Efficient real-time data retrieval through scalable multimedia storage

This paper presents a novel data placement and retrieving scheme or real-time multimedia stream playback via a scalable storage system. The multimedia streams are contiguous data packets which may be representing video, audio, or other media be retrieved simultaneously from a storage system on a real-time and on-demand basis. The major challenge in implementing the system is the support of simultaneously retrieving a big number of streams from a large-capacity storage system. This bottleneck comes from the seeking delay caused by the random movement of disk head in the storage under multiple stream requests. The proposed scheme efficiently reduces the seeking time by a very simple placement method and a retrieval scheduler and, in the mean time, continuous playback of multiple real-time streams and a scalable storage capacity are both achieved. Performance valuation of the proposed scheme is provided through theoretical analysis and experimental measure.