US start-ups Packet and Vapor IO are betting that the model of huge out-of-town datacentres will soon become outdated - and that their own micro datacentres will be the bridge to the future. The standard 100 millisecond latency time for data requests will not likely be tolerated by self-driving cars and mixed-reality smartphone applications, which need a delay closer to the seven milliseconds of human eye-head coordination if perceivable lag is to be avoided. Smaller, optimised data centres that are physically closer to the network nodes can provide this - a fact not lost on AR/VR, which is considering incorporating compute technology into its cell towers.
US start-ups Packet and Vapor IO are betting that the model of huge out-of-town datacentres will soon become outdated - and that their own micro datacentres will be the bridge to the future. The standard 100 millisecond latency time for data requests will not likely be tolerated by self-driving cars and mixed-reality smartphone applications, which need a delay closer to the seven milliseconds of human eye-head coordination if perceivable lag is to be avoided. Smaller, optimised data centres that are physically closer to the network nodes can provide this - a fact not lost on AT&T, which is considering incorporating compute technology into its cell towers.