Multimedia Synchronization and UNIX —or— If Multimedia Support is the Problem, Is UNIX the Solution?

This paper considers the role of UNIX in supporting multimedia applications. In particular, we consider the ability of the UNIX operating system (in general) and the UNIX I/O system (in particular) to support the synchronization of a number of high-bandwidth data sets that must be combined to support generalized multimedia systems. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first section reviews the requirements and characteristics that are inherent to multimedia applications. The second section reviews the facilities provided by UNIX and the UNIX I/O model. The third section contrasts the needs of multimedia and the abilities of UNIX to support these needs, with special attention paid to UNIX’s problem aspects. We close by sketching an approach we are studying to solve the multimedia processing problem: the use of a distributed operating system to provide a separate data and processing management layer for multimedia information. Keywords: Multimedia, UNIX kernel organization, I/O systems, distributed operating systems. 1