Computing, Caching, and Communication at the Edge: The Cornerstone for Building a Versatile 5G Ecosystem

This article presents a unified computing, caching, and communication (3C) solution for the upcoming 5G environment that will allow service, content, and function providers to deploy their services/ content/functions near the end users (EUs); to allow network providers to virtually deploy their connectivity services over commodity hardware; and to enable end users to renounce their role as passive 5G stakeholders and become active ones by offering their 3C resources to the 5G ecosystem. In this direction, we foresee the exploitation of a peer-topeer- like middleware/app solution that upon installation will enhance the end user devices with the ability to form virtual fogs capable of providing their 3C resources to the 5G ecosystem. Additionally, we propose the introduction of heterogeneous nodes (e.g., FPGAs and GPUs) at the networks edge, which will boost the processing capabilities without paying a premium in power consumption. This will enable efficient and thorough filtering of the information that makes it all the way up to the cloud. In summary, this article proposes an architecture that exploits and advances the edge and extreme edge 3C paradigms toward enabling the 5G ecosystem to meet its own criterion for low end-to-end latencies and, as such, enable it to provide and sustain high QoS/QoE levels.