Network and Operating System Support for Multimedia Applications

Abstract

This paper describes the general problems in providing system software support for multimedia applications. We specifically focus on applications which have digital continuous media (DCM) I/O components, and the type of support that must be provided by the network software and operating system. DCM applications have large bandwidth and low delay requirements. We discuss network software support to meet these requirements, such as resource reservation schemes based on parameterized requests for some level of quality of service. Most likely, DCM communications will be long-lived, which suggests that connections are the appropriate network construct for such communications. Regarding the operating system, we describe issues of real-time resource scheduling, synchronization of processes and temporally related DCM flows, shared memory, and the need for a modular, uniform I/O abstraction. Finally, we present design principles based on the concepts of moving processes to data and separating d..