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April 2019

EdgeX Foundry Is a Finalist for The IoT World Awards

By Blog

EdgeX Foundry, the vendor-neutral, operating system and hardware independent, open source, microservice, software edge computing platform, is a finalist for the “Best Edge Computing Solution & Achievements in IoT Integration” award for the IoT World Awards. The awards celebrate the success and outstanding contributors to the very best in the world of IoT.

Other finalists in this category include Dell Technologies and FogHorn – both are currently LF Edge members and are still very active in EdgeX Foundry – as well as Itron Inc and Lantronix Inc.

Not only will EdgeX Foundry be attending the award celebration but will be on-site on the exhibition floor. To see interactive EdgeX Foundry demos, which include building automation and a wind turbine, visit the LF Edge booth (Booth 610). For more information about the activities planned for IoT World, visit https://www.lfedge.org/event/iot-world-2019/.

EdgeX Foundry focuses on IoT Edge, and helps simplify the process to design, develop and deploy solutions across industrial, enterprise, and consumer applications. Since it’s launch in 2017, EdgeX has met several technical milestones in its roadmap including the Barcelona release, California release, & Delhi release.

In January 2019, EdgeX Foundry joined Akraino, Project EVE, The Open Glossary of Edge Computing and Home Edge to form LF Edge, an umbrella organization dedicated to establishing an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating systems.

The winner of the award will be announced at the IoT Awards Dinner & Gala in Santa Clara, CA on May 15. To learn more about the awards or any of the other categories, click here.

April 22, 2019

Arm at the Edge: Telco and IoT Akraino Blueprints debut at ONS 2019

By Akraino, Blog

By Tina Tsou, co-chair, Akraino Edge Stack Technical Steering Committee & Enterprise Architect, Arm. A version of this post also appeared on the Arm Community blog

Last week at Open Networking Summit in San Jose, there was a lot of buzz about the Akraino Edge Stack Project. Launched in 2018, Akraino Edge Stack was developed to create an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications.

Significant progress has been made in this community since the launch, and many member companies showcased their Akraino blueprints last week. Arm is very active in the Akraino community and is excited about the Akraino Edge Stack Blueprints.

Here are some additional details about the four blueprints that were shown:

1) SDN Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) on Ampere-based servers

For users of Virtual broadband access (XGS-PON which is a higher bandwidth, symmetric version of GPON), Ampere demonstrated SDN Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) validation on Arm. The SEBA blueprint in the Akraino Edge Stack Project, can run applications of Virtual broadband access – vOLT access and aggregation for 5000 edge locations. There are three servers per POD, with x86 and Arm (with 8-16 cores each). The power consumption is restricted to less than 1 kW and includes NEBS compliance and 48V DC. The Ampere eMAG-based server delivers competitive performance per watt with 32 Armv8 CPU cores at 3+ GHz with Turbo. 

The foundation of the SEBA validation on Arm demo is built on Integration Edge Cloud (IEC) blueprint family. The Integrated Edge Cloud (IEC) enables new functionality and business models on the network edge with benefits such as lower latency for end users, less load on the network since more data an be processed locally, and full utilization of the computational power of the edge devices.

VMWare proposed multi-cloud xConnection to interconnect different kinds of clouds of IT and Telco. The IEC had several deployment models that each support different business case such as telco/enterprise edge cloud (ex. MEC or brand office data center) or telco/enterprise remote edge locations (ex. SD-WAN, IoT Gateways). The demonstration included Ubuntu, Kubernetes, and Calico on Arm.

2) ELIOT (Edge Lightweight and IoT) Blueprint on Huawei IoT Gateway 

We were excited to partner with Huawei to demonstrate the ELIOT: Edge Lightweight and IoT Blueprint Family.  The ELIOT blueprint was designed to service the need of many diverse business applications that require a converged IoT gateway, and Enterprise WAN edge use of SD-WAN solutions or universal CPU (uCPE). The IoT gateway can be deployed in smart cities, smart homes, connected farming, agriculture logistics industrial, and Industrial IoT.  SD-WAN, WAN edge, uCPE are designed to be used for hybrid WAN, hybrid cloud deployment, and BYOD.  ELIOT is very scalable, from 1 single unit to 10K, 100K, 1000K, or more. ELIOT also supports diverse types of edge applications in many industries and market segments, including but not limited to: telcos, operators, service/cloud providers, medicine, smart cities, industrial IoT, home, and enterprise. The cloud/network infrastructure for ELIOT includes containers, Kubernetes, and the Kubernetes ecosystem. At the same time, the blueprint is designed to use lightweight operating systems and container runtime environments.

“The IoT gateway and enterprise edge SD-WAN gateway are two great examples of computing or power resource constrained edge nodes. The ELIOT project provides end-to-end light-weight open source blueprints for deploying and managing these use cases, built on any processor architecture, to foster a vibrant ecosystem around edge gateways in both hardware and software.”

––  Bill Ren, Chief Open Source Liaison Officer, Huawei

3) Micro-MEC Blue Print from Nokia

Nokia, Arm, and other ecosystem partners within the Akraino/LF Edge community have formed an edge blueprint for a Smart Cities platform called Micro-Mec (uMEC) targeted for a range of use cases. Nokia is using an Arm-based Marvell CN83xx uMEC design to show a highway traffic monitoring application. The uMEC enables new functionalities and business models on the network edge. The benefits of running applications on the network edge include lower latencies for end users, less load on the network since more data can be processed locally, and better security/privacy since sensitive data need not be transferred to a centralized location.

All these new services support the business case for building new high-speed networks which in turn enable new things. The uMEC has several deployment models that each support different business cases including:

  • Fixed installation as part of 5G NR base station enabling new services that require low latency such as AR/VR.
  • As an extension of the previous, the “Smart City” deployments have additional functions such as weather stations, cameras, displays, or drone charging stations.  The control software for these functions would run on the uMEC.
  • In an Industry 4.0 use case set, the uMEC is deployed as part of a 5G network and would provide a platform for running services for the factory floor.
  • In a train, the uMEC could collect and store surveillance camera data for later uploading. 

“Nokia is very excited to demo the the new edge blueprint for operators and smart cities called Micro Multiaccess Edge (uMEC). It demonstrates how even a very small ARM- based system can implement a Smart City use case, and complements the industry standard Open Edge hardware that is used in the Radio Edge Cloud and the 5G Radio Access Network,” said Tapio Tallgren, Project Technical Leader for uMEC and Akraino Technical Community

4) Tencent Future Network Lab Connected Vehicle Blueprint

The Connected Vehicle Blueprint focuses on the MEC platform, which is the backbone for V2X (Vehicle to Everything) applications. The blueprint can be used in multiple use cases, including but not limited to: 

  • Accurate Locations: The blueprint is designed to deliver more than 10X finer granularity in location. GPS is 5-10 meters level location which can be improved to <1 meter.
  • Smart Navigation: Real-time traffic information update reduces the latency from minutes to seconds to provide the more efficient path for drivers.
  • Safer Driving: Insight into potential risks which can’t be seen by drivers’ eyes.
  • Reduced Violation in Traffic Rules: Let the driver understand the traffic rules in some specific area.  For example, change in lines for an upcoming and narrow street, avoiding opposite way drive in the one way road, and avoiding carpool lanes for a single driver.

The blueprint can be flexibly deployed in multiple environments, including bare metal, virtual machine, and container based on commodity hardware (Arm/x86 server). The major software component of this blueprint is Tars, a Linux Foundation microservice Framework project. Tars can be deployed in Arm and x86 servers.  For more detail information for Tars, refer to the github link.

Learn more about connected vehicle blueprint on Google Drive or read the blog post here. 

“Tencent continuously promotes network innovation from various application perspectives. We believe that application-based network innovation promotes a stronger ecosystem, which brings tremendous benefits to our customers and stakeholders.” –– Zhang Yun Fei, Director of Future Network Lab, Tencent

“Open source is an important technical strategy for Tencent. As both a platinum member and board member of the Linux Foundation, Tencent continuously makes contributions to the Linux Foundation and its projects. After the Tars project contributed to the LF in 2018, and recent Akraino blueprint, Tencent will continue to contribute several new open source projects focused on cache and configuration. We welcome additional participation from more Linux Foundation member companies!” — Xin Liu, Linux Foundation Board member, and Tencent General Manager

We are excited about these great Blueprint demonstrations and the others shown last week. I want to acknowledge the Akraino Edge Stack Project Technical Steering Committee, PTLs, committers, and contributors, for their support with our activities at the conference.  It is truly a team effort! Special recognition goes to:

  • Aaron Byrd, AT&T
  • Matt Taylor, Ampere
  • Trevor Tao, Arm
  • Gabriel Yu, Huawei
  • Tapio Tallgren, Nokia
  • Robert Qiu, Tencent
  • Xinhui Li, VMware
  • Ken Yi, DiDi
  • Wenhui Zhang, PSU
April 12, 2019

Connected Vehicle Blueprint Debuts at ONS NA 2019

By Blog

The  Connected Vehicle Blueprint, established within the Akraino community by contributions from Tencent Future Network Lab, Arm, Intel, and Nokia, was demonstrated onsite at Open Networking Summit this week in San Jose. The blueprint demo clearly depicts features, architecture as well as the potential benefits for customers. The Connected Vehicle Blueprint focuses on the MEC platform, which is the backbone for the V2X (Vehicle to Everything) Application.

The blueprint can be used in multiple use cases, including, but not limited to:

  • Accurate Location: The blueprint brings more than 10X fine gratuity location. GPS is 5-10 meters level location, that can be improved to <1 meter, which is the distance of a typical street lane.
  • Smart Navigator: The real-time traffic information update, reduces the latency from minutes to seconds, figures out the most efficient route for drivers.
  • Safe Drive Improvement: Helps the driver figure out any potential traffic risks that may not be seen by the driver.
  • Reduces traffic violations: Helps the driver understand local traffic rules. For instance, changing the lane prior to a narrow street, avoiding driving on the wrong side of a one-way road, avoiding carpool lanes as a single driver, etc.

“Tencent continuously promotes network innovation from various application perspectives. We believe that application-based network innovation promotes a stronger ecosystem, which brings tremendous benefits to our customers and stakeholders,” said Zhang Yun Fei, Director of Future Network Lab, Tencent.

“Open source is an important technical strategy for Tencent. As both a platinum member and board member of the Linux Foundation, Tencent continuously makes contributions to the Linux Foundation and its projects. After the Tars project contributed to the LF in 2018, and recent Akraino blueprint, Tencent will continue to contribute several new open source projects focused on cache and configuration.  We welcome additional participation from more Linux Foundation member companies!” said Xin Liu, Linux Foundation Board Member and Tencent General Manager

The blueprint can be flexibly deployed in multiple environments, including bare metal, virtual machine and container-based environments on commodity hardware. The major software component of this blueprint is Tars, a Linux Foundation microservice framework project.  For more detail information on Tars, refer to the link:  https://github.com/TarsCloud/Tars

For more information regarding the connected vehicle blueprint, refer to:

April 5, 2019

LF Edge Builds Momentum with New Members, Blueprints as Community Works Toward Interoperability for Open Edge Computing

By Akraino, Announcement, EdgeX Foundry, Project EVE

New Open Edge Demos from Akraino and Project EVE to Debut at Open Networking Summit North America

OPEN NETWORKING SUMMIT, SAN JOSE, Calif., April 2, 2019 – LF Edge, an umbrella organization within the Linux Foundation that aims to establish an open, interoperable framework for edge computing independent of hardware, silicon, cloud, or operating system, today announced growing momentum with new blueprints from Akraino Edge Stack and four new general members including Alef Mobitech Inc., HarmonyCloud Inc., Section, and Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. The Akraino blueprints will debut at the Linux Foundation’s Open Networking Summit (ONS) on April 3-5 in San Jose.

LF Edge is comprised of projects that will support emerging edge applications in the area of non-traditional video and connected things that require lower latency, faster processing and mobility. Akraino, a project creating an open source software stack that supports high-availability cloud services optimized for edge computing systems and applications, is marking a technical milestone with eight blueprint families with more than 19 under development to support a variety of edge use cases. The Akraino community tests and validates the blueprints on real hardware labs supported by users and community members. The first release of Akraino is scheduled for Q2 2019 and will include several validated blueprints.

“LF Edge hit the ground running when we launched in January,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, The Linux Foundation. “Our collaboration for edge solutions across multiple industries in IoT, Enterprise, Telecom and Cloud has been very well received by the community.”

In addition, EdgeX Foundry, which enables an ecosystem of plug-and-play components to unify the IoT edge computing marketplace, is preparing “Edinburgh,” its fifth code release for Spring 2019 that will include binary data support, automated performance and security testing, new device services and a certification program. EdgeX Foundry will be on-site at Hannover Messe from April 1-5 in Germany with a building automation demo at the Dell Technologies booth (Hall 6, Stand C40). The demo will highlight the EdgeX framework’s ability to bring together a real-world, smart flexible office space environment based on components from a variety of vendors leveraging numerous connectivity standards, operating systems and hardware types.

Showcasing the Edge at Open Networking Summit (ONS)

LF Edge will make its debut with a booth on-site and several speaking engagements at ONS on April 3-5 in San Jose. The booth will feature demos from Akraino that showcase the emerging  blueprints for network cloud integration and industrial automation. Additionally, Project EVE will display a model wind turbine that demonstrates EdgeX Foundry technology for industrial IoT.

Experts from the LF Edge community will also present a range of related sessions as part of “The New Edge” track. Key sessions include:

  • Edge Open Source Synergy to Deliver Value-added End-to-end Services, Wednesday, April 3 at 5:10 PM – LF Edge members Ram Krishan, VMware; Kandan Kathirvel, AT&T; Srinivasa Rao Addepalli, Intel; Tina Tsou, Arm; and Rolf Muralt, MobiledgeX will discuss key open source efforts such as ONAP, Cloud Native Kubernetes, Mobile TIP Edge Application Developer Project Group and MobiledgeX, LF Edge, and Akraino.
  • Your Path to Edge Computing – Akraino Edge Stack, Thursday, April 4 at 5 PM – Tapio Tallgren, Nokia; Kandan Kathirvel, AT&T; and Tina Tsou, Arm will present edge use cases for Akraino, Akraino blueprints and how users can engage and contribute to the community.
  • Edge Computing League – LF Edge Umbrella, Friday, April 5 at 11:10 AM – Tina Tsou, Arm; MyeonGi Jong, Samsung; Roman Shaposhnik, Zededa; Kandan Kathirvel, AT&T; and Janko Isidorovic, Mainflux, will discuss how edge use cases are being addressed to satisfy industry needs, the collaboration between LF Edge projects and how to contribute to each project.

For more information about other LF Edge activities or sessions at ONS, click here.  The full line-up of ONS conference sessions can be found here.

Background On New LF Edge Members

LF Edge welcomes Alef Mobitech Inc., Harmony Cloud, Marvell, and Section as new general members working together to make it easy to quickly build, deploy, run, and scale edge computing solutions. These organizations join more than 60 founding member companies that broadly represent the edge computing and IoT landscape providing products and services supporting analytics, telecom, visualization, sensors, security and manageability, cloud and enterprise, among others.

Members will support LF Edge projects including Home Edge, a hub for real-time data collected through smart home devices; Project EVE, a new agnostic standard edge architecture; Open Glossary of Edge Computing, a freely-licensed collection that seeks to capture the fast-changing lexicon of edge computing; as well as Akraino Edge Stack and EdgeX Foundry.

LF Edge is making significant progress since its launch in January with almost 80 members from around the world joining face-to-face technical steering committee and board meetings at ONS to align on the LF Edge mission and project goals, develop working groups and identify opportunities across key functional areas. Additional information about how to join LF Edge or any of the projects can be found at https://www.lfedge.org/.

Support From New Members

“Together, the LF Edge has the opportunity to rewrite the definition of the Internet … at the edge,” said Ganesh Sundaram, CEO of Alef Mobitech Inc. “We are extremely excited to be joining the LF Edge and working with the entire edge ecosystem. With the proof of our live deployments at the edge, we are committed to creating edge enhanced and edge native applications. The future of applications is being written in front of us and, with the LF Edge, we will be the writers!”

“Edge computing, together with technologies like 5G, AI and IoT, will help build the infrastructure of a connected smart world,” said Yiqun Ding, CTO of HarmonyCloud. “A whole new generation of applications such as self-driving cars, AR/VR, and smart home will benefit from such a low-latency infrastructure. Harmony Cloud is a long-time open source contributor and solution provider of cloud computing and edge computing. By joining LF Edge, we are pleased to join this industry collaboration and accelerate the development and innovation of edge computing software and its ecosystem.”

“As a leading provider of  innovative compute networking and security solutions for the edge, cloud, 5G and the enterprise, we are excited to be a member of the LF Edge,” said Raj Singh, senior vice president and general manager of the Infrastructure Processor Group at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. “We understand and support open source industry initiatives for emerging requirements of  edge computing and 5G networks. We look forward to further industry collaborations to provide LF Edge open source solutions.”

“As a software provider in the edge computing ecosystem, one of our biggest challenges is educating software engineers on how to build for increasingly distributed architectures,” said Daniel Bartholomew, CTO of Section. “We see LF Edge playing a fundamental role in defining hardware and software standards that will accelerate adoption and innovation far beyond what we can imagine today.”

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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April 2, 2019
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