Towards a Cognitive Compute Continuum: An Architecture for Ad-Hoc Self-Managed Swarms

TL;DR

This paper proposes an architecture for a Cognitive Computing Continuum enabling autonomous, self-managed swarms of heterogeneous devices that operate outside traditional data centers, bridging edge and cloud environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel architecture and resource management framework for self-managed, ad-hoc swarms of cognitive devices in distributed IT service provisioning.

Findings

Initial architecture for cognitive device swarms

Resource management framework for edge-cloud integration

Supports autonomous decision-making in dynamic environments

Abstract

In this paper we introduce our vision of a Cognitive Computing Continuum to address the changing IT service provisioning towards a distributed, opportunistic, self-managed collaboration between heterogeneous devices outside the traditional data center boundaries. The focal point of this continuum are cognitive devices, which have to make decisions autonomously using their on-board computation and storage capacity based on information sensed from their environment. Such devices are moving and cannot rely on fixed infrastructure elements, but instead realise on-the-fly networking and thus frequently join and leave temporal swarms. All this creates novel demands for the underlying architecture and resource management, which must bridge the gap from edge to cloud environments, while keeping the QoS parameters within required boundaries. The paper presents an initial architecture and a resource management framework for the implementation of this type of IT service provisioning.