Cost-effective streaming server implementation using Hi-tactix
Damien Le Moal, Tadashi Takeuchi, Tadaaki Bandoh · 2002
High performance and high quality for continuous media stream delivery needed by streaming server systems cannot be achieved efficiently using general-purpose operating systems, due to the overhead of the I/O mechanism implementation generally used. Special OS combined with powerful hardware can deliver better performance and quality but increases development complexity and deployment costs. The External I/O Engine Architecture adopts a hybrid approach, implementing streaming engines using the streaming-oriented Hi-Tactix operating system on inexpensive hardware, in combination with existing stream servers. The evaluation results of a QuickTime video server implemented with the existing Darwin Streaming Server using the External I/O Engine Architecture shows that Hi-Tactix can deliver 5 times the performance of a conventional OS and better stream quality, while keeping the amount of code necessary low.