HOW TO MANAGE ONE TRILLION DEVICES ON
THE EDGE
NEW COMPUTE MODELS REQUIRE NEW THINKING

THE EDGE, THE DATACENTER, AND NEW DESIGN PRINCIPLES
The world of compute is changing rapidly, as is the traditional view of a physicalbuilding, or buildings filled with servers, storage, and networking to “run the business”.
Cloud computing, distributed cloud computing, and edge computing will all be fed by a
5G access network, forcing IT organizations to think and plan differently.
The environments managed by the IT organizations of tomorrow will extend beyond the
traditional datacenter into the distributed cloud and edge environments. Ruggedized
servers sitting on oil rigs; cameras, sensors, and micro datacenters powering smart
cities; even mobilized healthcare platforms that provide patient care and monitoring are
all examples of why datacenter assets must exist on the edge for petabytes andzettabytes of data to be transformed, analyzed, and turned into actionable intelligence inreal-time.
Arm predicts the world will see up to one trillion edge-connected devices by 2035.1
While this number is staggering, a quick look at the underlying dynamics supports thispredicted magnitude of devices. Consider the following:
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Consumer adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) is forecasted to continue toskyrocket. In North America, the average consumer will own 13 connected
devices by 2021.
Connected cars and autonomous vehicles that move people and goods will
number in the hundreds of millions and each vehicle will require thousands ofsensors.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will drive everything from farming to manufacturing tohealthcare, requiring hundreds of billions of sensors globally.
Smart cities around the globe will be populated with billions of high definition
cameras connected with hundreds of billions of sensors and devices that

1 https://pages.arm.com/route-to-trillion-devices.html

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manage traffic flow, respond to emergencies, and even power on/power off street
lamps for pedestrian traffic.

FIGURE 1: THE WORLD OF ONE TRILLION DEVICES

Source: Moor Insights & Strategy

This explosion of devices and data presents several challenges for organizations which
include:Compute must be local to the data as needed to provide real-time ingest,transformation, and analysis. Otherwise, the latency associated with edge-to-core roundtrip would render actionable intelligence outdated and the sheer volume of data
generated would overwhelm available bandwidth. Compute must also be as performant
as possible to adequately process the expected quantities of data in real-time at theedge or even greater quantities of aggregated data in the core datacenter.
Networking must be smart, flexible, and robust enough to move data across the edge,
the distributed cloud, and the core datacenter.
The core datacenter must be designed in a way that fully enables the core
infrastructure needs of the enterprise and seamlessly support the data influx andcompute requirements on the edge.
The software community has responded to the needs of both the distributed cloud andthe edge by embracing open source, service-oriented architectures (SOA), andPage 2

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microservices. The resulting highly-distributed applications that are emerging haveoutpaced the natural evolution of server hardware design. To stay relevant, theworkloads and software applications driving organizations of all sizes must run on therange of servers, appliances, and devices that make up the modern, distributed
datacenter.
For example, managing smart cities requires localized compute (coupled with highspeed networking) to analyze and re-route traffic in the event of an accident in real-time,and it must continue to process critical data even if the network connecting to the core
were to go down. This example alone requires a range of hardware in terms of
performance, power, and form factor since the physical, power, and thermal
requirements for each use case are unique. Conversely, the hardware requirements to
support an oil refinery plant have an entirely different set of requirements. While theseconflicting requirements have long existed, the availability of software stacks that drive
greater control and efficiency require a software and hardware ecosystem where choiceenables necessary tailoring.
The confluence of these dynamics requires a shift in datacenter design principles.
Whereas datacenter architects have traditionally taken a “datacenter out” approach todesign, they will now have to consider designing from the edge to the core datacenteras most data will be generated, transformed, and acted upon at the edge.

ARM – SCALABILITY AND SECURITY FROM THE EDGE TO THE COREDATACENTER
Despite the new “edge to datacenter” design approach, the fundamental constraints ofdatacenter design will not change: deliver the best performance within a power budget
in a secure operating environment with high bandwidth networking to support thebusiness and its users at the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO). Given the
explosion of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and edge computing, Moor Insights &Strategy (MI&S) views these as perhaps more important than ever. Three key tenets ofdatacenter design – performance, power, and security – all must start in silicon with:••

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Performance of infrastructure that is both scalable and predictable as resource
demands grow and shrink with the demands of workloads that power the edge,
the cloud, and the enterprise datacenter.
Power profiles that support the extended datacenter. Low power profiles (as low
as sub 10W) may be required for the equipment that physically sits on (anddrives) a manufacturing floor or must operate in a fan-less environment. MidHow to Manage One Trillion Devices at the Edge
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range power profiles are needed for the mobile edge compute environments
where inference and processing is required, and higher power profiles that drive
higher end servers in a traditional datacenter environment.
Security that can span the physical device to the data generated, analyzed,
moved, and stored.

The usefulness of silicon is only as strong as the richness of its ecosystem which ismade up of the independent hardware vendors (IHV) and independent software vendors(ISVs) that build targeted solutions on open-source software (OSS) running on silicon
intellectual property (IP). While today’s datacenter can be considered an x86 world, it is
a combination of general-purpose compute servers in combination with purpose-built
platforms for networking, storage, and other functions. As the datacenter extends to theedge and beyond, diversity of architectures that include silicon, system, and software
will be the norm.
When considering this “edge-to-datacenter” approach to design, finding a softwarearchitecture that can scale and move from the edge to the datacenter is critical since
infrastructure built on different silicon products and product types will be required. For
example, the convergence of traditional IT operational technology (OT – theorganization and technology that drives industrial networks) will require a softwarearchitecture that can connect devices and the data they generate with industry standard
servers. In addition, the OT has to be able to perform real-time analysis in managing
that industrial environment. Otherwise, the promise of operational efficiency is lost.
Arm is well-positioned to support the needs of the modern datacenter for a few reasons:
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Arm IP has a large footprint across the billions of devices that make up the edge,
the network, the distributed cloud, and the core datacenter today. This footprint
will increase as we near the trillion devices of tomorrow.
Arm IP powers devices (such as smart Network Interface Cards or smart NICs)
and servers that scale, spanning fan-less, very low power (<15W) and high-end
hyperscale (>100 cores operating in >150W TDP range).
The power, performance, and security profile in Arm IP is consistent with thedevice to the core datacenter approach.
The growing presence of open source software and its disaggregation from
hardware, along with the growing integration of edge to datacenter, leads
solutions providers to look for the right fit instead of a common instruction set
architecture.
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•

Perhaps most importantly, the breadth of the Arm ecosystem is filled withpartners collaborating to design and develop both general purpose and tailoredsolutions that leverage Arm IP across vertical industries, devices, and usage
models.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ECOSYSTEMAs previously mentioned, a common architecture inclusive of all the elements that makeup the modern datacenter seems difficult to achieve, if not impossible. Yet, MI&S
believes this is what makes Arm unique.
Arm is also unique in that it is a provider of silicon IP, not a manufacturer of processors.
One of the benefits of being an IP provider is that it becomes the engine of innovation
for technology companies developing industry-specific system-on-chips (SoCs) andsolutions. Arm being an IP provider allows tailoring per workload, per use case, per form
factor, etc.

FIGURE 2 – THE ARM ECOSYSTEM

Source: Moor Insights & Strategy

Arm’s model of licensing IP attracts an ecosystem of technology providers that candevelop market specific SoCs and solutions for new workloads at a rapid pace and, as
previously noted, with the right amount of resource for optimal performance. Arm’smodel extends this capability to OEMs seeking customized solutions for their specificuse cases and its ecosystem offers the choice of silicon vendor while maintaining
commonality of software architecture. IHVs looking to develop end-to-end solutions for a
specific vertical can design around different central processing unit (CPU) silicon (oreven design their own) or build custom application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)
that are best fit for use with assurance of software compatibility from the device to theserver.

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For those that think of Arm as being the IP that powers embedded systems such as
traditional network routers and switches, appliances, and the like – this is correct. Their
success in networking and the cloud gives Arm a significant datacenter footprint. In fact,
Arm is a significant player in the adoption of virtualized and containerized network
function virtualization (NFV) in the telecommunications space. Operators can improvetheir agility and responsiveness to market needs and their ability to innovate quickly bymoving from traditional network appliances with proprietary software to an open
standards-based approach.
The Arm ecosystem increasingly finds traction in traditional datacenters and cloudproviders. The Arm silicon ecosystem for server class CPUs and SoCs is rich withpartners demonstrating performance that can support both traditional infrastructureneeds, high performance computing (HPC) workloads, and AI.
Finally, the strength of the Arm ecosystem can be seen in the enterprise software thatruns organizations. Support for Arm in the Linux Kernel led to support for all the major
server operating system (OS) distributions including Red Hat, CentOS, Canonical,
Ubuntu, etc. Moreover, VMware’s recent announcement and demonstration of support
for Arm in its ESXi hypervisor is perhaps the most profound proof point to the relevanceof Arm in the datacenter.

DATA IS THE NEW CURRENCY AND CONNECTIVITY IS THE BANKING
Data drives the modern business, network, and datacenter. The separation between
winners and losers in the digital economy will be measured in speed. How quickly canan organization collect, shape, analyze, and act on terabytes worth of data in real-time?
How secure is an organization’s data and IP - from raw ingest to analysis to cold store?
Ironically, in a market where software-defined everything is driving mindshare in themarket, hardware has never been more important. While hardware’s reliance on silicon
may seem obvious, this statement has never been more true.
Consider the usage model where real-time data is collected from multiple assemblylines on a manufacturing floor and compared against multiple data sources to ensure
the highest levels of utilization across all assembly lines. In this use case, the ability todesign from the device to edge to network to core datacenter on a single underlyingarchitecture can help organizations gain the performance, scale, connectivity, andsecurity necessary to deliver that outcome.

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IN CLOSINGThe datacenter is no longer a physical construct but serves as centers of data andcompute that reside in the cloud, on the edge, and in the wild. The datacenter is the raw
data and intelligence that drive the modern business. It is the infrastructure that collects,
moves, secures, and turns that data into action. In the modern datacenter, the lines
between compute, networking, edge, cloud, device, and server are blurred and the path
to one trillion connected devices further blurs any lines of demarcation.
Due to this, organizations must consider distributed, connected datacenter design
methods that are flipped, moving from “edge to datacenter” instead of from thetraditional “on premise” datacenter outward. As with any disruptive market, players will
emerge that carry significant relevance. MI&S believes Arm is one of those rapidly
emerging forces in this market. The company’s IP portfolio, breadth and depth ofecosystem, and footprint in the IoT, IIoT, and networking markets combined with its
growing presence in the traditional and emerging datacenter spaces position it forsuccess.
With Arm, there is a benefit for all players in the ecosystem. Silicon vendors candevelop CPUs and chips that are both general purpose and tailored for specificworkloads, scaling from devices to networking gear to datacenter infrastructure. Tier
one operators can gain greater savings through vertically integrating their silicon supply
chain. Hardware vendors and OEMs can quickly react to market needs because of therapid pace of innovation. At the same time, software vendors can more cohesively
design and develop end-to-end solutions which can be vertically tailored to industryspecific solutions providers. In the end, the customer should benefit the most.

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PAPER
CONTRIBUTOR
Matt Kimball, Senior Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy

PUBLISHER
Patrick Moorhead, President, Principal Analyst

INQUIRIESContact us if you would like to discuss this report, and Moor Insights & Strategy will respond promptly.

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DISCLOSURESThis paper was commissioned by Arm. Moor Insights & Strategy provides research, analysis, advising,and consulting to many high-tech companies mentioned in this paper. No employees at the firm hold any
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