ARTIFACT: a platform for evaluating real-time window system designs

Multimedia and advanced real-time systems integrate a variety of applications and media types in one environment, many of which have timing properties which are not supported by current window systems running in multitasking environments. This paper discusses several key aspects to designing window systems which support continuous media and other real-time applications. These design considerations were used to construct ARTIFACT, a window system designed to investigate issues in building real-time window systems. Several of the behaviors of a partial implementation of ARTIFACT are described, along with preliminary scheduling models and avenues for further research.