R&D focus Oki Media Server
Multimedia Research Lab, Oki Electric Industry Co.,
Ltd.
Video servers have traditionally been large, dedicated systems requiring
expensive proprietary hardware and software. Oki's project is an attempt
to change that by developing an affordable, high-quality video server that
runs on a common platform.
by Steven Myers
One of Japan's largest electronics companies, Oki Electric was founded in
1881 as a maker of communications equipment. Today, the corporation is well-known
throughout the world for its myriad assortment of telecommunications systems,
computers, and electronic devices.
Not surprisingly, Oki invests heavily in research and development. It maintains
five major R&D labs in Japan: the Kansai General Research Lab in Osaka;
the Microsystems Technology Research Lab and Semiconductor Technology Research
Lab, both located in Hachioji; the Electronic Communications Systems Research
Lab in Numazu (Shizuoka prefecture); and the Multimedia Research Lab in
Tokyo's Shibaura district.
For this month's R&D Focus report, Dr. Tetsuo Kinoshita, a senior research
scientist for Oki, arranged for Computing Japan to visit the company's
Multimedia Research Lab, where advanced R&D is underway in such areas
as voice and handwriting recognition, RISC controllers, knowledge-based
systems, and natural language processing. After a brief overview presentation
by Yunosuke Haga, general manager of the Multimedia Research Lab, Dr. Kinoshita
and Senior Research Manager Atsushi Nagasaka introduced us to the Oki Media
Server, one of the lab's primary projects.
The Oki Media Server
The Oki Media Server is an applied research project conducted in cooperation
with Hewlett-Packard. The aim of the project is to produce a video server
capable of running on a common platform, such as UNIX. Currently, video
servers are commonly implemented as large, dedicated VOD (video on demand)
systems, such as the Hewlett Packard Broadband Video Server. These require
very expensive proprietary hardware and software, making them impractical
for all but high-volume, specialized applications.
An alternative to this approach involves the use of massively parallel machines
(such as Oracle + nCube or SGI Power Challenge) with bus speeds on the order
of 1GB/second. In both cases, though, the computing resources required to
implement such systems can be prohibitively expensive for many organizations.
The primary goal for the Oki Media Server, then, is to implement an affordable,
high-quality video server that can run on a standard platform, thus offering
not only affordable VOD services, but also allowing users to access other
types of multimedia applications as well. Other goals for the system include
compatibility with the HP Broadband Video Server and conformance to industry
standards, such as MPEG1, MPEG2, and DAVIC (Digital Audio-Visual Council).
The Oki Media server is designed to run on the HP PA-RISC and OKITAC 9000
series of computers, which typically include a PA 7200 CPU, 1-4 way SMP,
a 768MB/second Runaway Bus, and 1MB cache.
The figure on this page shows a sample implementation of the Oki Media Server
running on an OKITAC 9000/800 computer. The Multimedia Player can run on
Windows PCs as well as UNIX workstations. The setup includes Oki Author,
a multi-purpose authoring tool software package, which allows users to develop
multimedia applications on UNIX workstations and Windows PCs.
All of the research and development for the Media Server's kernel has been
conducted at the Multimedia Lab in Shibaura under the direction of Mr. Nagasaka.
In October, Oki announced that the design goals for the project had been
met: while maintaining conformance to industry standards, the Oki Media
Server is capable of supporting up to 200 video streams at 1.5M bps. The
company says that the Media Server will soon be marketed for such corporate
applications as computer-based training, multimedia information retrieval,
and multimedia presentations -- possibly as early as November 1995.
A first-generation system, an HP 9000 server with the Oki Media Server software,
is expected to be priced initially at ¥40 million.ç
For further information about the Oki Media Server, send e-mail to:
Tetsuo Kinoshita
kino@okilab.oki.co.jp
Atsushi Nagasaka
nagasaka@okilab.oki.co.jp
(c) Copyright 1996 by Computing Japan magazine