Parallel Computing at the Extreme Edge: Spatiotemporal Analysis

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is a revolutionary computing paradigm that facilitates delay-sensitive and/or data-intensive applications associated with the Internet of Things (IoT). Harvesting copious yet underutilized computational resources of the Extreme Edge Devices (EEDs) is foreseen as a promising endeavor. Such EEDs offer a unique opportunity to bring the computing service closer to IoT devices to curtail delay. However, the efficacy of extreme-edge parallel computing paradigm is profoundly impacted by i) wireless device-to-device communication performance, that is required for task offloading; and ii) computing capabilities of the EEDs, that governs the execution time of each task. In this context, we propose a novel spatiotemporal framework that employs stochastic geometry and continuous time Markov chains to jointly analyze the interwoven communication and computation performance of extreme edge computing systems. Based on the incorporated framework, we study the influence of various system parameters on the task response delay. Our findings reveal the existence of an optimal number of EEDs that need to be recruited in order to minimize the task response delay. Moreover, we show that in some cases, our model can outperform the normal MEC offloading systems.