[comp.std.misc] TRON Hammerlock??

billg@hitachi.uucp (Bill Gundry) (07/06/89)

From article <2140@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>, by chimiak@umbc3.UMBC.EDU (Dr. William Chimiak):
> Could it be that Japan hopes to develop adequate software and hardware
> for a domestic market they have targetted?  Now that they have a
> standard that the US cares nothing about, those machines (no matter how
> inferior or superior) are national standards for a selected market.
> They have a hammerlock on the their market and they still support
> popular non-Japanese systems for foreign sales and have a clever
> impediment to foreign sales.  In addition, if TRON meets design goals,
> then they will storm foreign markets.


Well, this is a popular theory, most recently advanced by the U.S. Trade
Delegation.   At one time the CEC, Central Education Commitee, put out
out an  RFP for educational computers that specificed the TRON OS.  The feeling
was that Japan, by using TRON in the schools would then make
it a standard in Japan.  The TRON specification seems to have gone away.

At this time there really isn't a particular market that TRON serves
exclusively.  Most current pieces of hardware and software will serve
the Japanese market as well as the rest of the world.  TRON is a wide
ranging concept for computing,  not a particular piece of hardware
or software to answer a particular problem.

As stated in earlier articles, TRON is an "open" standard, but a 
process difficult for US companies to participate in, and not well
promoted overseas. Some standards, the 32-bit VLSI and BTRON,
are available in English.  If TRON does become a widely used standard
in Japan there is nothing to stop U.S. companies from making TRON
products.

Whether or not TRON *storms* foreign markets is a question, like most
standards efforts, that will be answered in time.  If TRON serves a purpose
and solves the problems that the creators see then it will survive, if
not ......

Speaking for myself,

Bill Gundry	...uunet!hitachi!billg

Hitachi America  - Semiconductor & IC Division 
only be answ

diamond@diamond.csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond) (07/08/89)

In article <116@hitachi.uucp> billg@hitachi.uucp (Bill Gundry) writes:

>As stated in earlier articles, TRON is an "open" standard, but a 
>process difficult for US companies to participate in, and not well
>promoted overseas.

It is not much more difficult for U.S. companies to participate in TRON
than it is for Japanese companies to participate in Posix.  Hire a few
people who speak the language.  A lot of U.S. companies already have
sales subsidiaries in Japan:  hire a technical person.  True, TRON is
not being given U.S.-style promotions, but so what?

>Some standards, the 32-bit VLSI and BTRON, are available in English.

There are English-language reports on more topics than these, and there
are IEEE articles.  Sure, they are not especially detailed, just like a
standard for a language or for a protocol does not include details on
proprietary implementations.

>If TRON does become a widely used standard
>in Japan there is nothing to stop U.S. companies from making TRON
>products.

Nothing is stopping them now except their own blinders.  (Such blinders
are also stopping a number of Japanese companies.  Japan Inc. is not
quite as Inc. as you think.)

>Whether or not TRON *storms* foreign markets is a question, like most
>standards efforts, that will be answered in time.  If TRON serves a purpose
>and solves the problems that the creators see then it will survive, if
>not ......

TRON will creep in slowly, just like electronics and cars originally
crept in slowly.  VCRs stormed the market because there was no U.S.
competition.  But the creeping process started a generation earlier
with transistor radios and the like.  Japanese computer products will
storm the U.S. market next generation, but at this time they'll creep
slowly.  Companies who meet real needs with quality products will win,
just as before.  (A few companies who meet political needs with hyped
products will also win, just as before.)

--
Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.jp@relay.cs.net)
 The above opinions are claimed by your machine's init process (pid 1), after
 being disowned and orphaned.  However, if you see this at Waterloo, Stanford,
 or Anterior, then their administrators must have approved of these opinions.