System and method for deterministic response to audio/video commands in a multimedia system

摘要

In a multimedia data stream system, deterministic response is provided by multimedia servers for VCR client commands, thereby ensuring the commands execute within a predetermined deterministic window of a base response time +/- a jitter j. A command is timestamped and blocked until within the determinstic response window, and then released from a queue. An I/O then issues to a decoder card in a time period less than 2j. Threads processing these commands run at elevated priority. Non-deterministic commands default to the high priority but priority of a thread receiving such a command is lowered before processing. The response time jitter is bound by high priority commands by issuing only non-blocking I/Os and limiting the number of concurrent SCSI bus commands.