embrace 5G, we must move beyond traditional data centers and move towards edge computing. Edge computing will be an important opportunity for the entire ICT industry in the 5G era.