Scalable multimedia disk scheduling

A new multimedia disk scheduling algorithm, termed Cascaded-SFC, is presented. The Cascaded-SFC multimedia disk scheduler is applicable in environments where multimedia data requests arrive with different quality of service (QoS) requirements such as real-time deadline and user priority. Previous work on disk scheduling has focused on optimizing the seek times and/or meeting the real-time deadlines. The Cascaded-SFC disk scheduler provides a unified framework for multimedia disk scheduling that scales with the number of scheduling parameters. The general idea is based on modeling the multimedia disk requests as points in multiple multi-dimensional sub-spaces, where each of the dimensions represents one of the parameters (e.g., one dimension represents the request deadline, another represents the disk cylinder number, and a third dimension represents the priority of the request, etc.). Each multi-dimensional sub-space represents a subset of the QoS parameters that share some common scheduling characteristics. Then the multimedia disk scheduling problem reduces to the problem of finding a linear order to traverse the multi-dimensional points in each sub-space. Multiple space-filling curves are selected to fit the scheduling needs of the QoS parameters in each sub-space. The orders in each sub-space are integrated in a cascaded way to provide a total order for the whole space. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of the Cascaded-SFC disk scheduling algorithm over other disk schedulers.