Technical White Paper
The needs of digital content design, not to mention physics and
economics, are coming into conflict with current OS architectures. A new
definition, the Media OS, can unlock the door to more powerful media-based
personal systems, and extract more performance from the systems we are
using today.
In 1985, a new concept in personal computing began to take hold. Known
as "desktop publishing" and sparked by graphical user interfaces
and the invention of the laser printer, this new use for PCs grew from a
special interest group into a major market that changed the face of paper
publishing, from newsletters to annual reports to advertising. And in the
process, computer-based publishing sold millions of people on the usefulness
of personal computers, and changed the very nature of their work.
A decade later, desktop publishing as we have known it is coming to an
end. It is not the message that is being changed, but the way the message
is being conveyed. CD-ROMs provide us with a high capacity distribution
mechanism that costs pennies to produce in volume. DVDs are on the horizon,
promising to obliterate the CD-ROM and take capacities to new levels. And
the Internet is rushing towards universal coverage, able to deliver any
type of information, to any user, for the cost of the communications channel
and an inexpensive server.
This digital media is changing the way the message is conveyed.
Instead of static images on a page, digital media presents us with a mix
of text, digital audio, digital video, two-way communications, and 3D graphics
and animations.
Content designers everywhere, already computerized by the previous revolution,
have taken to the new media like ducks to water, experimenting with audio,
video and graphics in a myriad of combinations.
In response to the demand of the new media, production lead times are
shrinking from months to days, or even hours. These digital designers are
using new sets of software tools to manipulate this high bandwidth information
in as real-time as possible.
And in the process, they are bringing the personal computer as we know
it to its knees.
Today's Limitations
The computing industry has grown up with promises of doubling processing
power and halving equipment costs every 18 months or so. That pace hasn't
slowed. We have vastly more powerful hardware today than we had even three
years ago.
But the demands of digital media are increasing the need for processing
power at an even faster rate. Digital design requires that we squeeze every
bit of performance out of our current systems, and that we look to opening
new avenues for gaining performance, even as microprocessors continue to
advance.
Unfortunately, in the process applications are exceeding what the current
generation of operating systems were designed to do. Almost all existing
systems were originally designed decades ago, when the idea of personal
computers dealing with real-time video, audio, communications and other
high-bandwidth applications was practically science fiction. Windows 95 has
its roots in DOS, Windows NT in the VAX systems originally designed by DEC,
Mac OS in the early ideas of Xerox Parc and Mach in the labs of Carnegie-Mellon,
both designed in the late 1970s.
As the importance of audio, video and interactive communications has
increased in recent years, we've had to devise increasingly clever -- and
complex -- methods of delivering the performance required of media-based
applications because the foundations of today's systems were simply
not designed with high-bandwidth media in mind.
One example of aging foundations is the use of multiple processors in
a single system. The architectures of most of today's mainstream operating
systems are optimized for execution on uniprocessor systems, an assumption
borne of the days when microprocessors were very expensive. Adding multiprocessor
(MP) capability to these systems is difficult, and often goes only half way.
To gain the maximum benefit, all operating system services and applications
must be written with MP capability in mind, something that is virtually
impossible to do without major disruption. Those of today's systems that
can make some use of multiple processors do so in a coarse-grain way, failing
to take maximum advantage of the hardware resources available.
In addition, as more and more features have been added to today's operating
systems, layers of software "silt" have built up upon their architectural
foundations. These layers deliver new services, route around services no
longer required, provide specialized functions for individual applications
that can't be delivered any other way, and, most of all, provide a level
of backward compatibility. Unfortunately, as this software silt builds up,
it consumes more of the computer's processing power and hardware resources.
And it adds to the complexity of the system -- reducing performance, lowering
stability, and lengthening the time it takes to deliver new software.
This increasing complexity has had two effects. First, customers are
paying for more expensive hardware than they should, just to obtain acceptable
performance with mainstream productivity applications. The effort to counteract
this problem forms the basis of the network computer (NC) concept
-- by simplifying operating systems, moving to modern applications, and removing
the silt, computing can become less expensive.
And second, users are not able to take advantage of the real processing
power that is inherent in today's advanced microprocessors because of the
operating systems silt that lies in the way, making media-based applications
more expensive, and less powerful, than they should be. Solving this problem
lies at the heart of the Media OS concept.
The Necessities of Digital Media
It's not enough to add a few features and call an operating system a
"Media OS." An operating system needs to be architected to deal
natively with digital media. Our experiences with today's generation of
personal computers provide a glimpse at what is necessary to create a true
media-based system, and to squeeze the most possible power out of a system's
hardware resources. From this experience, we can identify five broad areas
in which a media-based system must excel.
Maximize Processing Power
The power of microprocessors continues to advance at a predictable pace.
However, the needs of digital content creators have outstripped even the
best efforts of microprocessor makers, and physics, to keep up. A Media
OS can't rely simply on single processors to handle the load, which means
that it must be multiprocessor capable.
Why are multiprocessor systems important? Today, the power of personal
computer systems is generally dependent on a single microprocessor. This
means that we must wait for new, faster generations of microprocessors to
become available in order to build more powerful personal computers.
Multiprocessing gives us a way around this problem. First, it gives us
access to even more powerful systems. We can multiply the effect of increases
in microprocessor performance across multiple processors, rather than just
one. This can provide access to vastly more powerful systems than we have
today, yet with today's PC technologies.
Second, multiprocessing provides us with a more economical way of reaching
a given performance point. The highest performance processor, 550 MHz today,
costs significantly more than 400 MHz processors. Thus it can cost just
as much to put two 400 MHz processors into a system as it does to put a
single 550 MHz processor. Yet the two processors combined deliver 800 MHz
of available cycles. The result is that using a multiprocessor approach
opens a new axis for hardware manufacturers to explore in price-performance
-- leading to new performance levels and options for end users.
Opening up new, multiprocessor-based solutions for the mainstream is
a key requirement as we take media design into the next century. There are
a number of other ways to maximize processor performance. For example, how
an operating system implements multiprocessor capability can be even more
important than the capability itself. We'll examine this further a bit later
in this discussion.
Graphics Power and Flexibility
In addition to consuming massive amounts of processing power, a key characteristic
of the work of digital designers is that it involves the manipulation of
graphics, preferably in real-time (manipulation with no "lag"
or processing time from the user's perspective.) To accomplish this, media-based
systems have to address two things involving graphics capabilities.
First they need to take advantage of specialized graphics coprocessors.
Graphics co-processing is a specialized type of multiprocessing that can
help increase the performance of a system dramatically. This is especially
true in 3D graphics and video compression and decompression, where
function-specific chips can boost throughput significantly.
Second, the graphics capabilities must be flexible. The types of graphics
work being done by digital designers varies greatly. Some do more 3D work
than video, others more 2D than 3D, and so on. Because of this, a Media
OS must be flexible enough to allow hardware to be configured in the way
that's best for the end user. In addition, flexibility and modularity means
that graphics hardware can be upgraded as new, more powerful solutions become
available, or as the user's needs change.
Access to Large Amounts of Storage
Another key characteristic of digital design is the amount of data required.
We have moved from floppy storage, to hard drive storage, to CD-ROMs, providing
us with direct access to significantly more data than only a few years ago.
Average hard drive sizes have increased from a few hundred megabytes and
are now approaching 4 gigabytes.
But this is nothing compared to what's going to be required
in the near future. One hour of digital audio requires about 600 Mb (the
capacity of a CD-ROM.) One hour of compressed video, though, requires over
2 gigabytes. The DVD standard for two hours of high-quality, high definition
compressed video contains over 5 gigabytes of data. And if you are working
with the original, uncompressed image of a two hour movie, as many digital
designers want to do prior to compression, the numbers approach 300 gigabytes
of data.
A media-based system must deal with multiple, large storage devices.
These devices will vary widely in capabilities, and so the storage system
also needs to be flexible enough to accommodate these differing abilities.
And a Media OS must be sure to take advantage of advances in underlying
hardware that will enable this information to be routed through a system
and manipulated in real-time.
Internet Communications
Today, it almost goes without saying that Internet capability is a standard
option for personal computers. For the digital design crowd, it's a distribution
channel for their work, and so is a basic requirement of business.
A media-based system should be Internet-native, based in the TCP/IP protocols
and able to access and publish a wide range of Internet based services.
Taking advantage of fast Internet networking hardware is the first step.
Providing a wide range of Internet application services, from the web, to
mail, to secure layers is the next.
Software that Works Together
Lastly, no one who uses personal computers for digital design uses a
single piece of software. Most often, we use software "groups",
a set of packages that operate on the same underlying data, each doing a
set of specific functions. One of the key complaints users have about today's
generation of operating systems and applications is that it is often difficult
to get these software packages to work together, especially if they are
from different vendors.
A Media OS can't solve this problem alone, applications play a key role.
But it can make the job a lot easier. Data interchange and scripting capabilities
are two methods of approaching this problem. Extensive threading, interapplication
messaging, and even the ability to "merge" applications with one
another are additional approaches. The more work an operating system does
to provide these services, the more likely applications are to take advantage
of them.
Defining the Media OS
Given these basic necessities of life for digital design, what should
a Media OS look like? Given what we know about software design today, what
features would an optimum Media OS have and how would they work together
with application software to deliver the best performance and experience
for the user?
So that we can better identify the features of a Media OS, we can split
the functions of an OS into two broad categories:
The foundation of a true Media OS must be built with real-time
media and communications in mind from the start. It must make maximum use
of the underlying hardware, and free hardware manufacturers to build ever
more powerful, and more economical, systems. The Media OS needs to be built
with the high-bandwidth needs of media in mind, from storage to I/O throughput
to graphics.
In addition to a solid, media-oriented foundation, a Media OS must also
provide application services which allow developers to create
powerful applications that deliver on the advantages of the underlying
foundation, to do so quickly, and to do so efficiently - with a minimum
of reinventing the wheel.
The Media OS Foundation
The performance and capabilities of any OS are highly
dependent on the foundation level services of the OS. These services -- known
separately as the kernel, file system, input-output (I/O) system, graphics
system, among others -- form the connecting layer between the services applications
(and customers) use, and the power of the underlying hardware. Because of
this, efficiency and performance delivered within the foundation ripples
throughout the computer system. Conversely, problems within the foundation
will impact the performance of the entire system.
In order to service the needs of media-based applications and high-bandwidth
data, a Media OS should have the following features in its foundation:
Multiprocessor Optimized
As discussed above, basic economics mean that multiprocessor personal
computers will grow rapidly in number during the next decade. This means
that a Media OS should cast off the uniprocessor assumption used in today's
systems, and use an architecture designed to take advantage of two, four,
or more processors in a single system.
These processors should be treated as peers in a system, allowing each
to execute any portion of application or OS code, and giving each full access
to the computer's resources. Often referred to as symmetric multiprocessing,
this feature speeds operations, improves efficiency, and importantly, simplifies
the task of writing multiprocessor-aware applications.
In order to fully implement symmetric multiprocessing, a number of other
"modern" OS concepts also need to be present. Preemptive multitasking
allows the computer to switch quickly and efficiently between tasks, and
between processors. Virtual memory should be constantly present,
allowing for a smooth transition between tasks and efficient memory management.
Software drivers and application add-ons should be dynamically loaded
to maximize memory usage and enable dynamic reconfiguration.
Lastly, the often complex internal nature of media-based application
software today, combined with rapidly shrinking software revision cycles,
means that we are developing a situation in which the customer needs to
be protected from sliding from the "cutting edge" to the "bleeding
edge." To prevent this, a Media OS should provide memory protection
between applications -- preventing one application from adversely affecting others.
In addition, the Media OS should implement a client-server internal architecture
that separates application code and user data from the underlying operating
system. By combining these two features, end users can be better assured
that they can use the latest applications with a minimum of risk to their
data.
Pervasive Multithreading
Basing an operating system on multiprocessing is not enough, however.
If we simply use past software programming concepts on top of a multiprocessor
architecture, what we'll end up with is a number of processes executing
in sequence, rather than in parallel, erasing most of the benefits of multiprocessing.
In addition, using older application software concepts can cause what is
known as a "scaling problem" with multiprocessor systems where
performance does not increase, but rather tops out -- and can even degrade
-- as the number of processors increases.
To gain the most performance, increase parallelism, and reduce the scaling
problem, a Media OS needs to employ a concept called pervasive multithreading.
Multithreading takes large tasks, such as applications, and breaks them
down into a myriad of smaller tasks which can be performed in parallel.
Pervasive multithreading means that this
approach is taken throughout the operating system and applications, from
the kernel up to and including graphics that the user views within windows.
In many ways, pervasive multithreading is as fundamental a shift to
software design as the introduction of GUI systems were in the early 1980s.
But rather than simply visual differences, the user will see significant
performance and capability increases as a result.
Pervasive multithreading allows the Media OS to rapidly switch between
dozens, often hundreds of smaller tasks quickly. These tasks can be rapidly
deployed on multiple processors, and rapidly reassigned when the system's
processing load changes. Pervasive multithreading is often referred to as
"fine grain" multithreading, because of the view that it is easier
to move grains of sand through, say, an hour glass, than larger rocks and
boulders.
The Media OS implements every OS service, from the fundamental level
up through application services, using pervasive multithreading. In fact,
a Media OS will go further and ensure that applications are written in
this manner as well.
But how does this highly multithreaded design affect single processor
systems? As it turns out, pervasive multithreading also helps in these cases,
allowing preemptive multitasking on a single processor to be smoother, and
more responsive to changes in tasks such as when the user decides to open
a new application.
Multithreaded 64-bit File System
Many of us are aware of past transitions in processor architectures,
from 16-bit systems to 32-bit systems, and in the future to 64-bit systems.
But an equally important transition is taking place in how computers deal
with storage. As media-based applications have become more mainstream, the
size of our storage devices -- from hard disks, to Zip and Jaz drives, to
optical and high capacity magnetic media -- has increased dramatically.
And in doing so, we are hitting a basic limit. If an operating system
implements a "32-bit" file system, the maximum file size a device
can natively hold is 4 gigabytes. While 4 gigabytes seemed like a massive amount
of storage only a few years ago, today we can envision media-based applications
using files which easily exceed this limit. Even with today's applications
we have reached these limits, and there are an increasing number of complex
solutions to get around this limit in today's operating systems.
But a simpler solution exists -- move the basic file system design
to 64-bits. This increases the theoretical capacity of a single device
to roughly 18 million terabytes (18 billion gigabytes), enough to give drive
manufacturers a reasonable amount of running space in the short term. By
moving the file system design to 64-bits, we also free the application developer
from dealing with specialized solutions to the 4 gigabyte limit, and we improve
overall efficiency by avoiding "kludges" to a basic
foundation-level service.
In addition, a Media OS file system should integrate basic database-type
capabilities for applications, allowing key attributes and descriptions
of the contents of files to be searched across and indexed for faster access.
This speeds overall access in situations such as the often thousands of
files that make up a large web site.
Multithreaded, Direct Access Graphics Capabilities
The Media OS is expected to deal natively with compressed video streams,
and interactive 3D graphics, in addition to the 2D graphics of the past.
Both compressed video and 3D graphics require a large amount of processing
power to manipulate interactively. Compressed video requires the power to
both compress and decompress large amounts of video data, with the objective
of doing so in real-time. Interactive 3D graphics consume even more processing
power because a 3D scene must be reconstructed entirely from mathematical
representations.
Further, the field of computer graphics is advancing rapidly, which means
that hardware is changing rapidly. Multiprocessor systems are sure to be
a boon to this field, but in addition there are specialized video processors
and 3D graphics processors that can speed up graphics operations considerably.
These graphics processors can be thought of as "specialists" in
a multiprocessor system, and to make maximum use of them, it's extremely
useful to start with a multiprocessor-aware, multithreaded operating system
and multithreaded applications.
Because of these factors, the Media OS should not make too many assumptions
about the type of graphics hardware that may be present, nor assumptions
about what type of capabilities application software might have. What this
means is that a Media OS should have a modular, dynamic, multithreaded
graphics system. Graphics hardware drivers should be modular and dynamically
loaded. Graphics APIs should allow various functions to be handled in OS-level
software, or to be overridden by hardware capabilities or application-level
functions. And these APIs should assume that there are multiple general
and specialized processors in a single system, and be able to dynamically
allocate graphics tasks among these resources.
And perhaps most importantly, applications need to have direct access
to the underlying graphics hardware, when desired. Providing this capability
runs against the grain of conventional modern OS design, which states that
the underlying hardware should be abstracted from applications for protection
and security reasons. However the reality of graphics design during
the last decade, and the anticipation of change in the next decade, means
that providing the user with the fastest, most interactive media system
will sometimes mean that an application needs direct access to hardware.
It is the goal of a Media OS to allow this to happen in as efficient, and
safe, a method as possible.
High-Efficiency, Modular I/O
With the microprocessors and graphics processors gaining speed, the input/output
(I/O) system of a computer can rapidly become a bottleneck. This system
moves data from storage (like hard drives) to memory, and back again. In
addition to storage, there is a wide range of other devices, such as digital
cameras, video cameras and scanners which use the I/O system to push data
into and out of the computer. In the case of raw professional video, up
to 42 megabytes per second has to be moved through the system.
Fortunately, hardware designers are working as rapidly in this area
as they are in graphics. So, as with graphics, the Media OS needs to provide
a modular, dynamic, multithreaded I/O system. I/O drivers should
be dynamically loaded and unloaded, allowing for on-the-fly reconfiguration.
And they should be multiprocessor enabled.
Clarity & Simplicity of Design
Lastly, there is a needed characteristic of the Media OS which is less
deterministic, but no less important. In the foundation of a Media OS, the
clarity and simplicity of the overall architecture has a profound effect
on the performance of the system, and on what type of application software
becomes available.
Efficiency in Execution. The simpler the design, the more efficient
the OS. This profound statement has been proven over thirty years of personal
computer design, yet we are using very complex systems today, and are losing
a great deal of performance in the process. A simple design and API means
fewer mode of operations, smaller code bases, and faster performance.
Efficiency in Building Software. Simplicity is not enough, clarity
must also be a characteristic of the API. Clarity in design means that
programmers can easily grasp the pros and cons to various approaches to
application design. New software can be produced faster, with fewer people.
The capabilities of media-based applications can be complex, clarity in
the design of a Media OS means that less time is spent simply figuring
out how to make the OS work, and more time on the design of applications.
Clarity and simplicity imply that a operating system should be based
on the concepts of object-oriented programming, but a Media OS must go beyond.
The objects found within the Media OS need to be as few as possible, as
powerful as possible, and as flexible as possible. Adding thousands of objects
to an OS may accomplish the task of enabling reusable code, but it increases
complexity -- potentially slowing both performance and the emergence of new
applications.
The Media OS Application Services
Above the foundation of the Media OS lies a
wealth of software known collectively as application services. The
depth and breadth of these services prohibit a detailed description of all
of the possibilities, but there are six areas of application services which
are of exceptional importance in a Media OS.
Media Services
Of course, any Media OS should embody a wide range of media and data
services. Of these, the most important fall into three categories:
Format Translation Services. The various forms of digital media
come in a wide variety of formats. The Media OS should provide standardized
tools for converting between these formats, and for adding new formats as
they are defined.
Manipulation Services. Usually dependent on the type of data being
manipulated, a wide range of standard and non-standard manipulation services
should be provided by a Media OS -- with a focus on those services which
can be used by a wide variety of applications.
Data Access Services. Hand-in-hand with the foundation I/O services,
the Media OS should provide a variety of standard data access services for
storage, interactive and network devices.
Native Internet Services
One of the key reasons for the popularity of the Internet is that Internet-based
services are standardized. This allows any type of system to interact with
any other computer on the Internet without regard for processor type, OS,
or application. What this also means is that Internet services can be integrated
into a Media OS so that applications do not have to duplicate code.
The Media OS should go further, however. For example, the Internet uses
a data-type definition standard known as MIME for many types of services.
The Media OS should use MIME types natively, better ensuring the integration
of local data with that found across the Internet, and easing the chore
of publishing information across the network.
"Interacting Application" Services
Digital designers don't use one software tool to get a job done, they
use groups of tools each handling specific functions. A Media OS needs to
provide services to ensure that applications work together smoothly. Among
these capabilities:
Extensive Messaging Services. In a pervasive multithreaded environment,
it's important to have extensive messaging capabilities between applications,
and even between threads within applications. If integrated correctly,
this messaging allows applications to interact at even very low levels
to accomplish a task.
Scripting. At a higher level than messaging, applications should
be able to publish messages they understand to other applications and to
the user, allowing scripting tools to be built which give the user control
over how applications interact to accomplish very large scale tasks.
Transplant Capabilities. The integration of applications and
data can go even a step further in a pervasive multithreaded environment.
Parts of one application and its data can be merged into another to add
capability and to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be impossible.
International Services
Digital design cuts across national boundaries. The Internet is tying
millions together seamlessly around the globe. It is no longer acceptable
to produce software that understands only one language. The Media OS is
no exception, and should provide services which applications can use to
"go worldwide."
There are many foundations upon which international services can be built.
However, the advent of Java as both a programming language and an Internet
run time environment means that Unicode, which is used by Java, is the preferred
foundation for a Media OS.
Multithreaded User Interface
The goal of digital media application design is to provide as much direct
manipulation of media objects as possible, in as real-time a
way as possible. What this means is that by interacting with the user interface
of the OS and of applications, the user can initiate any number of very
processor-intensive tasks.
To ensure that the computer remains as responsive to the user as possible,
even under heavy loads, the design of the user interface needs to employ
pervasive multithreading. As few dependencies as possible should be created.
The Media OS can accomplish this, in its own UI as well as within applications,
by ensuring that the basic interface elements used by all applications --
windows, views, menus, etc. -- are designed to be pervasively multithreaded.
In this way, it's virtually impossible to design a single threaded application
for a Media OS.
The complexity and variety of options involved in digital content design
also means that these applications take advantage of large amounts of screen
real estate and large numbers of user interface elements. The Media OS should
provide a wide set of standardized elements from which to choose. At the
same time, the OS itself should provide a clean, uncluttered UI -- to avoid
adding to already complicated applications.
Object Oriented Design
Perhaps the most important aspect of application services in a Media
OS is the concept of object-oriented design. The basics of object-oriented
design are embodied in programming languages such as C++ and Java. But the
benefits of object-oriented design -- faster software development, better
integration between applications, and clarity in design -- cannot be achieved
unless the entire OS follows object-oriented concepts.
But adopting object-oriented concepts is not enough. As with the foundation
services, clarity and simplicity of design within the applications service
objects is essential. Again, defining thousands of objects may allow a large
amount of code to be reused, but only at cost of complexity and slower software
development.
The Media OS: Be's Philosophy and Goal
As the Internet spreads, and as electronic media becomes more prevalent,
the needs of digital content design and the aging architectures of our current
mainstream operating systems are coming into conflict. The design of a Media
OS can unlock the door to much more powerful personal computers, and extract
more performance from the systems we are using today.
In this document, we've taken a look at the demands of digital media
design, and defined a new type of operating environment, the Media OS, which
will be needed if we are to take personal computers to new levels of price-performance
and functionality -- levels that aren't just nice to have, but required
for digital content design.
In 1996, Be, Inc. delivered to software developers the initial versions
of a new operating system, the Be Operating System (BeOS). In 1997, with the
shipment of the BeOS for PowerPC, Be made the BeOS available to a wide
public audience for the first time. And in 1998, Be shipped the BeOS Release 3
for Intel Architecture, increasing the base of potential customers by an
order of magnitude.
Be did not take an existing operating system and transform it into a
Media OS. As we've discussed here, such a transformation would be less than
optimal, and potentially impossible. The engineers at Be started
with the concept of the Media OS, and used it as the underlying philosophy
and goal of the BeOS. The BeOS is designed to be the first, true, Media
OS.
Underlying this design is a philosophy that states that the goal of a
Media OS, and thus the BeOS, is to, as much as possible, get out of the
way and apply the full power of the underlying hardware directly to the
task at hand. In this way, the BeOS allows personal computers to achieve
new levels of price-performance, especially in interactive design applications.
Are we there yet? Is the BeOS the optimum, complete Media OS? Frankly,
no. The Media OS is a goal and a philosophy, the definition of a system
that will keep evolving over time as the industry learns more about software
and hardware design.
We at Be believe that software is never "finished." There are
always new applications and new levels of performance. But inherent in a
true Media OS, like the BeOS, is the ability to advance the operating system
in a modular, dynamic manner -- even across the Internet -- and faster than
with today's mainstream OS architectures. So as the needs of digital content
design changes and evolves, so will the BeOS.
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