Along with the emergence of high-speed communication technologies and protocols, tools for multimedia applications are growing in terms of their variety and their performances, making multimedia data flows candidates to the integration in almost every computer system. We particularly focus on the case of the factory plant where audio and video equipments could soon take part in the control/monitoring of manufacturing processes. Our paper presents a novel architecture for real time distributed systems using a 155.52 Mbit/s ATM network. The system is based on an intelligent network interface board, which integrates a processor and a field programmable gate array component to implement flexible high level real time data services in an off-host implementation approach. Moreover, the embedded ATM switch allows to build a large variety of topologies and provides high speed communication links, in particular for audio and video streams, inside the workstation. We also propose an MMS-like multimedia application service element for the integrated service computer manufacturing system and present some target applications.

Today, communication networks are growing in terms of size and speed, delivering hundreds of megabits to tens of gigabits per second. This large amount of bandwidth leads to the definition of new kinds of distributed applications introducing multimedia. Nevertheless, current computer architectures are not well suited to process these delay guaranteed and cumbersome flows. This paper particularly focuses on the factory plant case where multimedia equipments could soon be integrated in the control of manufacturing processes. First, a novel real time distributed architecture based on a 155 Mbit/s ATM network is introduced. The main features of the communication board are an embedded ATM switch, and a processor coupled with a programmable gate array in order to provide efficient high level communication protocols. Then, a MMS-like multimedia application service element for integrated manufacturing services is introduced. It takes advantage of the particular architecture of the network interface board.

Computing and networking technologies allow the integration of continuous media data flows to almost every computer system. We particularly focus on the case of the factory and process control plants where audio, animation and video devices will soon take part in the control and the monitoring of manufacturing processes. We propose a MMS-like multimedia application service element (MASE) for the configuration and the management of multimedia devices and continuous media data streams on manufacturing and process control plants. We also propose a novel architecture for real-time distributed systems using a 155.52 Mbit/s ATM network. The system is based on an intelligent communication board integrating a processor and a field programmable gate array component on which MASE and other flexible high level communication functions are implemented. The embedded ATM switch provides high speed communication links inside the workstation. The main advantages of our architecture include: the reduction of the multimedia load imposed on the host processor, the provision of an efficient real-time data service to applications, and the support of the TCP/IP protocol.