Scaleable video system having shared control circuits for sending multiple video streams to respective sets of viewers

摘要

A video system is comprised of: a) a single supervisor processor, and multiple co-processors which are selectable in number and are coupled via a bus to the single supervisor processor; b) a supervisor memory which is coupled to the supervisor processor and which stores a respective portion of each of several video streams; c) a control program in each co-processor which selectively reads the stored video stream portions from the supervisor memory and sends each video stream portion that is read to a different viewer; and d) a control program for the single supervisor processor, which dynamically updates the stored portion of each video stream in the supervisor memory and which services external requests to change the respective viewers of each video stream. In this video system, the number of co-processors is selectable; the number of video streams which are sent by each co-processor is selectable; and, the number of viewers per stream is selectable. Also in this video system, the cost of the supervisor processor and supervisor memory is incurred only once because they operate in a shared fashion with all of the co-processors.