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Extending the Chorus micro-kernel to support continuous media applications

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Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV 1993)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 846))

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Abstract

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 the Chorus micro-kernel operating system environment which provides the necessary soft real-time support while simultaneously running conventional applications. Our approach is to extend existing Chorus 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. 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.

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Doug Shepherd Gordon Blair Geoff Coulson Nigel Davies Francisco Garcia

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Coulson, G., Blair, G.S., Robin, P., Shepherd, D. (1994). Extending the Chorus micro-kernel to support continuous media applications. In: Shepherd, D., Blair, G., Coulson, G., Davies, N., Garcia, F. (eds) Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video. NOSSDAV 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 846. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58404-8_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-58404-8_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58404-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48779-1

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