Edge computing processes data not in a central cloud but on devices close to the user (edge nodes). The reason: a 1ms latency is critical for an autonomous vehicle, while a cloud round-trip takes 50–100ms. In IoT, sending every sensor's data to the cloud saturates bandwidth — edge filtering handles it locally.
CDN (Content Delivery Network) is the simplest form of edge computing. Cloudflare Workers, AWS Lambda@Edge, Vercel Edge Functions — running code on a server close to the user. Practical examples: facial recognition camera (processing on the camera, only the result sent), smart factory (local real-time sensor analysis), AR/VR (latency-free rendering). The Edge + 5G combination enables new classes of applications.
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