Continuous media: a paradigm shift in distributed systems

Summary form only given. The integration of digital audio and video (continuous media) in general-purpose distributed computer systems should eventually lead to the merger of computing, telecommunications, publishing, and broadcast media into a seamless global information environment. It is noted that the software prevalent in today´s distributed systems cannot provide the performance properties needed by continuous-media (CM) applications. It is based on principles, such as buffering, fairness, and transparency, that are often contrary to the needs of CM. To solve these problems, one needs a paradigm shift in computer system software. At the heart of things is scheduling. Scheduling policies for CM must be able to handle multiple streams of audio/video data, with varying requirements on delay and throughput. At a higher level, one needs a meta-scheduler to handle the chaining together of multiple resources and the intervening buffer space.<>