Authors:
Ilir Murturi
1
;
Chao Jia
2
;
Bernhard Kerbl
2
;
Michael Wimmer
2
;
Schahram Dustdar
1
and
Christos Tsigkanos
1
Affiliations:
1
Distributed Systems Group, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria
;
2
Research Unit of Computer Graphics, TU Wien, Vienna, Austria
Keyword(s):
Edge Architectures, Computational Workloads, Edge-cloud Continuum.
Abstract:
Contemporary applications such as those within Augmented or Virtual Reality (AR/VR) pose challenges for software architectures supporting them, which have to adhere to stringent latency, data transmission, and performance requirements. This manifests in processing 3D models, whose 3D contents are increasingly generated procedurally rather than explicitly, resulting in computational workloads (i.e., perceived as Procedural Geometry Workloads) with particular characteristics and resource requirements. Traditionally, executing such workloads takes place in resource-rich environments such as the cloud. However, the massive amount of data transfer, heterogeneous devices, and networks involved affect latency, which in turn causes low-quality visualization in user-facing applications (e.g., AR/VR). To overcome such challenges, processing elements available close to end users can be leveraged to generate 3D models instead, and as such the edge emerges as a central architectural entity. This
paper describes such procedural geometry workloads, their particular characteristics, and challenges to execute them on heterogeneous devices. Furthermore, we propose an architecture capable of provisioning procedural geometry workloads in edge scenarios.
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