US telecommunications giant Verizon has used edge computing to halve 5G latency in a recent trial.
One of 5G’s key advantages is reduced latency compared with earlier generations, meaning information can complete roundtrips much faster. Lower latency unlocks new possibilities for applications such as online gaming, real-time virtual reality, and latency-sensitive remote operations.
Verizon engineers deployed Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) hardware and MEC platform software inside a network facility located closer to the network edge. By shortening the distance between a wireless device and the compute resources that run its applications, overall responsiveness and performance improve.
For the trial, Verizon ran a facial recognition application. Processing the data at the network edge allowed the system to identify people twice as quickly as when the same workload was handled by a traditional centralized data center.
Adam Koeppe, Verizon’s Senior Vice President for Network Planning, said:
“For applications requiring low latency, sending huge quantities of data to and from the centralized cloud is no longer practical. Data processing and management will need to take place much closer to the user.
MEC moves application processing, storage, and management to the Radio Access Network’s edge to deliver the desired low latency experiences, thereby enabling new disruptive technologies.
This shift in where application processing occurs, combined with 5G’s ability to move data more efficiently and our use of millimeter wave spectrum, is a game-changer for the edge computing capabilities we can provide.”
The trial took place at Verizon’s 5G testbed in Houston, Texas. The operator has not published exact latency numbers from the test.
Other carriers are running similar experiments. AT&T, for example, recently opened an edge computing testbed in Silicon Valley and is collaborating with The Linux Foundation to develop the software stack needed to support edge deployments.
(Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash)
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