Software Architecture for Immersipresence

Alexandre R.J. Francois

Computer Science Department

University of Southern California

Date: Friday, February 24, 2006
Place: HSSB 1173
Time: 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm (Reception to follow)

Abstract:
Immersive, interactive applications realizing the Immersipresence vision require on-line processing and mixing of multimedia data streams and structures. One critical issue seldom addressed is the integration of different solutions to technical challenges, developed independently in separate fields, into working systems, that must operate under hard performance constraints. Traditional software engineering is not applicable to most research projects. In order to realize the Immersipresence vision in the research world, and bring it to the industrial world, a consistent, generic approach to system integration is needed, adapted to the constraints of research development.

SAI (Software Architecture for Immersipresence) is a new software architecture model for designing, analyzing and implementing applications performing distributed, asynchronous parallel processing of generic data streams. It provides a universal framework for the distributed implementation of algorithms and their easy integration into complex systems that exhibit desirable software engineering qualities such as efficiency, scalability, extensibility, reusability and interoperability.

In this talk, I will describe the SAI architectural style and its properties. I will illustrate the use of SAI and its supporting open source middleware (the Modular Flow Scheduling Middleware, MFSM) with a number of integrated, distributed interactive systems designed and implemented in the lab and in the classroom.

For more information:
SAI: http://iris.usc.edu/~afrancoi/sai
MFSM: http://mfsm.SourceForge.net

ALEXANDRE R. J. FRANCOIS is a Research Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. Dr. Francois has created and developed SAI, a new software architecture framework for generic concurrent processing of data streams. SAI is an essential tool for inter-disciplinary cooperation and integration research and education efforts. Dr. Francois received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California in 2000 and 1997 respectively, a D.E.A. (M.S.) from the University Paris IX - Dauphine (France) in 1994, and the Diplome d'Ingenieur from the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon (France) in 1993.

For more information, visit http://www.alexandrefrancois.org.

Host: Dr. Curtis Roads, Professor of Media Arts and Technology