Issues in developing real-time multimedia applications for a multiprocessor system

Several of the emerging networked multimedia applications, such as video conferencing, high quality interactive games, and video on demand, place significant computational requirements on an end system, such as a personal computer, workstation, or set top box. In this context, we consider flexible, single chip, programmable shared memory multiprocessor architectures targeted at such applications. The need to develop applications targeted for such processors, and the need to execute a fairly diverse mix of continuous media and interactive applications on such a target, poses significant conceptual and technical challenges when designing a software architecture. The paper addresses three aspects of such a software architecture: the high level methodology for developing applications, the associated programming model, and the underlying operating system and run time support