Patent ID: 6438630
Filing Date: 2002-08-20
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
A system for scheduling storage accesses of multiple continuous media streams, comprising:a plurality of media stream clients; a plurality of media stream managers, wherein each media stream manager is associated with a different one of said media stream clients and maintains a ring of buffers configured to buffer media stream data between its associated media stream client and one or more storage systems, wherein each media stream manager is configured to provide a guaranteed maximum media stream rate to its associated media stream client; a different deadline queue associated with each one of said one or more storage systems; wherein each deadline queue is configured to queue buffer requests from said media stream managers, wherein each buffer request includes a deadline by which the buffer request must be fulfilled by the corresponding storage system to meet the corresponding guaranteed maximum media stream rate, wherein each deadline is calculated as: current_time+(Nâˆ’1)*buf_time, wherein current_time is a time reference for the system, N is the number of buffers in the ring of buffers, and buf_time is the minimum time in which the media stream client can consume one of the buffers without exceeding the guaranteed maximum media stream rate; wherein each media stream manager is configured so that once one of its buffers is consumed by the associated media stream client, the media stream manager submits a buffer request and deadline for that buffer to the appropriate deadline queue; and wherein buffer requests are ordered in each deadline queue from earliest to latest deadline.