A simulation environment for studying workstation multimedia capacities

The concept of multimedia capacity region (MCR) is used to characterize a workstation's capability in supporting multimedia processing with quality of service guarantees. Typically, the MCR depends on the process behavior, processing scheduling policy and the quality of service constraints. In most cases, an analytical method is not available to compute the MCR. We build a simulation environment for studying the dependencies of the MCR on the process behavior and scheduling policies. We present the process modeling, scheduler modeling, the quality of service measurement mechanism and the overall design of the simulation environment. Its general process modeling technique allows various complex process behavior and scheduling algorithms to be studied, and various quality of service parameters to be measured. The modular design of the system allows a mix-and-match of different components designed to achieve good re-usability. Some implementation issues and examples of using the simulation environment are also given.