Scalable Computing and Communications: Theory and Practice

8

–––––––––––––––––––––––

The Future in Mobile Multicore Computing

Blake Hurd, Chiu C. Tan, and Jie Wu

8.1   INTRODUCTION

Mobile computers are with us everywhere, allowing us to work and entertain ourselves at any venue. Due to this, mobile computers are replacing desktops as our personal computers. Already, we see signs of smartphones becoming more popular than traditional desktop computers [1]. A recent survey of users reveals that e-mail, Internet access, and a digital camera are the three most desirable features in a mobile phone, and the consumers wanted these features to be as fast as possible [2]. The increasing sales of more powerful phones also indicate consumer demand for more powerful phones [1, 3].

There are two ways to improve mobile computing. The first way is to execute the computation remotely, where the mobile phone transfers the processing to a remote platform, such as a cloud computing environment, to perform the computation and then retrieves the output. The alternative is for the mobile device to execute the computation locally using its own hardware. The following three factors make remote computation less ideal than local computation:

1. Security. Remote computation requires out sourcing data to a third party, which increases the security risks since the third party may not be trustworthy. For instance, the third party may utilize the data to violate the user’s privacy. Local computation, on the other hand, does not have this problem.
2. Efficiency. Transmitting ...