Abstract:
The ubiquity and the range of utility of ”smart”
devices is ever increasing. Device limitations have lead developers
to leverage cloud-offloading to gain performance for
their applications. As users become aware of the expanding
utility of their devices through these powerful applications, they
tend to demand more from them. However, developers’ intent
on providing state-of-the-art applications will undoubtedly hit
performance barriers for emerging products due to the inherently
high latency of the prevailing mobile-cloud architecture. This
paper proposes a new type of service architecture called AXaaS
(Acceleration as a Service) that will empower developers to
satisfy user demand for greater application performance and fully
realize new computationally-intensive applications that would
be otherwise impossible or impractical. While Telecom Service
Providers (TSP) already provide data and bandwidth services,
we introduce a new paradigm in which the TSP may charge subscribers
for computational acceleration of complex applications
by outsourcing computational tasks to larger cloud operators.
We provide an exposition of the performance potential of such
a service by examining its theoretical impact upon an opensource-
based Face Recognition application. We also examine a
sample instantiation of cloud resources via AmazonWeb Services,
and estimate the return on investment for a TSP implementing
AXaaS. We find the TSP-side ROI to be quite favorable, which
means that AXaaS is a viable new aaS alternative.
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