CPOS: A Real-Time Operating System for the IRCAM Musical Workstation

The IRCAM Musical Workstation, or IMW (Lindemann et al. 1991), combines one or more NeXT computers with several real-time coprocessors (CPs), and includes an extensive software package that takes advantage of this multiprocessing environment. The part of the software that runs on the CPs requires a special operating system. Not only must the processors work together in real time, but they must pass dozens or hundreds of channels of digital sound among themselves at low latencies, as well as sporadic messages defining real-time control. The processors may also require access to real-time sound and MIDI inputs and outputs via a Motorola DSP56001 digital signal processor.