Author(s): Bharath V, Priyadarsini K
The cloud heralds a new era of computing where application services are provided through the Internet. Cloud computing can enhance the computing capability of mobile systems, but is it the ultimate solution for extending such system’s battery lifetimes. Cloud computing1 is a new paradigm in which computing resources such as processing, memory, and storage are not physically present at the user’s location. Instead, a service provider owns and manages these resources, and users access them via the Internet. For example, Amazon Web Services lets users store personal data via its Simple Storage Service (S3) and perform computations on stored data using the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This type of computing provides many advantages for businesses—including low initial capital investment, shorter start-up time for new services, lower maintenance and operation costs, higher utilization through virtualization, and easier disaster recovery—that make cloud computing an attractive option. Reports suggest that there are several benefits in shifting computing from the desktop to the cloud.1, 2. The primary constraints for mobile computing are limited energy and wireless bandwidth. Cloud computing can provide energy savings as a service to mobile users, though it also poses some unique challenges.