Pervasive Processing

Are we ready for the clouds?

I think yes and no. Simply put, we need a transition. We cannot jump directly from a system at our disposal to a world looking uncertain, un-secure and unoccupied. Actually last 3 reasons are the solutions as well. We are waiting for a transitive device. Something which slowly will place our resources on cloud, without letting us know. A seamless integration between the services, storage medias and security features. 

We are trying to bring in this transition in our device. A slow but steady transition. And as I said, smooth. 

Here comes something which is very crucial to figure out. Should we move services first or storage? Solution lies in understanding what is current system better at, transmitting data or processing it? If the processing power at disposal is high, you can compromise with lesser information being sent. But that would effect the energy efficiency, something very important for us. But there has to be a compromise. A compromise which takes advantage of situations which the data to be processed is small but processing involved is really very high. Sent it to clouds in this case and vice-versa for the other case.

Clouds provide us something which we can only imagine in our PC. They are huge rendering farms. Anything for them is cheese and butter. And here lies the answer to optimization as well. Imagine working on softwares like Maya on your PC for design but sending the files over the net for rendering and voila! You see the power you can get. In short “Pervasive Processing”. Its like providing minimal but optimal tools to the user, for anything more, talk to the Gods over the clouds.

The Unbalanced World

The Unbalanced World

World is unbalanced at many places. We see droughts and floods. Its same for the electronic industry as well. We see products around embedded with components which are far more powerful than what current consumers can make use of. We see 4GB of RAM in PCs now a days, and not one time you will notice system consuming more than 2GB. Yes there are application which can make use of this extra horse power, but how many of we actually use them?

What is the size of HDD installed in your PC? Are you running short of more space lately? No, probably. What about those dual and quad-core processors? That would roughly give you more than 4GHz and are you using these for running internet browsers and songs?

We call these configurations Hummers for City transportation. We all live in cities and not in rendering farm houses. And how is the software industry responding to this cult? By giving us more resource hopping applications. Even OSes would tell you “Your current configuration is not our OS capable”. But there is a change in this trend.

Netbooks, UMPCs and MIDs are on rise not because we are in recession (or were in?). But, people are realizing, they need bikes and scooters. They are choosing mobility and maneuverability over real life animation rendering capabilities and complex OSes. And yes, they are cheaper.

But these new trends are presenting us with very different questions. Since resources now have to be optimised, what is the perfect configuration? How much storage should I have? How many simultaneously running applications would make me happy? What is the perfect screen size for me? Do I need a keyboard sticking on to the screen? How much RAM, since I’m not using bloatwares? What if I get stuck somewhere because of the different resources I have at my disposal, can cloud computing be a solution for me then?

If you look closely, you can draw a similarity between Oil and computer industry. First, if you make lot of oil available, you get lot of cars in the market. Lot of oil gives these car manufacturers freedom to make more powerful cars and hence consuming more fuel. And what would more demand would do the the oil prices?

Same is with the application writers. If you get freedom to use more resources, you would concentrate on how to use it, and not on how to use less of it to do the same work. In the end you get application which demand more, and we give them a systems which in the end are just, More.

And solution as we ponder upon is, Simple.