What is Edge Cloud?

Edge Cloud presents a hybrid arthictecture, which consists of datacenters and edge-servers (e.g., CDN servers), to support on-demand or cloud gaming by lowering network latency

What is cloud gaming?

Cloud gaming is the use of remote servers, particularly those that are found in cloud datacenters, to perform game computation such as graphics rendering. In this model, user input is captured and sent to remote servers whereupon the remote servers perform computation that pertains to game logic and graphics. The resulting audio and video is then sent back and presented to the end user. Cloud gaming is particularly advantageous for the end user if he or she does not possess the hardware to perform intensive computation.

Why do we care about latency?

Previous works have found that end users notice latency that is above 100ms for dynamic action games. This latency includes encoding and playback latency, which we found to be 20ms, and network latency. In this project, we conducted a measurement study which showed that a significant fraction of the US population is not within 80ms (the maximum network latency cloud gaming can incur) RTT of a datacenter. Consequently, many are unable to obtain an acceptable end-user experience if they used a cloud-only, on-demand gaming deployment. Therefore, we propose a hybrid architecture, which can enable cloud-gaming providers to reach more end-users within the 80ms RTT.