A Novel Architecture using Dynamic Computing Nodes to Improve Multi-Access Edge Cluster Productivity

Demand for latency sensitive computing is driving the need to push computing resources closer to the source of data leading to the spurt in the growth of ‘clusters at the edge’. However, edge devices are severely constrained with the availability of computing resources, power etc. especially when the need is to setup an edge cluster in an unfamiliar or a hostile environment. This problem can be solved by adding the available dynamic edge devices or host into the edge cluster for a specific period of time, share a fraction of their computing resources and leave the cluster at will. Addition of the dynamic host into the edge cluster using a mutual trust based agreement form a hybrid edge cluster. This hybrid architecture not only helps to enhance the throughput of the edge cluster but also reduces the job execution cost as incorporation of ‘opportunistically available dynamic hosts’ comes at $\mathbf{0 -}$ cost. Most of these ‘dynamic hosts’ work on a synergistic partnership model - the same dynamic node can be ‘source’ and ‘sink’ of these “latency sensitive tasks”. Proper allocation of the job within the hybrid edge cluster is also very important parameter to enhance the execution efficiency of the job within the cluster. In this work, a novel architecture of such a hybrid edge cluster consisting of both static and dynamic host is proposed along with proper job scheduling algorithm to reduce the job execution latency of the cluster and job execution costs. The efficiency of the proposed architecture and scheduling algorithm has been compared with the state of the art solutions in terms of job execution cost, latency and cluster throughput.