Architecture of a light-weight multimedia adapter
Erich Rütsche · 1994
This papers analyzes the particular requirements that multimedia communication imposes on the network adapter and on the I/O subsystem of a workstation. An adapter architecture is developed that is specially suited for multimedia communication. The key ideas are the separation of isochronous and asynchronous traffic and the execution of per-byte protocol operations on the adapter. The adapter does not perform protocol processing but provides only protocol processing support. Applications of the adapter and the performance gain for protocol implementations are discussed. 3 Architecture of a Light-Weight Multimedia Adapter Erich Rütsche Institut Eurécom, Sophia-Antipolis, France [email protected] 1. Introduction New types of networks such as FDDI and ATM provide a bandwidth in the range of 100 -155 Mb/s to a single workstation. Multimedia communication requires broadband communication of high-speed data, still images at high resolution, and moving pictures (video, animated graphi...