Allocation and Routing for Distributed Multimedia Systems*

Distributed multimedia systems require a resource management scheme that can support a large number of diverse applications and still provide timing guarantees to each application. An important component of the resource management scheme is an allocation and routing algorithm that determines which system resources to reserve for each application based on these two objectives. Unfortunately, most work on allocation and routing has ignored application timing requirements. Not only is there a need for an algorithm that addresses both objectives, but current trends towards network computer-based distributed intranets composed of high-powered computing, storage and communication resources require an integrated allocation and routing strategy to avoid local minimas [CS96a]. This paper describes an integrated allocation and routing algorithm that determines an optimal flow path (if any) that minimizes resource load (indirectly increases the number of applications the system can support) and meets the application’s timing requirements. The algorithm is general and can be applied to a large number of multimedia systems with diverse scheduling policies.