General Data Streaming

This work presents a new I/O system design and implementation targeted at applications that perform data streaming. The approach yields true zero-copy transfers between I/O devices in many instances. We give a general characterization of I/O elements and provide a framework that allows analysis of the potential for zero-copy transfers. Finally, we describe the design, implementation, and performance of a prototype I/O system in a real-time, embeddable, 32-bit operating system that uses the presented analysis to minimize data copying. The prototype uses a global buuer cache that allows pass-by-reference transfers of buuers between distinct I/O subsystems.