AUTOMATED ADAPTION OF A CODEC

• US 20160182611A1
• Filed: 06/05/2014
• Published: 06/23/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Alcatel-Lucent SA (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Klotsche, Ralf, Sienel, Juergen, Bauer, Markus
• Granted Patent: US 10,666,711 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/541 via adapters, e.g. between incompatible applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/762 at the source reformatting of additional data in video distribution servers H04N21/2355
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/764 at the destination reformatting of additional data in video clients H04N21/4355
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/4788 communicating with other users, e.g. chatting arrangements for providing for computer conferences, e.g. chat rooms, to substation in data switching networks H04L12/1813; distributed application using peer-to-peer [P2P] networks H04L67/104
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/147 Communication arrangements, e.g. identifying the communication as a video-communication, intermediate storage of the signals selecting H04Q

Abstract

The present document describes a system comprising at least two processing nodes (1) that are connected by a network, and an application distribution function, which automatically distributes processing components (3) of an application to be run on the system over the nodes (1). The system is configured, when a sending processing component and a corresponding receiving processing component are arranged on different nodes, to determine, based on information about the processing component (3) which receive the data, in which representation to send the data via the corresponding communication channel (4).

Claims

1. An application distribution unit configured to automatically distribute processing components of an application to be run on at least two processing nodes that are connected via a communication channel, wherein the application distribution unit is configured, when a sending processing component and a corresponding receiving processing component are arranged on different processing nodes, to determine, based on information about the processing component which receives data, in which representation the data is to be sent via the corresponding communication channel.

2. A system comprising at least two processing nodes that are connected by a network, and comprising an application distribution unit according to claim 1, which is configured to automatically distribute processing components of an application to be run on the system over the nodes, wherein

each node has an execution environment, each execution environment includes means for connecting an outgoing port of a processing component sending data with an inbound port of a processing component receiving data via a communication channel.

3. The system according to claim 2, wherein possible representations of data include one or more of:

an original data format of the sending processing component;

spatially, temporally or spectrally reduced representations of the original data, compressed or encoded representations of the original data, representations in a transformed domain, and features extracted from the original data.

4. The system according to claim 2, wherein

an encoded representation of data is determined in case that the data to be transferred through the communication channel is media data, such as video data, audio data and/or image data.

5. The system according to claim 2, wherein

if an encoded representation of data is determined, the system is further configured to instruct a codec manager of the sending node to instantiate an encoder based on information about processing applied by a subsequent processing component, and to send a request to the receiving component to instantiate a decoder which corresponds to the encoder.

6. The system according to claim 4, further comprising

a codec manager to instantiate or adapt an encoder and a decoder during runtime of the application by combining encoding functions which include a type of transform processing, a type of prediction method, a quantization type, and a type of entropy coding.

7. The system according to claim 2, further comprising

a service graph analyzer to acquire information on data dependencies between the processing components and/or information on processing operations performed by receiving processing components, wherein

the data dependency information and/or the processing information is used to determine the representation in which to send data to the receiving components.

8. The system according to claim 7, wherein

the service graph analyzer is further adapted to determine during runtime of said application whether data dependencies have changed, and wherein the codec manager is adapted to re-configure a pair of corresponding encoder and decoder being instantiated for an existing communication channel.

9. The system according to claim 1, wherein

the nodes of the sending component and of the receiving component are further connected via a back-channel, wherein

the back-channel is configured to transfer back information from the node of the receiving component to the node of the sending component, and wherein

the sending node is configured to determine in which representation to send data via the communication channel between the sending component and the receiving component based on the received back information.

10. The system according to claim 9, wherein

the receiving node further comprises a relevance manager for determining a relevance of received data for the processing component of the receiving node, and wherein

relevance information is stored in a relevance map, and the relevance information comprises information about a relevance of data for the processing of a processing component in a spatial, a temporal and/or a spectral domain.

11. The system according to claim 8, wherein

the receiving component is configured to determine how much a part of received data contributes to a currently ongoing processing and to predict how much said data will contribute to processing in a temporally-subsequent processing step of the application, and

the determined contribution information is sent to the sending component as back information.

12. The system according to claim 10, wherein

values of the relevance map are updated during application processing based on the back information being provided through the back-channel, wherein

values of a plurality of relevance maps of a plurality of processing components are combinable so that a merged relevance-map is created, and wherein,

if data is sent from a sending component to a plurality of receiving components through at least one communication channel, coder and decoder are adapted based on said merged relevance map comprising relevance information for each receiving component.

13. A sending processing node comprising

at least one execution environment,

at least one processing component, and

at least one outgoing port being connectable via a communication channel with a receiving processing node for sending data through the communication channel, wherein the execution environment is configured to establish the communication channel;

the sending processing node further comprising an application distribution unit according to claim 1 and being configured to determine, based on information about a receiving processing component being located on the receiving processing node, in which representation to send the data via the communication channel.

14. A receiving processing node comprising

at least one processing component, and

at least one inbound port being connectable via a communication channel with a sending processing node for receiving data through the communication channel;

the receiving processing node being configured to send information to the sending processing node about the processing component being located on the receiving processing node.

15. A method for transmitting data between processing nodes of a distributed processing environment comprising

distributing processing components of an application to be run on the distributed processing environment over the nodes,

connecting an outgoing port of a sending processing component with an inbound port of a receiving processing component via a communication channel,

determining whether the sending processing component and the receiving processing component are arranged on different nodes,

if it is determined that the sending processing component and the receiving processing component are arranged on different nodes, determining, based on information about the receiving processing component, in which representation to send data via the corresponding communication channel,

converting the data to be transmitted into the determined representation, and

sending the converted data in the determined representation from the node of the sending component to the node of the receiving component.