Multimedia workstation architecture with ATM interconnect

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis describes a multimedia workstation architecture, which uses an ATM switch rather than a traditional system bus, for connecting both multimedia and non-multimedia peripherals. This architecture is intended to eliminate the performance bottlenecks which are present in a typical bus-based workstation during transfers of high bandwidth information among the internal workstation components and between the workstation and the external network. The thesis discusses other recently developed multimedia workstation architectures, their advantages and shortcoming. The detailed structure of the proposed workstation architecture, including the CPU, memory, video display, disk, and ATM switch, is discussed. To offer a performance comparison between the proposed architecture and a generic bus-based system, a computer simulation was created to show the delays for both types of interconnect when subject to typical multimedia data streams. The simulation shows that the performance of the ATM workstation can be up to nine times better compared to the bus-based workstation for typical high bandwidth multimedia loads. However, the performance of the proposed ATM architecture is highly dependent on the number and the pattern of connections among workstation peripherals through the ATM switch.M.A.Sc