High-performance parallel applications running on massively parallel, distributed architectures require efficient resource management and optimized implementations of communications, input/output, processor, and memory management. We propose a customizable operating system architecture that can be optimized for individual parallel applications. Our approach is to organize such an operating system as an object-oriented system. Our long-term goal is to show that carefully designed object-oriented operating systems can allow high-performance parallel applications to be ported and run efficiently and economically on distributed parallel processors built out of stock or commercially available ``off-the-shelf'' components.

Operating systems need new algorithms, services, and protocols to support processing (e.g., CPU scheduling, disk scheduling) of audio/visual streams according to quality of service (QoS) specification and provide graceful degradation in case resource availability decreases. This project concentrates on the design of a brokerage service with admission and adaptation control of real-time and nonreal-time tasks and its client/server negotiation protocols. An integrated time/event scheduler will provide control for guarantees as well as notification if deadlines cannot be met. The goal is to provide guaranteed services in OS as well as an integration of guaranteed services between the OS and the network to achieve end-to-end QoS guarantees for distributed multimedia systems.