US 6,385,673 B1 · SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ADJUSTING PERFORMANCE OF A MEDIA STORAGE BY DECREASING A MAXIMUM THROUGHPUT BY A PRIMARY DERATE PARAMETER TO SPECIFY AVAILABLE & GUARANTEED RATE PARAMETERS AND DETERMINING RING BUFFER SIZES FOR STREAMS

Abstract

A system and method for tuning a storage system may include characterizing a maximum sustainable throughput for the storage system. The maximum sustainable throughput may be decreased by a primary derate parameter to obtain a primary throughput. Sizes for buffer units may be determined at different stream rates, where during operation the buffer units buffer a data stream between a stream requester and storage. Buffer unit sizes may be determined by generating stream simulators sufficient to consume the primary throughput and then optimizing the buffer sizes to prevent underruns. This may be repeated at different stream rates to determine a table of buffer sizes. The primary throughput may be decreased by a secondary derate parameter to obtain a maximum system bandwidth which sets an upper limit on admission of streams. When buffer sizes are determined, a prefill margin parameter may be set by which request deadlines must be met. Also, an available rate parameter may be set to proportion available bandwidth between rate-guaranteed streams and non-rate-guaranteed requests. The proportion allocated for rate-guaranteed requests may be used to determine buffer sizes that are able to meet the prefill margin. Another parameter may set the length of a seek reorder queue that orders storage requests according to their physical address. This parameter allows a tradeoff between seek efficiency and variability in service time, which may require larger buffer sizes. Also, the block size by which data is accessed in the storage system may be configured.

Claims37

Dependent claims

A method for configuring a multimedia storage system, the method comprising:

characterizing a maximum sustainable throughput for a multimedia storage system;
decreasing the maximum sustainable throughput by a primary derate parameter to obtain a primary throughput;
determining sizes for buffer units at different multimedia stream rates, wherein during operation each buffer unit is for buffering a multimedia data stream between a multimedia stream requester and the storage system, and wherein said determining is performed according to the primary throughput;
decreasing the primary throughput to obtain a maximum system bandwidth, wherein during operation the maximum system bandwidth sets an upper limit on admission of multimedia stream requesters to the storage system.

1 more element

A storage system comprising:

a plurality of data stream clients, wherein a maximum stream rate is set for each of said plurality of data stream clients;
a plurality of buffer rings, wherein each buffer ring is associated with a different one of said data stream clients and buffers data between its associated data stream client and one or more storage units, wherein each buffer ring is sized according to a predetermined set of buffer ring sizes for a plurality of different maximum stream rates;
a bandwidth allocator configured allocate a portion of storage system bandwidth to rate-guaranteed streams from said plurality of data stream requesters and the remaining portion to non-rate-guaranteed requests, wherein said portion is determined by a configurable available rate parameter;
and
wherein the storage system is configured to accept data stream requesters up to a maximum aggregate stream rate.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for adjusting performance of a media storage by decreasing a maximum throughput by a primary derate parameter to specify available & guaranteed rate parameters and determining ring buffer sizes for streams

Life of this patent

System and method for adjusting performance of a media storage by decreasing a maximum throughput by a primary derate parameter to specify available & guaranteed rate parameters and determining ring buffer sizes for streams

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims37