A performance analysis of the IBM subsystem control block architecture in a video conferencing environment

Abstract

With the proliferation of new intelligent adapters, advanced bus architectures, and powerful microprocessors, the latest personal computers need a new architecture to coordinate the transfers of command and control information, data, and status between their system components in the most efficient manner. To this end, IBM has defined the Subsystem Control Block (SCB) architecture. In this paper, we would like to present our performance analysis of the SCB architecture in one of the most sophisticated multimedia applications today, the video conferencing environment. Our analysis demonstrates how effective the SCB architecture is in handling multiple video streams and file transfers concurrently in a typical video conferencing system based on personal computers.