Date: October 13, 1994

Speaker: Clifford Mercer

Processor Capacity Reserves: Operating System Support for Multimedia Applications

Abstract:
Multimedia applications have timing requirements that cannot generally be satisfied using the time-sharing scheduling algorithms of general purpose operating systems. My objective is to provide the predictability of real-time systems while retaining the flexibility of a time-sharing system. I designed a processor capacity reservation mechanism that isolates programs from the timing and execution characteristics of other programs in the same way that a memory protection system isolates them from outside memory accesses. In this talk, I will describe a scheduling framework that supports reservation and admission control, and I'll talk about new reserve abstraction, specifically designed for the microkernel architecture, for measuring and controlling processor usage. I'll talk about our implementation of processor capacity reserves in Real-Time Mach, and illustrate the performance of our system on several types of applications.

SDI / LCS Seminar Questions?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/