Interactive scheduling supports for real-time multimedia execution

With the widespread use of multimedia in industry, there is a need to re-study the underlying computer system structure to better support the execution of multimedia applications. Traditional schedulers found in general-purpose operating systems (GPOS) like UNIX cannot give sufficient and timely service to the multimedia applications. Though there are many hard real-time systems available, they emphasize predictability and absolute guarantee of schedules. These should not be the primary concerns for multimedia applications where missing a deadline is not fatal. To address the special needs of multimedia scheduling, the authors have designed and implemented a flexible scheduling testbed, called ICute (Interactive exeCUTE). The objectives of ICute are: (1) to implement a flexible scheduling mechanism that is able to regulate the execution of multimedia applications to achieve optimal output under various load conditions, (2) to present the programmer with a suitable environment for developing and executing multimedia applications by abstracting all the internal process management and scheduling from the programmer, and (3) to improve portability since ICute is implemented on a UNIX platform, the codes are portable across many systems.