A New Software Architecture for Evolvable Multimedia Software

This paper describes the Micro Virtual Machine and the (default) operating system (OS) interface that we have designed and implemented for set top boxes and for servers for the delivery of on-line multimedia services. This article is derived from a proposal document presented at the 11th meeting of the Digital Audio-Visual Council (DAVIC) held in Berlin in December 1995. We also participated in the Japan site of the DAVIC inter-operability trials which have taken place in the Fall of 1995. The technology used for these trials is the one presented in this paper. 1. INTRODUCTION Our goal is to promote interfaces and protocols facilitating optimally open environments. Inter-operability, application portability, evolution flexibility, longterm extensibility and adaptability are the main principles underlying the design of the software architecture presented in this article. We have adopted the concept of Micro Virtual Machine (MVM), implementing a Micro Kernel (MK), which allows for three..