Compute-Less Networking: Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities

Delay-sensitive applications have been driving the move away from cloud computing, which cannot meet their low-latency requirements. Edge computing and programmable switches have been among the first steps toward pushing computation closer to end-users in order to reduce cost, latency, and overall resource utilization. This article presents the "compute-less" paradigm, which builds on top of the well known edge computing paradigm through a set of communication and computation optimization mechanisms (e.g.,, in-network computing, task clustering and aggregation, computation reuse). The main objective of the compute-less paradigm is to reduce the migration of computation and the usage of network and computing resources, while maintaining high Quality of Experience for end-users. We discuss the new perspectives, challenges, limitations, and opportunities of this compute-less paradigm.