On interprocess communication

A formalism for specifying and reasoning about concurrent systems is described. Unlike more conventional formalisms, it is not based upon atomic actions. A definition of what it means for one system to implement a higher-level system is given and justified. In Part II, the formalism is used to specify several classes of interprocess communication mechanisms and to prove the correctness of algorithms for implementing them. Dr. Lamport is a member of Digital Equipment Corporation's Systems Research Center. In previous incarnations, he was with SRI International and Massachusetts Computer Associates. The central topic of his research has been concurrency, and he can writeTEX macros and chew gum at the same time.Much of this research was performed while the author was a member of the Computer Science Laboratory at SRI International, where it was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Project under contract number N00014-84-C-0621 and the Rome Air Development Command Project under contract number F30602-85-C-0024     

Hardware support for interprocess communication

The use of a special-purpose coprocessor for supporting message passing is proposed. An actual message-based operating system is partitioned into computation and communication parts, executing, respectively, on a host and a message coprocessor which interact through shared queues. Its performance is measured on a multiprocessor. Hardware support in the form of a special-purpose smart bus and smart shared memory is designed. The benefits of these components are demonstrated through analytical modeling using generalized timed Petri nets. The analysis shows good agreement with experimental results and indicates that substantial benefits may be obtained when the software is partitioned between host and the message coprocessor and when a small amount of special-purpose hardware is added     

Multiparty interactions for interprocess communication andsynchronization

The authors consider the essential properties of a multiparty interaction construct which serves as a primitive for interprocess communication and synchronization in distributed programs. It is claimed that more general constructs, which violate the suggested properties, are appropriate for abstraction but should not be seen as a communication primitive, and that both facilities are needed. Several acceptability criteria are posed for multiparty interactions, and various possibilities for constructs satisfying these criteria are presented. These include introducing a novel kind of nondeterminism within the assignments of an interaction, weakening the synchronization among the participants in an interaction, and varying the number of participants in order to provide a high-level treatment of fault tolerance     

Silence detection for multimedia communication systems

Silence detection and removal is an essential building block of any multimedia video conferencing system. It reduces the bandwidth requirements of the underlying network transport service and helps to maintain an acceptable end-to-end delay for audio. We analyze the requirements for a silence detection algorithm hosted on a multimedia communication system, and propose a novel low-complexity algorithm operating in the non-linear domain. After discussing the constraints which are imposed by the architecture of the system hardware (computer, packet-based network), we show that several recently proposed silence detection algorithms fail to meet all of these constraints. A new approach is then introduced, based on the small- and large-signal behavior of the speech waveform in the -law domain. The new algorithm is compared with a recent design that meets several of our requirements; experimental results indicate that it performs significantly better in the particular environment at hand.     

An approximate model for performance evaluation of real-time multimedia communication systems

A Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP) is a doubly stochastic Poisson process which has recently received a lot of attention due to its ability to model a highly correlated arrival stream while retaining analytical tractability. In this paper, the cell arrival process from integrated voice and data sources is approximated by a two-state MMPP with batch arrivals (BMMPP). We propose a new matching technique which leads to more accurate performance prediction than other recent work for both delay estimation and evaluation of tail probabilities. While using BMMPP in the model does not noticeably increase the computational complexity over MMPP, it allows better representation of traffic sources with significantly higher burstiness. Another major contribution of the proposed model is its simplicity which makes the model suitable for real-time traffic control. An extended version of the model for integrated video, voice and data sources is also given with numerical examples again showing that the accuracy is quite satisfactory.     

An architecture for attacking the communication bottleneck in P systems

The distributed implementation of P systems on a cluster of processors has met with a bottleneck communications problem. When the number of membranes grows in the system, the network gets congested and the time taken to execute an evolution step degrades. In this article, we suggest a software architecture denominated “partially parallel evolution with partially parallel communication”, where some membranes are located in each processor, proxies are used to communicate with membranes located in different processors, and a policy of access control to the communications network is mandatory. With all this, we get a certain parallelism in the system and an acceptable functioning in communications. In addition to this, it establishes a series of equations that allows us to determine in the architecture the optimum number of processors needed, the time required to execute an evolution step, the number of membranes to be located in each processor, and the conditions to determine when it is best to use the distributed solution or the sequential one. This work was presented in part at the 12th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 25–27, 2007     

PressBase : a presentation synchronization database for distributed multimedia systems

Multimedia presentations are the basic objects of multimedia databases. Since a multimedia presentation is not an instant display of a query result, the control knowledge (or synchronization requirements) has to be incorporated into the database and necessary precautions have to be taken for a lengthy presentation. Active databases provide a mechanism for incorporation of control knowledge by using event-condition-action (ECA) rules. In this paper, we describe how multimedia synchronization can be handled within a database using ECA rules. We present a prototype presentation synchronization database, named as PressBase, for distributed multimedia systems. We have adopted one of the synchronization models, SynchRuler, and then incorporated into a relational database system.     

HeiRAT - Quality-of-service management for distributed multimedia systems

Multimedia systems must be able to support a certain quality of service (QoS) to satisfy the stringent real-time performance requirements of their applications. HeiRAT, the Heidelberg Resource Administration Technique, is a comprehensive QoS management system that was designed and implemented in connection with a distributed multimedia platform for networked PCs and workstations. HeiRAT includes techniques for QoS negotiation, QoS calculation, resource reservation, and resource scheduling for local and network resources.     

Abstract communication model for distributed systems

In some distributed and mobile communication models, a message disappears in one place and miraculously appears in another. In reality, of course, there are no miracles. A message goes from one network to another; it can be lost or corrupted in the process. Here, we present a realistic but high-level communication model where abstract communicators represent various nets and subnets. The model was originally developed in the process of specifying a particular network architecture, namely, the Universal Plug and Play architecture. But, it is general. Our contention is that every message-based distributed system, properly abstracted, gives rise to a specialization of our abstract communication model. The purpose of the abstract communication model is not to design a new kind of network; rather, it is to discover the common part of all message-based communication networks. The generality of the model has been confirmed by its successful reuse for very different distributed architectures. The model is based on distributed abstract state machines. It is implemented in the specification language AsmL and is used for testing distributed systems.     

An architecture for adaptive multimedia content delivery

In this paper, we propose an architecture for multimedia content delivery considering Quality of Service (QoS), based on both the policy-based network and the best-effort network. The architecture consists of four fundamental elements: multimedia content model, application level QoS policy, QoS adaptation mechanism, and delivery mechanism. Applications based on current architecture loses their meaning by drastically degrading quality when network congestion occurs. Despite of this all-or-nothing architecture, applications based on our adaptive architecture can reduce its quality and then negotiate with the network entity, keeping its quality measure as much as possible even when network congestion occurs. We may consider a quality measure for Web pages, total page transmission time, and transmission order of inline objects as a segregation. We then define a language to specify application level QoS policies for Web pages and implement a delivery mechanism and a QoS adaptation mechanism to fulfill these policies. Kaname Harumoto, Ph.D.: He received the M.E. and Ph.D. (Eng.) degrees from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1994 and 1998, respectively. From 1994 through 1999, he was with the Department of Information Systems Engineering, Grauuate School of Engineering, Osaka University. Since November 1999, he has been an Assistant Professor in Computation Center (currently, the name has changed to Cybermedia Center), Osaka University. His research interests include database systems, especially in advanced network environments. He is a member of IEEE. Tadashi Nakano: He received the B.E. degree from Osaka University in 1999. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. His current reeearch interests include multimedia content delivery architecture. Shinji SHIMOJO, Ph.D.: He received the M.E. and a Dr.E. degrees from Osaka University in 1983 and 1986, respectively. From 1986 through 1989, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Faculty of Engineering Science, Osaka University. From 1989 through 1998, he was an Associate Professor and since 1998, he has been a Professor in Computation Center (currently, the name has changed to Cybermedia Center), Osaka University. He was engaged in the project of object-oriented multimedia presentation system called Harmony. His current interests cover wide diversity of multimedia applications such as News On Demand System, multimedia database and networked virtual reality. He is a member of ACM and IEEE.     

Transformations for optimizing interprocess communication and synchronization mechanisms

This paper presents source-level transformations that improve the performance of programs using synchronous and asynchronous message passing primitives, including remote call to an active process (rendezvous). It also discusses the applicability of these transformations to shared memory and distributed environments. The transformations presented reduce the need for context switching, simplify the specific form of communication, and/or reduce the complexity of the given form of communication. One additional transformation actually increases the number of processes as well as the number of context switches to improve program performance. These transformations are shown to be generalizable. Results of hand-applying the transformations to SR programs indicate reductions in execution time exceeding 90% in many cases. The transformations also apply to many commonly occurring synchronization patterns and to other concurrent programming languages such as Ada and Concurrent C. The long term goal of this effort is to include such transformations as an otpimization step, performed automatically by a compiler.This work was supported by NSF under Grant Number CCR88-10617.     

Real-time software-based video coder for multimedia communication systems

A novel software-based video compression algorithm, the Popular Video Coder (PVC), is presented in this paper, and a video phone system, the Popular Phone, is also implemented based on the PVC. The PVC simplifies the traditional video coder by removing the transform and the motion estimation parts and modifies the quantizer and entropy coder. Two novel coding algorithms, the adaptive quantizer and the modified windowed Huffman-like coder, are used in the PVC to encode the video data with a quality picture at a high compression ratio. The video quality of the proposed coder is as good as that of the MPEG coder when the input is a low-resolution and slow-motion video, and the computational complexity of the PVC is much lower than that of the Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG). Since no compression hardware is needed for the PVC to encode and decode video data, the cost and complexity of developing multimedia applications, such as video phone and multimedia e-mail systems, can be greatly reduced. Furthermore, some networking issues, such as error control and flow control, are discussed in connection with applying the PVC to implement the Popular Phone.     

Dynamic end-to-end QoS management middleware for distributed multimedia systems

In this paper, we present a separable, reusable middleware solution that provides coordinated, end-to-end QoS management over any type of service component, and can use existing (legacy) QoS management solutions (by using wrappers) in a distributed multimedia system. Our middleware solution incorporates strategic and tactical QoS managers, and supports protocols and messages between tactical managers and managed application components, and between QoS managers in the management hierarchy. Strategic QoS managers take a global view of QoS provided by a set of application components within the manager's policy domain. Tactical QoS managers provide local control over application components. We introduce the concept of QoS policy domains to scope the authority of a strategic QoS manager. We describe how the management hierarchy is dynamically configured and reconfigured based on runtime needs of the application.     

Transformation and exchange of multimedia objects in distributed multimedia systems

One of the challenges in the design of a distributed multimedia system is devising suitable specification models for various schemas in different levels of the system. Another important research issue is the integration and synchronization of heterogeneous multimedia objects. In this paper, we present our models for multimedia schemas and transformation algorithms. They transform high-level multimedia objects into schemas that can be used to support the presentation and communication of the multimedia objects. A key module in the system is the Object Exchange Manager (OEM). In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the OEM module, and discuss in detail the interaction between the OEM and other modules in a distributed multimedia system.     

A software architecture for distributed computer control systems

Distributed computer control systems have a number of potential advantages over centralized systems, especially where the application is itself physically distributed. A computer station can be placed close to the plant being controlled, and a communications network used to enable the stations to communicate to coordinate their actions. However, the software must be carefully designed to exploit the potential advantages of distribution. This paper describes the software architecture of CONIC, a system to support distributed computer control applications. This architecture emphasizes the distinction between the writing of individual software components and the construction and configuration of a system from a set of components. A modular structure is used to separate programming from configuration. Typed entry and exit ports are used to clearly define module interfaces. Ports, analagous to the plugs and sockets of hardware components, permit modules to be interconnected in different ways. On-line modification and extension of the system is supported by permitting the dynamic creation and interconnection of modules. Message passing primitives are provided to permit modules to coordinate and synchronize control actions.     

An offline parallel architecture for forensic multimedia classification

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Nowadays, the volume of the multimedia heterogeneous evidence presented for digital forensic analysis has significantly increased, thus requiring the application...