Evaluation of a CPU Scheduling Mechanism for Multimedia Systems

: Multimedia applications handling audio and video data have to obey time characteristics of these media types. Besides a basic functionality to express time relations, correctness with respect to time constraints requires mechanisms which lead to favored processing of multimedia operations. CPU scheduling techniques based on the experience from real-time operating systems offer a solution and provide multimedia applications with the ability to meet time-related quality of service requirements. This paper discusses mechanisms to express time in multimedia systems and describes an implementation of a CPU scheduler designed to run under IBM's UNIX derivate AIX. The evaluation of the implementation based on measurements shows that the scheduler is able to support the time requirements of multimedia applications and that such mechanisms are indeed necessary since otherwise deadline violations occur. Keywords: multimedia, real time, scheduling, operating system support Introduction Due to..