SYMPHONY: A Hardware, Operating System, and Protocol Processing Architecture for Distributed Multimedia Applications
Andreas D. Bovopoulos · Open Scholarship Institutional Repository (Washington University in St. Louis) · 1993
This paper explores the architectural requirements for computers to be able to process multimedia data streams such as video and audio. The I/O subsystem is shown to be a bottleneck, and a network backplane approach is suggested to alleviate this. The need to provide end-to-end performance guarantees requires predictable performance of intra-machine communication, and a schedulable bus with reservation is proposed to achieve this. In addition this requires operating system (OS) mechanisms to negotiate and enforce QoS requirements of applications. A real-time microkernel executive is proposed for each autonomous unit. Requirements for real-time microkernel exeutive is proposed for each autonomous unit. Requirements for real-time scheduling and efficient interprocess communication mechanisms are described. Finally the implications of the hardware and OS enhancements for the protocol procesing mechanisms are discussed. A compositional approach to protocol organization that is capable of catering to the wide variations in transport requirements of various media is described.