Where's the Cloud Headed? Think “Minority Report”

Pervasive personal processing and cloud computing will lead to a level of data and processing independence never before.

I read a news release (here) recently where NVidia is proposing to partition processing between on-device and cloud-located graphics hardware. Here’s an excerpt:

“Kepler cloud GPU technologies shifts cloud computing into a new gear,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA president and chief executive officer. “The GPU has become indispensable. It is central to the experience of gamers. It is vital to digital artists realizing their imagination. It is essential for touch devices to deliver silky smooth and beautiful graphics. And now, the cloud GPU will deliver amazing experiences to those who work remotely and gamers looking to play untethered from a PC or console.”

As well as the split processing that is handled by the Silk browser on the Kindle Fire (see here), I started thinking about that “processing partitioning” strategy in relation to other aspects of computing and cloud computing in particular.

My thinking is that, over the next five to seven years (at most by 2020), there will be several very important seismic shifts in computing dealing with at least four separate events:

 1) User data becomes a centralized commodity that’s brokered by a few major players.

 2) A new cloud-specific programming language is developed.

3) Processing becomes “completely” decoupled from hardware and location.

 4) End user computing becomes based almost completely on SoC technologies (see here).

The end result will be a world of data and processing independence never seen that will allow us to live in that Minority Report world. I’ll describe the events and then will describe how all of them will come together to create what I call “pervasive personal processing” or P3.

Trevor Williamson is Director of Solutions Architecture at GreenPages Technologies, where he contributes to the journey to the cloud blog. He is directly responsible for working with Global 1000 (financial, insurance and pharmaceutical) companies for the assessment and analysis, planning and design, and construction and management of enterprise technology (virtual, physical) infrastructures and for specifying and coordinating onsite professional services. Williamson has extensive knowledge and expertise in business applications and enterprise systems including designing complex, highly distributed virtual desktop environments for large enterprise clients. He has provided program and project management oversight and support for enterprise-scale solutions and is responsible for coordination of internal and external (partner) resources.

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(Shutterstock image credit: Computer Servers in Cloud)