The Cluster power to Edge computing

Several years ago (actually that is around 18 years ago :)) when I first heard of Artificial Intelligence, I had just entered into hard core Java programming. Back then, I was working on Atlanta based Asset Management ERP startup.  Dotcom boom was at all time high and herd of Y2K bug fixers were floating around. Motorola had started giving out embedded Java Development CDs. Being few years already into core programming and always interested to learn new things, I was fortunate to be introduced and then nurtured into a culture of analytical thinking. This gave me numerous opportunities in interacting with some of the greatest minds in the industry over the years.

One thing just held back few of us who were spawning thoughts of machines being intelligent was computing power. We never went deep into exploring ML, but what did we do for next decade is understanding better HL (buss kya..  Human Learning yaar1). We learnt numerous tricks on computing. Some of us who were coding back in early in late 90s and early 2000 may recognize the raise of GUI tools. And we were sucked into the swirl of GUI based application programming. From early days of Oracle Pro C to Informix 4GL then to Sybase PowerBuilder, titans had taken over the market. While I saw that it took most of the developers deep connection with hard core programming, for the analytical few, it gave new visual dimension to programming.

Today, I live in a society neighborhood where every other person is coder here. I feel deep coding is gaining its popularity again due to emerging techniques in cloud, AI and possibilities of doing marvel with so little of device footprints. This is a boon to many who were coding conservatively on ever growing server farms. My most of the last 15 -20 years of work was on clustered grids, where flexible plugging of heavy duty servers allowed many havoc to happen as well. I called it overuse of the resources with bigger the better perceptive thinking of few. Frankly, I am resource conservative guy when it comes to programming. That also provided me some of biggest opportunities with Fortune 100 customers to work on million dollar optimizations. And most of them were result of "have it all, we will make clusters bigger " syndrome.

It all boils down to : Bigger the better is not always good. Vision of exactly what is required for making bigger is important than have all data and then we figure it out later.

Today, we have Bigdata clusters, infinite (well sought of) cloud computing power, ever improving AI computational power and what not!. The big Question you need to ask is "What do you want to do?"

I was watching a BBC Earth TV series called Dynasties few days ago. In that, they were showing how Orangutans of Indonesian jungles and Chimps learning to eat insects hidden inside tree barks. How do they teach other fellows those techniques? It is all observational intuitions to transfer learning.
From nature we have lot of things to learn, as humans we have forgotten the art of "Enough"ness as we are living a pseudo life of abundance resources. Taking example of AI, today, still at research stage our early(ZenSpectra) smart designs are learning on the edge and communicating inferences to find outliers of decisions to refine themselves. I would like to see them as Smart Enough Devices.
The challenge I have taken myself is to go towards tiny footprint machines and ensure that coding is at epitome of efficiency with high speed real-time edge hybrid computing with cloud backbone.

In your next project, don't be just dummies executing instructions of so called requirement specs coming from gods. Go one step beyond and challenge to achieve maximum by using minimum of resources. No one wants to waste resources, somehow they have been living under impression that they need all resources to win. But you have the secret, winning does not take all that is available, it is mere leading from the front, execution with a vision and for the coder at heart - take efficiency as your principle component!

Conserve network, Conserve storage, Conserve power, ultimately be part of Awesome Future building!

Kiran