Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Micro-kernel support for continuous media in distributed systems
AU - COULSON, G
AU - Blair, Gordon
AU - ROBIN, P
PY - 1994/7
Y1 - 1994/7
N2 - Currently, popular operating systems are unable to support the end-to-end real-time requirements of distributed continuous media. Furthermore, the integration of continuous media communications software into such systems poses significant challenges. This paper describes a design for distributed multimedia support in a micro-kernel operating system environment which provides the necessary soft real-time support while simultaneously running conventional applications. Our approach is to extend existing micro-kernel abstractions to include QoS configurability, connection-oriented communications and real-time threads. The design uses the following key concepts: the notion of a flow to represent QoS controlled communication between two application threads, a close integration of communications and thread scheduling and the use of a split-level scheduling architecture with kernel-and user-level threads. Implementation work is not yet completed and therefore performance figures are not available. However, the paper shows how our design qualitatively improves performance over existing micro-kernel facilities by reducing the number of protection-domain crossings and context switches incurred.
AB - Currently, popular operating systems are unable to support the end-to-end real-time requirements of distributed continuous media. Furthermore, the integration of continuous media communications software into such systems poses significant challenges. This paper describes a design for distributed multimedia support in a micro-kernel operating system environment which provides the necessary soft real-time support while simultaneously running conventional applications. Our approach is to extend existing micro-kernel abstractions to include QoS configurability, connection-oriented communications and real-time threads. The design uses the following key concepts: the notion of a flow to represent QoS controlled communication between two application threads, a close integration of communications and thread scheduling and the use of a split-level scheduling architecture with kernel-and user-level threads. Implementation work is not yet completed and therefore performance figures are not available. However, the paper shows how our design qualitatively improves performance over existing micro-kernel facilities by reducing the number of protection-domain crossings and context switches incurred.
KW - MULTIMEDIA
KW - OPERATING SYSTEMS
KW - THREAD SCHEDULING
KW - REAL-TIME SYSTEMS
KW - QUALITY OF SERVICE
KW - ENHANCED TRANSPORT SERVICES
U2 - 10.1016/0169-7552(94)90104-X
DO - 10.1016/0169-7552(94)90104-X
M3 - Journal article
VL - 26
SP - 1323
EP - 1341
JO - Computer Networks and ISDN Systems
JF - Computer Networks and ISDN Systems
IS - 10
ER -