  Nowadays, computation is playing an increasingly more important role in the
future generation of computer and communication networks, as exemplified by the
recent progress in software defined networking (SDN) for wired networks as well
as cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) and mobile cloud computing (MCC) for
wireless networks. This paper proposes a unified concept, i.e., computation
diversity, to describe the impact and diverse forms of the computation
resources on both wired and wireless communications. By linking the computation
resources to the communication networks based on quality of service (QoS)
requirements, we can show how computation resources influence the networks.
Moreover, by analyzing the different functionalities of computation resources
in SDN, C-RAN, and MCC, we can show diverse and flexible form that the
computation resources present in different networks. The study of computation
diversity can provide guidance to the future networks design, i.e., how to
allocate the resources jointly between computation (e.g., CPU capacity) and
communication (e.g., bandwidth), and thereby saving system energy and increase
users' experiences.
