STORED FORWARD NETWORK ARCHITECTURE FOR MULTIMEDIA SUBSCRIBER - ATM MINI-BAR SYSTEM AND ITS MEMORY ARCHITECTURE

In this paper, the ATM Mini-Bar System (AMBS) which is a future inform ation providing service infrastructure is proposed. The purpose of AMB S is to provide a multi-media environment in which a user can (1) sele ct and get quickly any needed information, in low cost, at any time, a mong very large amount of different media information provided by a va riety of providers, (2) be charged only for the information which is s elected and used, (3) edit or process informations into users' individ ually requested style or format before using them. The basic concept a nd configurations of AMBS are also addressed. This system is basically a center-end oriented one-way information providing system. The infor mation center broadcasts its contents to all user equipments based on a user request forecast, and every user equipment stores the delivered contents in its large storage. A user can select one's needed informa tions from the storage, and may edit or process them within the user e quipment. The charge is only on the read informations from the storage , not on all contents in it. The key points of this system are the fol lowing three. (A) Introduction of a broadcast (or multicast) media for economical information delivery (exactly speaking, it is a pre-delive ry which means a delivery before request) to user equipments. (B) Intr oduction of a 1 to 1 communication network for selective charging and control of each user equipments. (C) Introduction of the user equipmen t storage for (1) Quick response to user information request in most c ases with the broadcast (or multicast) information delivery media desc ribed above, (2) Separation of information delivery speed and replay s peed to increase system flexibility, (3) Local user information proces sing or editing. As an example of technical solutions, a memory archit ecture, which is based on hierarchical architecture, is described. AMB S is expected to give some impacts to information industries because i t can integrate many kinds of services into the same platform, but som e standerdization items are needed to realize it.