Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Remote data accessing
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-30
2002-08-27
Pan, Daniel H. (Department: 2183)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Remote data accessing
C709S232000, C709S212000, C709S213000, C710S110000, C710S310000, C710S033000, C710S034000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06442599
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to an improved data processing system for transmitting information in the form of videos. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to an improved video storage architecture for transmitting and manipulating multiple video data streams.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advance of new compression technologies, the storing of video, audio, and user data into disk storage devices has become feasible. In addition, improvements in data transmission technologies provide sufficient bandwidth for multimedia traffic. As a result, applications such as video-on-demand (VOD), video editing, interactive games, home shopping, and other multimedia applications have been developed. Video-on-demand services may include, for example, movies, sporting events, textural information, educational programs, and arts programs.
A “multimedia application” is an application that uses different forms of communication as one application. For example, information can be displayed on a data processing system using voice, text, and video simultaneously. A multimedia data processing system allows text, graphics, and audio to be displayed simultaneously. These types of multimedia applications are referred to collectively as “video”, and it should be understood that a video generally includes both video and audio portions, although, in some instances, a video may only include an image portion as in information, or only in audio portion, as for example music.
Typically consumers, also called “users”, would like videos of their choice to be available to them at times and locations convenient to them. It would be an advantageous if the videos could be delivered by any transmission medium, such as commercial telephone, cable, and satellite networks. The videos should be compatible with readily available display systems, such as NTSC standard televisions or personal computers.
Furthermore, consumers also would like to have real-time interactive control of the VOD similar to video cassette recorder (VCR) type commands that presently available VCRs provide. These types of commands are called “virtual VCR commands”—fast forwarding, pausing, or replaying portions of the video at will. Furthermore, video in the form of home shopping and video games require a much higher level of interaction and control between the video and the consumer than a video in the form of a movie. In addition, the data processing system used to provide video services should be scalable at a reasonable cost to maximize the availability of the service to large populations of consumers.
Such applications demand a convergence of video, computing, and telecommunication technologies to meet demands of consumers. The convergence of these technologies, necessary to meet the control and delivery of video, renders obsolete the standard architectures employed in both the computing and telephony industries. For example, video server
10
in
FIG. 1
illustrates a conventional data processing system architecture employed to deliver video to consumers. Video server
10
includes a bus
12
connected to a processor
14
and a memory
16
. Video server
10
also includes disk arrays
18
. Disk arrays
18
are connected to disk array controllers
20
, which are in turn connected to system bus
12
via host adapters (HA)
22
. Additionally, video server
10
contains network adapters (NA)
24
, each having two connections, one connection to system bus
12
and another connection to a communications network (not shown). Disk arrays
18
contain compressed video data containing videos. Videos located on disk arrays
18
are sent to consumers located across a network by moving the video data from disk arrays
18
to system bus
12
. From this location, the video data is moved to the network via network adapters
24
. Multiple streams of video data also called “video data streams” are sent to consumers across the network from video server
10
.
As the number of consumers requesting videos on the communications network increase, the amount of video storage needed increases, as does the amount of traffic on system bus
12
, resulting from the movement of video data to system bus
12
and then to the communications network. In effect, a mismatch can occur in the connection of computer hardware and software to the communications network. System bus
12
in video server becomes a bottle neck for the transfer of video data from disk arrays
18
to the communications network. In addition to increased amounts of video data being transferred, the amount of traffic increases on system bus
12
because of commands received from various consumers. In particular, commands requesting new videos and commands representing VCR-like commands, also called “virtual VCR commands”, for controlling the videos are received by video server
10
and processed by processor
14
.
To improve the performance of video server
10
, current computer technology requires implementation of high performance hardware with corresponding high cost. Typically, very high performance internal input/output (I/O) system buses are required to carry video traffic in video server
10
for any significant number of users. In addition, most very high performance system buses are vender unique and expensive. For a small number of users, the cost per video stream containing a video is not feasible.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus for delivering videos to users that overcome the problems described above.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides an apparatus for storing and playing videos. The apparatus includes a storage device containing videos for playback on a user system located on a communications network. The apparatus includes a system connection to a data processing system and a network connection to the communications network. The apparatus includes a transfer means for transferring the video from the storage device to the network using the second network connection, wherein the video is directly transferred from the apparatus to the communications network.
In addition, the presently claimed invention includes a means for receiving commands from the network. These commands are processed in the apparatus and are used to control the video and how it is transferred from the storage device to the communications network.
In particular, data representing the video may be transferred from the storage device to the network connection by transferring the data from the storage device to a bus connected to the storage device and then from the bus to a buffer connected to the bus. The buffer also includes a connection to the network connection, and data is transferred directly from the buffer to the network connection.
The above as well as additional objectives, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.
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patent: 5410343 (1995-04-01), Coddington et al.
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patent: 5544161 (1996-08-01), Bigham et al.
patent: 5600644 (1997-02-01), Chang et al.
patent: 5606359 (1997-02-01), Youden et al.
patent: 2071416 (1993-12-01), None
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DuLac Keith B.
Freeman Paul M.
Carstens Yee & Cahoon LLP
LSI Logic Corporation
Pan Daniel H.
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