An Architecture of a Quality of Service Resource Manager Middleware for Flexible Embedded Multimedia Systems

There is a growing interest in multimedia applications and, in particular, in Consumer Electronics Embedded Multimedia Systems (CEEMS), such as set-top boxes and VTRs. At present, fimctionality changes and enhancement in CEEMSs are frequent. Manufacturers must adapt to such changes to keep in the market. Therefore, they must reduce time to market for their products. One of the clues to better improve and enhance system functionality is to develop easily upgradable (flexible) systems; so, a modification in some function of a CEEMS will not imply redesigning the whole system. Current trend is to include programmable components in these devices to enhance their flexibility. In order to make this approach feasible, it is required a high and efficient use of resources. This paper presents HOLAQOS, an architecture of a QoS resource manager that gives support to bulling flexible and open multimedia embedded systems. It is composed of a set of homogenous layers, where each of them manages one of the main system entities: appplications, quality levels, and resource budgets. HOLA-QoS is flexible and composable in order to facilitate experimentation with different types of multimedia applications for CEEMSs and management policies. A prototype of this architecture has been built to test the main concepts in the design.