Skip to main content
Monthly Archives

February 2023

Linux Foundation’s LF Edge and Open Grid Alliance Collaborate on Accelerating Innovation for Reimagining the Edge

By Announcement

Initial focus on collaboration with LF Edge for functional specification of the Grid Nodes 

BARCELONA, Mobile World Congress 2023 – February 27, 2023 The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, and the Open Grid Alliance (OGA) , an  organization focused on evolving the Internet into a worldwide platform capable of running global services on shared infrastructure, today announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for formal collaboration. Collaboration includes multiple foundations across the Linux Foundation with LF Edge being the primary.

Catalyzed by the emergence of edge infrastructure, 5G networks and billions of IoT devices, the grid is the next step in the evolution of the Internet. Globally distributed, the grid weaves together a public and private fabric of compute, data and intelligence to enable contextually aware, immersive applications at the edge, on demand.

“Co-creation across multiple sectors contributing to ´dirt-to-cloud´ stack of the Open Grid is the core principle of the OGA. This demands deep collaboration with the industry bodies influencing various parts of this stack. We are excited to partner with the Linux Foundation as we start to lay the foundation for this stack”, said Kaniz Mahdi, Chairperson of the OGA, and SVP Technology Architecture & Innovation, Deutsche Telekom.

Edge computing places applications and services close to the point of use, as the grid marries software-defined flexibility with edge infrastructure. LF Edge projects provide the required automation for edge infrastructure to be used to build autonomous grid infrastructure. These projects create new use cases and proof points that cover aspects of grid computing. The collaboration between LF Edge and OGA  is  aimed at creating synergies that will accelerate a full-scale, global and operational deployment of the Open Grid.   

“Aligning LF Edge with Open Grid Alliance is the next step in enabling the internet to distribute data when and where it’s needed,” said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. “Integrating LF Edge architecture and use cases into open grid infrastructure provides a vendor-neutral approach to re-architect the Internet with the grid topologies needed to scale globally.

The agreement enables both organizations to formally support collaboration and work together in creating the open software defined and architected by OGA work groups. LF Edge projects and initiatives will work closely with the OGA workstreams to mutually develop the use cases and underlying technology of the Open Grid. 

About Open Grid Alliance

Open Grid Alliance (http://opengridalliance.org) is a member-supported 501(c)(6) organization that produces collaborative, vendor-neutral strategies to re-architect the Internet with grid topologies needed to scale globally. Founded in 2020 by over 30 global technology companies, the Open Grid Alliance welcomes additional participants, contributors, and supporters.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

# # #

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

 

 

 

 

Akraino Displays Robotics Blueprint at ONE Summit 2022

By Akraino, Blog, Event

By Jeff Brower, CEO at Signalogic & LF Edge community member

At the ONE Summit (ONES) in Seattle in November, the Linux Foundation Edge community (LF Edge) presented state-of-the-art edge computing in areas of Telco, Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, and Retail. The Akraino blueprint “Robot Architecture Based on SSES” was selected by the LF Edge conference showcase committee to exhibit in the Manufacturing category. This blueprint is architected by Fujitsu and focuses on two key areas in robotics:

  • manipulating elastic and non-uniform objects with variable shapes and surfaces, under variable environmental conditions
  • safe and reliable robot-human interaction

     

Fujitsu and Signalogic personnel manned the Manufacturing kiosk and we’re happy to report the exhibit was well-attended and effective. While we didn’t see a pre-pandemic level of attendance (maybe half compared to 2019), that was made up for by enthusiasm and energy of attendees and exhibitors. It was a great feeling driving into Seattle on a cold but sunny day, negotiating the city’s notoriously gnarly freeway design and traffic, arriving at the Sheraton, and then focusing 100% on presenting LF Edge, Akraino, and robotics to technical
and business developers ! We can confidently report that in-person conferences are back and thriving.

As it turns out, the conference format was effective for promoting robotics as well as Akraino and LF Edge. As one example, our blueprint’s project team leader, Fukano Haruhisa-san from Fujitsu’s development labs, gave a technical presentation in the early afternoon of Day 1.
Then later in the day, while dinner was served near the exhibit area, attendees who had attended Fukano-san’s presentation zero’d in on our kiosk. They had been busy juggling their conference schedule, but now they had questions and were ready to dig deeper. That was also our chance to promote LF Edge and Akraino. Naturally we took full advantage 😀

Customer discussions at the kiosk were both wide ranging and in-depth. Of particular concern is how to merge requirements for compute intensive onboard processing (i.e. on the robot) with cloud processing. There is a mix of needs, including mapping, handling unusual and as-yet-unknown objects, failure prediction, real-time speech recognition, background noise removal, natural language processing, and more.  Some needs can be met in the cloud, and some demand “never down, never out” capability. The former can be met with containerization, Kubernetes, and other CICD and automation tools, while the latter requires intensive onboard computation. Of course, any onboard computation faces severe limitations in size (form-factor), weight, and available power. It’s a fascinating problem in edge computing and engineering tradeoffs.

Given the effectiveness of the ONE Summit format, I strongly urge the LF Edge board to organize and promote more combined technical + exhibit events. The exhibit component does two important things: (i) encourages effort and progress among blueprint participants, and (ii) provides feedback to shape and guide blueprints moving forward. A little pressure to meet conference schedule deadlines and get demos working is a good thing, and the payoff for LF Edge is increased industry exposure for its member projects.