I/O Channel and Real-Time Disk Scheduling for Video Servers

Abstract

multimedia, VOD, real-time disk scheduling A video server is one of the key components in providing the videoon-demand service. This service allows the delivery of movies (or games, sports, news, etc.) to homes on viewers' requests. Video servers are different from traditional file servers or database systems in the following major aspects: they have large storage capacity, must support intensive I/O traffic, large transfer size, and real-time disk I/O. Therefore, the video server I/O subsystem design is critical to its success. The current most popular I/O interface is SCSI. It has some problems, such as an unfair channel arbitration protocol, which are detrimental in an I/O intensive environment.