In military applications, particularly those oriented toward real-time battlefield understanding, synthesis of actionable information from diverse data sources in near real-time becomes an important requirement.
In the current art, users with significant computing requirements have typically depended on access to large, highly shared data centers to which they backhaul their data (e.g., images, video, or network log files) for processing, says DARPA. However, in many operational scenarios, the cost and latency of this backhaul can be problematic, especially when network throughput is severely limited or when the user application requires a near real-time response.
Dispersed computing is an approach that can leverage the collective computing power of dissimilar, dispersed edge devices such as smart phones, sensors, and microclouds available “locally” (in the sense of latency, available throughput, or similar measures that are relevant to the user or mission) . Users can borrow processing and communications resources from its many nodes as and when needed to accomplish whatever task or mission .
This research program has the potential to give our warfighters a significant information advantage by enabling warfighters to collect, transmit, and process information even in situations where where network connectivity is highly variable and degraded and access to a remote data or operations centers— or even a reliable laptop computer—cannot be counted on.
US Army has also planned for dispersed computing. The future Army network will be a highly dispersed computing infrastructure consisting of and leveraging the computational capabilities of assets that span Soldier-carried devices, apparel, weapon systems, command post servers and higher-echelon systems, according to Army’s new, long-term, network strategy called “Shaping the Army Network (2025-2040).”
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