Since the 1960's we have observed paradigm shifts in the context of distributed computing from mainframes to client-server models and back to centralized cloud approaches. The next development will include the distribution of intelligence back to the topological edge of the network. This natural evolution decreases dependency and load on the network and enhances data privacy and protection. Edge Computing is applied in several application domains and enables areas such as 5G, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Internet of Things, or Digital Twins.

As the Edge Computing market is estimated to generate a value of up to 19 Billion EUR by 2023, at the forum the latest technological approaches and their benefits in the area of Edge Computing will be presented to discuss open issues to build an industrial Edge-based ecosystem by making infrastructures interoperable, programmable, secure and easy to use. This includes the identification of reference architectures, open standards, available implementations, reference technology stacks and evaluation within use cases. Further, best practices and experiences gained from recent testbeds will be presented. More than 100 decision makers, key experts, innovators and early adopters from companies such as Siemens, IBM, Siemens, Huawei, Vodafone, Telekom etc. were represented last year.

We will address most of the areas covered in the Reference Architecture Model Edge Computing (RAMEC):

• Connectivity (e.g. TSN/5G)

• Silicon (e.g. x86/ARM)
• Operating Systems (e.g. Unikernels)
• Middleware (e.g. OPC UA)
• Information (e.g. Distributed Digital Twins)
• Applications (e.g. Distributed AI / vPLCs)
• Security (e.g. TPM)
• Real-Time (e.g. RTOS)
• Acceleration (e.g. Edge TPU)
• Virtualization (e.g. Unikernels)
• Management (e.g. Kubernetes)

Hosted and organized by:

Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS

Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 31, 10589 Berlin, Germany

General Chairs:

Dr.-Ing. Alexander Willner and Dr.-Ing. Florian Schreiner

Fraunhofer FOKUS, Heads of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Center