The TRON Project began as a computer standardization movement in 1984 as a result of a recommendation by the Japan Electronic Industrial Development Association technical committee, then chaired by Prof. Ken Sakamura from the
University of Tokyo. TRON Association currently consists of 63 companies and 2 academies, including
Red Hat,
NEC,
Metrowerks,
Mitsubishi,
Fujitsu, and
Hewlett-Packard, to name a few.
Some observations made by Prof. Ken Sakamura back in
1984:
Backward compatibility slowed down technical innovation in microprocessor design.
Computer systems were designed to handle English, which uses a one-byte character system, and hence could not efficiently process Japanese, which uses a two-byte character system.
Microprocessors and their operating systems were not designed for real-time processing
There was no standardization among the various computer systems in use and many technical details of the proprietary systems that had become de facto standards were not made public
TRON stands for "
The
Real-Time
Operating System
Nucleus." The TRON
Association designs an open architecture for computer hardware, software, and middleware that works with the
TRON Hypernetwork (a.k.a. 超機能分散システム,
Highly Functional Distributed System,
HFDS). Everything from the specification of the chip to the operating system is designed for distributed, real-time computing. Note that the TRON Project only makes specifications and not actual implementations. Instead, OS and chip makers are left to implement it.
TRON Subarchitectures:
- Industrial TRON (ITRON) - kernel specification for home appliances, industrial machineries.
Implemented in: NTT DoCoMo's i-mode-enabled products.
- Business TRON (BTRON) - multitasking RTOS specification for PCs, workstations, handheld PDAs.
Implemented in: B-right/V OS by Personal Media Co.
- First released in the late 90's.
Comes with support for vertical-directional text, and also support for approximately 130,000 characters (including Cantonese, Braille, and all characters in Unicode 2.0), as opposed to Unicode which has less than 64,000 (2^16) characters defined.
Many people buy TRON systems for their support for a larger set of kanji.
For example, Rashômon by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, a work only a few decades old, can be presented in the characters originally used, which are not all available in Unicode.
Screenshot at: http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/tronwebimages/chokanji2fig1.gif
To the dismay of developers who are commited to Unicode, the TRON Association opted for their own version of a sort-of superset of Unicode called the TRON multi-lingual large character set processing environment. TRON uses multiple character sets in a standard called the TRON Application Databus(TAD).
TRON specifies the support for a light version of Unicode (Unicode minus Unihan), along with other previously existing East Asian character encodings.
TAD switches between various character sets in a manner that is a bit more complicated than ISO-2022.
More TAD info at: http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/tadenvironment.html
- Central and Communication TRON (CTRON) - multitasking RTOS specification for communication hubs.
Implemented in: Fujitsu's Sure System 2000
- Macro TRON (MTRON) - an architecture to link together ITRON, BTRON, and CTRON-based systems.
- Micro Industrial TRON (μITRON, or Micro-ITRON) - A real-time operating system nucleus specification for embedded systems that is a de facto standard in Japan.
- JTRON - Mixes ITRON with Java.
History
grabbed from: http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/projecthistory.html
1984
- TRON Project officially launched
1985
- NEC announces first ITRON implementation based on ITRON/86 specification
1986
1987
- Fujitsu anounces ITRON implementation based on ITRON/MMU specification
- Mitsubishi Electric announces ITRON implementation based on ITRON/32 specification
- Hitachi announces Gmicro/200 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
1988
- TRON Association incorporated TRON Association officially established
- Toshiba announces TX1 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '88 (TEPS '88) held to demonstrate EnableWare technology to the disabled
1989
- Matsushita unveils a personal computer for educational use based on the BTRON specification
- TRON Intelligent Building concept unveiled
- Oki Electric announces the RG68KS-BOS basic operating system based on the CTRON specification
- Mitsubishi Electric announces Gmicro/100 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- Fujitsu announces Gmicro/300 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- Construction completed on the TRON-concept Intelligent House
1990
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '90 (TEPS '90) held
- Personal Media launches premier issue of a new magazine called TRONWARE
- Oki Electric announces OKITRON-C operating system based on the CTRON specification
- Toshiba announces the TR90 kernel based on the ITRON specification
- Oki Electric announces O32 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- Matsushita begins marketing BTRON-based PanaCAL ET educational computer
- TRONSHOW '90 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
1991
- Personal Media begins marketing the TK-1 TRON-specification ergonomic keyboard
- Personal Media begins marketing 1B/note, a laptop computer with a BTRON-specification OS
- Two bus architectures TOXBUS and TOBUS are unveiled
- TRONSHOW '91 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
1992
- Software portability experiment across CTRON-based systems completed
- Human-machine interface (HMI) design competition held
- Yamaha announces a bus controller LSI for LANs based on BTRON-specification systems
- TRONSHOW '92 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '92 (TEPS '92) held
1993
- Tandem Computers Japan announces Integrity C300 transaction processor based on CTRON-specification OS
- Toshiba announces TX2 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- Hitachi announces Gmicro/500 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- Oki Electric announces the OKITRON-L/M series digital exchanges
- TRONSHOW '93 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '93 (TEPS '93) held
1994
- TRON Project celebrates its 10th anniversary
- Personal Media begins marketing 1B/V1, a BTRON-specification OS for IBM PC compatibles
- Mitsubishi Electric announces Gmicro/400 32-bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification
- Hitachi announces the HPT500 chip for CTRON-based systems
- TRONSHOW '94 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '94 (TEPS '94) held
1995
- Works solicited for the CTRON standard operating system contest
- BTRON-specification 1B/V2 operating announced by Personal Media
- 12th TRON Project International Symposium held
- TRONSHOW '95 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '95 (TEPS '95) held
- Interest in TRON rises overseas; many seminars and other events held
1996
- Multilingual computing project begins at the University of Tokyo
- Sun Microsystems and Personal Media announce ITRON ported to the microSPARC II chip
- Activities begin at the University of Tokyo's Digital Museum, which uses TRON technologies
- Seiko Instruments unveils the micro-BTRON-based BrainPad TiPO personal digital assistant
- 13th TRON Project International Symposium held
- TRONSHOW '96 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '96 (TEPS '96) held
1997
- BTRON-specification 1B/V3 operating system announced by Personal Media
- Interface design study group for human-machine interfaces launched
- Special ITRON technical committee lanuched for automotive real-time operating system applications
- University of Tokyo holds the "Open Academia" exhibit, which uses TRON technologies
- BTRON-based product used at Japanese national athletic meet held at Namihaya near Osaka
- Metrowerks announces CodeWarrior development environment for TiPO and BTRON
- Aplix Corporation announces JBlend, a combination of Java plus ITRON (JTRON)
- TRONSHOW '97 held to exhibit TRON-based products to the public
- TRON Electronic Prosthetics Symposium '97 (TEPS '97) held
Recommended site for further reading:
-
TRON Web : : http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/
-
Official news source for the TRON Project (in English!! :D). Also contains an overview of TRON and products related to it.