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Client side compute and edge compute are converging. Web apps are transitioning where data is processed closer to the user\u2014a move inclusive of not only compute on the device using client side rendering engines like V8, Google’s JavaScript and WebAssembly engine, but also the so-called \u201cedge.\u201d As Stephen O\u2019Grady has so eloquently explained<\/a>, despite \u201cdozens or perhaps hundreds of technology vendors at present hav[ing] substantial open investments in marketing edge branded products,\u201d the term \u201cedge\u201d is rife with ambiguity. However, beyond exasperating critics if \u201cedge\u201d accomplishes nothing else, it does the important work of signifying servers that are geographically closer to the user than cloud data centers historically have been.<\/p>\n This trend, which AI workloads will only serve to amplify, is moving serverless compute closer to the user for performance reasons\u2014a transition which has repercussions for packaging, runtimes, databases, and abstractions in general. Serverless compute (an idea that is itself fraught with ambiguity<\/a>, as Rachel Stephens notes) is where all this convergence around the location of data processing, which has migrated away from local data centers (colocation, rackspace), and toward the cloud and the devices themselves (browsers, IoT), whether you want to use the term \u201cedge\u201d or not.<\/p>\n The future of compute will not occur at remote data centers, but will instead take place locally and close to the user. Cloud providers have risen to the challenge of creating a global network of data centers to ensure the workloads they manage are processed close by its customers. US-EAST-1, AWS\u2019s first region and \u201cproblem child,\u201d which David Brown<\/a>, VP for compute and networking services at AWS, recently defended<\/a>, is far from the only or even the default option for AWS cloud customers who can now take advantage of local zones<\/a>. Cloudflare\u2019s homepage boasts that 95% of the world’s population is within 50 milliseconds<\/a> of a Cloudflare Worker, with 80% of them being within 20 milliseconds<\/a>. This shift goes beyond CDN, a technology that emerged in the 90s to transmit cached data using a distributed network of servers (a history<\/a>). Vendors including Akamai, Cloudflare, edge.io, Edgio, Fastly, and others realized they could not run functions on CDN, and needed an alternative solution. While strategies and product offerings vary among these players, the race is on to ensure compute occurs as close to the user as possible because today\u2019s workloads increasingly process real time, streaming data. This shift matters because streaming data is finicky. It requires support architectures intended to reduce the heaviness and latency costs associated with moving data into and out of a database, making edge computing, in the sense of data processing occurring at a relative position near the user, absolutely essential.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The shift in where compute happens makes frontend and mobile developers, who work almost exclusively on client side code, heralds of a significant transition in the cloud computing space. In fact, by harnessing the wave of powerful emerging JavaScript tools and technologies that have appeared on the market in recent years, both frontend engineers and the vendors that recognize them as Kingmakers<\/a>, have positioned themselves as innovators at the tip of the spear.<\/p>\n So, @vercel<\/a> reverted all edge rendering back to Node.js \ud83d\ude2c<\/p>\n Wanted to correct the record here as it's something I've advocated for in the past, and share what I've learned since then.<\/p>\n Also, the "edge" naming has been a bit confusing, so let's clear that up here as well.<\/p>\n What is\u2026<\/p>\n — Lee Robinson (@leeerob) April 17, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nFrontend Workloads<\/h2>\n
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