ISO/IEC 23004-1:2007 specifies the architecture of the MPEG Multimedia Middleware technology. Multimedia Middleware (M3W) allows application software to execute multimedia functions with a minimum knowledge of the inner workings of the multimedia middleware as well as to support a structured way of updating, upgrading and/or extending the multimedia middleware. The architecture consists of the following.

• M3W API:
• multimedia API (specified in detail in ISO/IEC 23004-2);
• interfaces for audio broadcast decoding, processing and rendering;
• interfaces for video broadcast decoding, processing and rendering;
• IPMP interfaces;
• governance interfaces.
• Support API (specified in detail in ISO/IEC 23004-3 to ISO/IEC 23004-7):
• interfaces for instantiation of services (Runtime Environment and Service Manager);
• interfaces for interaction with remote services (REMI-P and REMI-R, REMI stands for Remote Method Invocator);
• interfaces for Resource Management;
• interfaces for Component Download;
• interfaces for Fault Management;
• interfaces for Integrity Management.
• Realization technology (specified in detail in ISO/IEC 23004-3):
• Unit of Trading;
• Unit of Loading;
• Unit of Instantiation;
• standard interfaces:
• navigation between interfaces,
• binding,
• access to public attributes.