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Multimedia applications are becoming ubiquitous. These applications
often have real-time requirements which distinguish them from the
conventional interactive and batch applications that have been the
mainstay of the general-purpose computing environment. As multimedia
applications are integrated with conventional non-real-time
applications in the general-purpose computing environment, the problem
arises of how to support the resulting mix of applications that users
will execute, some of which will have real-time requirements and some
of which will not. A key question is how does the operating system
schedule processor cycles to enable applications with and without
real-time requirements to co-exist and run effectively?
To address this question, we have created SMART, a Scheduler for
Multimedia And Real-Time applications. SMART explicitly supports the
time constraints of applications with real-time requirements, and
provides dynamic feedback to these applications to allow them to adapt
their performance based on the availability of processor cycles. It is
unique in its ability to make efficient use of processor cycles in
meeting real-time requirements under a dynamically varying system
load, even in the absence of admission control policies when the
system is overloaded. In addition, the support for applications with
real-time requirements is integrated with the support for applications
without real-time requirements. This allows SMART to provide uniform
controls that allow users to prioritize or proportionally allocate
processor cycles across all applications, regardless of whether or not
they have real-time requirements. We have implemented SMART in a
commercial operating system and measured its performance against other
schedulers in executing applications with and without real-time
requirements, including continuous media, interactive, and batch
applications. Our results demonstrate SMART's ability to provide
superior performance for multimedia applications.
More Information:
- The SMART Scheduler: Operating System Support for Multimedia Applications
- J. Nieh. Talk for Institute for Information Industry, Columbia University, New York, NY, May 2000.
- Multimedia on Multiprocessors: Where's the OS When You Really Need It?
- J. Nieh, M. S. Lam. Proceedings of the Eighth International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video, Cambridge, U.K., July 1998.
- The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of SMART: A Scheduler for Multimedia Applications
- J. Nieh, M. S. Lam. Proceedings of the Sixteenth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, Saint-Malo, France, October 1997. (Also available in HTML format).
- SMART UNIX SVR4 Support for Multimedia Applications
- J. Nieh, M. S. Lam. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, June 1997.
- SMART: A Processor Scheduler for Multimedia Applications
- J. Nieh, M. S. Lam. Abstract from Proceedings of the Fifteenth ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, Copper Mountain, Colorado, December 1995.
- Integrated Processor Scheduling for Multimedia
- J. Nieh, M. S. Lam. Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video, Durham, New Hampshire, April 1995.
- SVR4 UNIX Scheduler Unacceptable for Multimedia Applications
- J. Nieh, J. G. Hanko, J. D. Northcutt, G. A. Wall. Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video, Lancaster, U.K., November 1993.
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