rick@cs.arizona.edu (Rick Schlichting) (03/04/91)
[Dr. David Kahaner is a numerical analyst visiting Japan for two-years
under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research-Asia (ONR/Asia).
The following is the professional opinion of David Kahaner and in no
way has the blessing of the US Government or any agency of it. All
information is dated and of limited life time. This disclaimer should
be noted on ANY attribution.]
[Copies of previous reports written by Kahaner can be obtained from
host cs.arizona.edu using anonymous FTP.]
To: Distribution
From: David K. Kahaner ONR Asia [kahaner@xroads.cc.u-tokyo.ac.jp]
Re: TRON (The Real Time Operating System Nucleus)
4 March 1991
ABSTRACT.
TRON is a large and long term project to develop a computer Operating
System (OS) along with a global man-machine interface that can work with
many other computer operating systems. Its main focus is to provide an
environment for a very large number of small distributed computers to
cooperate in real time. The project is supported entirely by industry,
mostly Japanese. Western academic computer scientists should make
themselves much more knowledgeable about the details.
SUMMARY.
TRON (The Real Time Operating System Nucleus) is a complex and
controversial subject, especially in the United States. It is an
ambitious project which is attempting to develop an Operating System (OS)
specification that will be coupled to a global man-machine interface that
can work with other, different computer operating systems, such as those
of IBM, SUN, APPLE, and DEC. Its main focus is to provide an environment
for a very large number of small distributed computers to cooperate in
real time. The project is supported entirely by industry, mostly Japanese
but a few Western. The originator and principle investigator of the
project is
Prof Ken Sakamura
Department of Information Science
Faculty of Science
University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113 Japan
Tel: +81-3-3812-2111 x 4094, Fax: +81-3-3779-5753
Email: SAKAMURA@TANSEI.CC.U-TOKYO.AC.JP
Professor Sakamura created the TRON concept in 1984 and has been working
energetically to promote industry's acceptance of it since then. It
could have an important impact, when completed and if accepted, in many
areas of information technology, such as advanced numerical controls,
robotics, task interfaced plant operations, and simultaneous inter-task
communications as well as in many consumer applications. Sakamura claims
that all the funding for the project has come from industrial sources
through the TRON Association. Membership now numbers almost 150 and
includes essentially all major Japanese electronics companies, as well as
construction companies, software houses, etc. (A complete list is given
at the end of this report.) There are also a few US-Japan subsidiaries
such as IBM Japan, and Apple Japan and a very small number of US
companies such as Tandem Computer and Motorola.
A great deal has been written about TRON. The April 1987 issue of IEEE
Micro was entirely devoted to this topic and Sakamura received an IEEE
award for best paper of the year because of his work. TRON was also the
subject of a short chapter written by Professor Michael Harrison in a
JTEC report "Advanced Computing in Japan", Oct 1990. Both these
references also contain citations to many other research papers. TRON
has been directly involved in basic trade friction between the US and
Japan and this has obscured some of its major technical aspects. For
example more than 50 percent of Harrison's report was concerned with
trade concerns. Even so, in the West, TRON is not well known, and
details about the project are much better known in the industrial
community than in the basic research community. The purpose of this
report is not to repeat material that has already been covered in other
sources or to deal with contentious trade problems in any way, but rather
to point out to research scientists that there are TRON concepts that
have wide implication in many other aspects of computing science.
Why is TRON important? It is not necessary to master the details of the
various TRON architecture specifications to grasp its potential
significance. Sakamura is visualizing a world even more computerized than
today's. In such a world one's everyday life will be influenced by
computers that adapt the local environment, provide basic functions for
communication, transportation, and control, as well as interaction
between other heterogeneous computer environments. What are the key
characteristics associated with such a computerized world? Clearly, these
include distributed processing, toleration of faults, rapid response
(real time) to multi media inputs and outputs (voice, image, text, and
others), a very human and friendly interface, and adaptation to a
constantly changing universe in which the network of computers will be
undergoing constant reconfiguration as nodes are added, removed or
replaced by different systems. These are some of the same issues
confronting researchers in scientific parallel and distributed computing.
(Of course, there is a difference between the needs of high performance
distributed numerical computation, and real time distributed computation,
but this difference is primarily related to task switching speed rather
than fundamental organization.) But one major difference between the TRON
and other distributed computing models is that TRON is driven by large
numbers of small sensor-sensitive computers, the kind that are most
likely to make their appearance in inexpensive consumer devices, light
pens, touch screens, television, etc. The important part of this is that
in Japan consumer electronics is fueling the computer industry rather
than the other way around. Consumer product specialists such as
Panasonic, Sony, Seiko, Ricoh, Kyocera, Oki, etc., are deeply involved in
computer developments. When we realize that in the US one of the most
successful parallel computers, Intel's iPSC (hypercube), got its first
boost by being able to make use of large numbers of inexpensive, off the
shelf processors that were used in PSs, it is possible to imagine how the
transfer from consumer technology to computer technology occurs here.
One very good (and well known) example is the TRON House. This is an
extremely modern residence of almost 400 square meters situated in the
center of Roppongi, one of the most expensive sections of residential
Tokyo. The general appearance of TRON house is similar to what one would
find in the pages of Architectural Digest-modern, open, functional. The
building connects about 1,000 computers that are all linked together to
perform a dazzling variety of automated functions controlling lighting,
heating, cooling, domestic hot water use, ironing, cleaning, personal
hygiene equipment, entertainment, ticketing, etc. Currently, a family is
actually living in the house at the same time that experiments are being
conducted using the computers. (For example, what happens if some of the
ystems break down.) Plans are to open the residence in April 1991 to
public inspection. The project is supported by nineteen Japanese
companies including NTT, Nippon Homes, Mitsubishi Electric, Toto, Yamaha,
etc. The construction industry is Japan's largest, and since 1987 new-
housing starts have been averaging about 1.7million per year. The average
Japanese new house is about 136square meters (about 1400square feet). You
can buy a two floor California style house of that size which sits cheek
by jowl against its neighbor and about one hour's train ride from Tokyo
for about $700,000 US. Thus TRON house represents a substantial
investment.
Sakamura plans to extend the concept to a TRON office building, and even
to an TRON city with "billions" of cooperating computers. The
construction companies see in TRON a future of intelligent buildings,
intelligent communities, and intelligent cities, in which non-obtrusive
computers will control various functions in environmental control,
security, communication, health, amenity, recreation, and transportation
systems. A pilot intelligent building is to start construction in 1991.
In addition, there is a ten-year project to build a computer city
incorporating TRON concepts. Land has already been set aside in Chiba
Prefecture and this project is being carried forward by over 40
corporations. Certainly, the research necessary to make such a
distributed computing project work must have some relevance to other
distributed/cooperative computing projects.
The one Sakamura lab that I visited was a feast of gadgets and
experiments. There seemed to be no end of equipment, and high-end
workstations were packed almost wall to wall. (His lab space occupies
virtually an entire floor in the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Science
building, although I was told that he is also moving into another larger
facility in a different part of the city.) Sakamura has designed an
ergonomic keyboard for a TRON-based Gmicro workstation that he
demonstrated to me. It was hooked up to a standard Sony video camera and
the operator could open a window that displayed the camera's output,
which could be processed in real time. The workstation is definitely
multimedia capable. There are also wireless electronic pencils
(functioning like a mouse) and wireless erasers. He is designing
"intelligent" glasses that will sense distance from the screen and adjust
text image size accordingly. A video center also lets Sakamura and his
students experiment with interaction to and from CDs.
The TRON project is now so large that it has branched; BTRON, ITRON,
CTRON architectures are associated with business, industry (robotics),
and communication respectively. For example the target application
classes for CTRON systems include switching and communication,
information processing, and workstation applications as central file
servers in wide area networks or as hosts in large databases. The CTRON
specification defines mechanisms to meet the special needs of hard
realtime constraints, high reliability and high performance. Each of the
subprojects has ambitions goals. For example BTRON workstations use a
16bit character code to allow them to support many different languages.
The BTRON specs make it likely that the system will have real time
response capability even if equipped with advanced man-machine-
interfaces. The design also incorporates psychological techniques such as
requiring users to confirm that they want to process sequences that will
take a long time, and the updating of only those portions of the display
requiring user attention. BTRON defines a common data format for
graphical data, and the BTRON OS has utilities for editing and
displaying such data as well as hypertext functions and the ability to
link documents in network fashion.
There are a number of committees and special interest groups. For
example, the automotive committee is studying ways to use TRON in
navigation, and safety. There is a TRON computer education research
group, consumer electronics research group, intelligent house research
group, physically handicapped needs group, etc. The seventh annual TRON
Project Symposium was held (in English) in December 1990, coincidentally
with the TRON Show where products are displayed and demonstrated. Each
Symposium Proceedings is published by Springer-Verlag ("TRON Project
1990", Ken Sakamura (ed), ISBN 0-387-70066-8 Springer-Verlag New York
Berlin Heidelberg Tokyo). A list of the titles of the 1990 Symposium is
attached to this report.
Sakamura has repeatedly emphasized that he is involved in basic research
and wants an open system in which creative ideas are shared. For
example, in the latest Symposium, he gave a paper on programmable
interface design for highly functional distributed systems. The idea here
is that cooperation among elements in a large distributed system is only
possible if some standard interfaces are provided on all the
communication paths in the network. Such interfaces need to be defined
between application programs, data formats, network protocol, printer
control codes, human/machine interfaces, etc. But if the standard is
fixed this will tend to stifle incorporation of new computer technology.
Alternatively, if the standard is updated via dated versions, then
version inconsistency will soon be a problem. Sakamura proposes to deal
with this in the following way. A system with which communication is made
can be programmed, and interface specifications can be changed whenever
needed. When communication takes place between systems, first the
interface specifications on both sides are compared and if necessary, the
side requiring higher-level specifications sends a program to the other
side, establishing the necessary communications. For example, consider a
system in which an ITRON-controlled air conditioner is operated by a
BTRON computer. If the air conditioner sends to the BTRON machine a
dialog window program for its control, interaction with people can then
be left up to the BTRON machine, while the ITRON side need only receive
instructions that have been determined based on a standard interface.
TRON specifications are published and available for everyone to examine.
Members of the TRON Association have access to some additional
information, but special provisions are in place to provide academic
researchers with full details. Given the involvement of Japanese
industry in the TRON project it is not surprising that much of the
research is being done at corporate laboratories, but it is somewhat
disappointing that there has been so little involvement from the West,
and essentially none from the academic community. At the 1990 TRON
Symposium a few Western scientists did give papers, but with the lonely
exception of Professor James Mooney from West Virginia Univ, their
affiliations were entirely industrial. And while Mooney does make
recommendations and assessments about CTRON, his paper is mostly
concerned with general issues of software portability rather than about
detailed TRON research. On the other hand, papers were presented by
researchers from NTT, Toshiba, Hitachi, Matsushita, UTokyo, NEC,
Mitsubishi, Oki, Fujitsu, and others in Japan. Topics range from the very
general such as Sakamura's above, to detailed implementations on Unix, PC
and other systems, floating point, graphics, etc. Sakamura admits that
there may have been some misunderstanding related to trade problems and
that he personally does not know too many Western computer scientists. He
explained that while many Japanese scientists like to study Western
papers to then generalize and extend them, his approach has been to try
and develop his ideas entirely independently. The fact that his support
is only from industry may also have diluted interest from the basic
research community in the West. However, now some Western companies have
expressed their interest by joining the TRON Association. The latest is
Tandem computers, who are hoping to expand their knowledge of how to make
large computer systems more fault tolerant. (A TRON-specification
extended bus, TOXBUS, has been developed specifically to improve the
performance of VME or Multibus for tightly coupled high performance
systems, as well as fault tolerant systems.)
TRON has standard functions such as interrupt, exception handling, and
memory control functions, in addition to such basic capabilities as
input/output, file management, and debugging. U.S. operating systems
with some similarity to TRON are RMX-86, MTOS-68K, VRTX/68000. Users can
write in C, C++, Fortran, Pascal, and Forth as well as TRON-specific
language (TULS). (Green Hills Software in the US provides compilers for
TRON architectures.)
About half dozen TRON-based microprocessors are already commercially
available, as are a number of ITRON products. Tables describing these are
given below.
One characteristic of TRON CPUs is the use of a large linear (non-
segmented) address space. The early design was for a 32bit CPU with
expandability to 64 bit addressing. TRON-based microprocessors include
the 32-bit MN10400 by Matsushita, or a 32-bit Gmicro 300 from the
combined efforts of Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi that I saw
demonstrated. (The MN10400 has run floating point double precision
calculations at 8.3MWIPS at 20MHz.) Oki Electric has developed a 0.8mu-m
CMOS 32 bit TRON based micro (O32) containing 700,000 transistors, which
will perform at 10MIPS at 33Mhz.
The TRON Association also announced the development of CHIP64 (a 64-bit
microprocessor). Hitachi has an IBM-PC bus board that allows its
Integrated System Debugging Tool (ISDT) to run. ISDT is part of
Hitachi's European based TRON project. Toshiba has a Intel-386 based
operating system based on CTRON specifications. In the US, Interactive
Systems Corp has ported Unix System V Release 3 to a Gmicro/200. This
company has many years of experience in porting various versions of Unix
to Intel, Motorola, and RISC processors and the development team found
that the Gmicro/200 had some advantages that made hardware-dependent
portions of the port relatively easy to implement (especially memory
management and software generation system). Gmicro has a floating point
unit (FPU). One interesting feature is that elementary functions are
computed using the iterative "cordic" algorithm [C.W. Schelin, American
Math Monthly, Vol 90, No. 5, May 1983, pp317-325]. Hewlett-Packard
adapted a similar scheme for their pocket calculators.
It has also been claimed that the Japanese industrial involvement is as
much for fear of being left behind as from any direct interest in the
project. Part of their reluctance stems from the historical Japanese
approach to building custom software from scratch, rather than using
standardized components. My own observation is that research activity is
active although industrial commitments might be a bit tentative. As an
example, here is a quote from the Mitsubishi Research Institute,
"we...are conducting research into methods, based on the object-oriented
approach, of defining application requirements, carrying out software
design, and generating program code automatically. The object-oriented
approach is especially geared to event-driven applications in real-time
control fields so our immediate goal is to build prototype systems
applying ITRON specifications."
Matsushita has been most active in the adaptation of TRON into their
product lines and has produced an educational system geared for the
school market under the sponsorship of the Center for Educational
Computing (CEC), an organization affiliated with MITI and the Ministry of
Education and Culture. The potential adoption of TRON standards for
school computers was one of the trade-related concerns.
Some US researchers do not think much of TRON, saying it is nothing but a
warmed-up version of the Motorola 68000 to make it a real time OS and
extendable to 64 bit chip applications; in other words, not innovative
technology. And some of the US vendors may feel that their real-time
operating system kernels are superior to what could be done using ITRON.
Sakamura feels that his viewpoint is rather different. TRON chips do not
use RISC architecture. Sakamura believes that when floating point is
required RISC speed drops off rapidly. Further he feels that to get the
most performance and cost benefit it will be necessary to use specialized
chips (ASIC), commenting that using a RISC chip for video is not as
effective as using a special ASIC, and that it would cost far too much to
use a RISC chip in a game computer or in what should be an inexpensive
consumer product. He claims that a TRON-spec chip has functions that make
it more suitable as an ASIC controller. Further, there is a family
approach to TRON, something that RISC chips don't have (using the same
architecture from 16 to 64 bits is not the RISC model). The TRON project
is concerned about an architecture that is suited to systems with
extremely large numbers of intelligent objects networked together, and
compatibility is clearly necessary.
A reasonable question is the relationship between TRON and other Japanese
computer projects, such as the proposed New Information Processing
Technology (see my report, NIPT.90, 26 Dec 1990). One major difference is
that the funding for the latter is via the Japanese government; TRON is
industrially financed. While TRON is looking toward futuristic uses of
computers it is using silicon technology for chip design. Further, TRON
has no provisions for new reasoning models, and concentrates more on the
interface, communication, and collaboration issues. TRON is focused on
uses of computers in very direct applications, while NIPT envisions much
more complicated information processing requiring new models of what it
means to think and compute. TRON is being propelled by scientists who
imagine a city where many computers cooperate; NIPT is viewing a world
where computers and people are synergistic.
SUGGESTIONS.
In the West many people are worried about TRON, because they fear that if
Japanese electronic giants such as SONY, NEC, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, and
Matsushita someday adopt the TRON specification in their product
standards, then these could eventually become the world-wide industry
standard because of Japanese strength in the electronics and computer
markets. Consequently, Western companies would then be forced to adopt
TRON specifications in order to be competitive. There is another view
however. As all TRON specs are published in English there is nothing to
stop Western manufacturers from implementing a TRON operating system and
marketing it to the Japanese. Computer Design (Feb 1, 1991) points out
that TRON is only a specification, not real code. The fact that it can be
implemented on many different levels appears to offer an opportunity for
enterprising US software companies. They go on to remark that "if the US
is so far ahead in software technology, it should be possible to create
BTRON-based high-performance operating systems that would be strong
competitors in the Japanese market".
My own view is that we should concentrate on the scientific content of
this project. There is no doubt that promotional literature about TRON is
often vague and sometimes fails to differentiate between the future that
will come anyway and the future that will come using TRON. Several of
the Japanese academic computer science researchers I spoke to were also
politely tentative about TRON. They state that CS research spans a broad
range from highly theoretical to nuts-and-bolts extremely practical, and
that TRON concentrates on quite practical applications. Nevertheless,
there are many excellent ideas coming from the TRON community. Fueled by
the Japanese ability in chip and other hardware design and manufacture
members of this group have been aggressive and successful in building
experimental systems. Western scientists are not going to be able to
assess these unless they are more active participants in the project.
Western standards organizations as well as research scientists should
start paying serious attention to TRON specifications now, realizing that
sooner than we anticipate, one of the Japanese giant electric firms may
adopt TRON specifications. One way to begin would be to have serious US
attendance at the 1991 TRON Symposium, which will be held on 26-27
November, 1991 in Tokyo. For more details contact Sakamura at the address
given above.
TRON BASED MICROPROCESSORS -------------------------------------------
TX1 Gmicro Gmicro Gmicro MN10400 O32
/100 /200 /300
Toshiba Mitsubishi Hitachi Fujitsu Matsushita Oki
Number of
Instructions 93 92 22(coproc) 102(basic) 93 103
22(coproc)
11(decimal)
MMU X X O O X O
Cache X 256 Inst. 1Kb Inst 2Kb Inst 1Kb Inst 1Kb Inst
128 Stack 2Kb Data 1Kb Data
Number of
Transistors 45 34 73 90 40 70
x 10,000
Process (CMOS)
(in mu-m) 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.2 0.8
Packaging 155PGA 155PGA 135PGA 179PGA 144PGA 208PGA
152 OFP
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ITRON PRODUCTS-----------------------------------------------------------
Specificantion OS CPU OS Vendor
mu-ITRON MR7700 MELPS 7700 Series Mitsubishi Elec.
MR3200 M32 Mitsubishi Elec.
HI8-3X H8/300 Series Hitachi
HI8 H8/500 Series (64Kb mem) Hitachi
HI8-EX H8/500 Series (1Mb mem) Hitachi
REALOS/7 F2MC-8 Series Fujitsu
TR90 TLCS90 Series Toshiba
ITRON1 RX116 V20/30 NEC
HI68K 68000 Hitachi
HI16 H16 Hitachi
REALOS/286 80286 (protected mode) Fujitsu
MR32 32032 Mitsubishi
ITRON2 HI32 H32 Hitachi
REALOS/F32 F32 Fujitsu
IX101 TX1 Toshiba
MR3210 M32 Mitsubishi
ITRON/FILE HI68KA 68000 file mgmnt for HI68K Hitachi
HI16A H16 file mgmnt for HI16 Hitachi
HI32A H32 file mgmnt for HI32 Hitachi
MR3200F M32 file mgmnt for MR3200 Mitsubishi Elec.
MR3210 M32 file mgmnt for MR3210 Mitsubishi Elec.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRON ASSOCIATION MEMBERS AS OF MARCH 30, 1990.
Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd.
Alps Electric Co., Ltd.
Amano Corporation
AMD Japan Ltd.
AMP (Japan), Ltd.
Ampere Incorporated
Ando Electric Co., Ltd.
Anritsu Corporation
Apple Computer Japan, Incl
Asahi Kasei Microsystems Co., Ltd.
Ascii Corporation
AT&T Japan, Ltd.
Aval Data Corp.
Brother Industries, Ltd.
Canon Inc.
Casio Computer Co., Ltd.
Central Information Center Co., Ltd.
Chubu Electric Power Company, Inc.
Computer Presence Corporation
CSK Corporation
Custom Technology Corporation
Digital Electronics Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation Japan
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
Elco International K.K.
Fanuc Ltd.
Ford Motor Company
Fuji Electric Co., Ltd.
Fuji Software Inc.
Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
Fuji Facom Corporation
Fujitsu Limited
Fujitsu Network Engineering Limited
Garde Inc.
Goldstar Software, Inc.
Green Hills Software Inc.
Hazama Corporation
Hirose Electric Co., Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi Microcomputer Engineering, Ltd.
Hitachi Software Engineering Co., Ltd.
Hokkaido Information & Communication Co., Ltd.
Hoshiden Electronics Co., Ltd.
IBM Japan, Ltd.
Ikegami Tsushinki Co., Ltd.
Ines Corporation
Intec Inc.
Intel Japan k.k.
Iwasaki Electronics Co., Ltd.
Japan Air Lines Co., Ltd.
Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, Ltd.
Japan Direx Corporation
Japan Radio Co., Ltd.
Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
Keizo Limited
Kohgaku-Sha Publishing Co., Ltd.
Kohwa Joho Giken Inc.
Kokusai Denshindenwa Co., Ltd.
Kokusai Electric Co., Ltd.
Kozu Systems Design Corporation
KSD Corporation
Kyocera Corporation
Logic Systems International, Inc.
Matsushita Communication Industrial Co., Ltd.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd.
Matsushita Electronics Corporation
Meidensha Corporation
Microboards, Inc.
Micronics Co., Ltd.
Microtec Research, Inc.
Minolta Camera Co., Ltd.
Misawa Homes Institute of Research and Development Co., Ltd.
Mita Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Mitsubishi Electric Semiconductor Software Corporation
Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.
Mitsui Real Estate Development Co., Ltd.
Morson Japan
Motorola Inc.
NEC Corporation
Nihon Unisys, Ltd.
Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd.
Nippon-Data General Corporation
Nippon Homes Corporation
Nippon Koei Co., Ltd.
Nippon System Kaihatsu Co., Ltd.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
Nippondenso Co., Ltd.
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.
Nissin Electric Co., Ltd.
NUK Corporation
Northern Telecom Japan Inc.
NTT Data Communications Systems Corporation
NTT Software Corporation
Oki Electric Cable Co., Ltd.
Oi Electric Co., Ltd.
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Olivetti Systems Technology Co.
OMC, Incorporated
Omron Corporation
Omron Tateisi Software Co.
Pasco Corporation
Personal Media Corporation
PFU Limited
Plus Corporation
Printing Machine Trading Co., Ltd.
R&D Computer Co., Ltd.
Ricoh Company, Ltd.
Roland Corporation
RSA Network Corporation
Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.
Seiko Epson Corp.
Seiko Instruments Inc.
Seikosha Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Shimizu Corporation
Shinko Electric Co., Ltd.
Siemens AG
Software Consultant Corp.
Software Products and Systems Corporation
Software Research Associates, Inc.
Sony Corporation
Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
Sun Wave Industrial Co., Ltd.
System Algo Co., Ltd.
System V. Co.
Texas Instruments Japan Limited
Tokico Ltd.
Tokyo Computer Service Co., Ltd.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc.
Tosei Systems Co., Ltd.
Toshiba Corporation
Toto Ltd.
Toyota Motor Corporation
Uchida Yoko Co., Ltd.
Uemura Giken Co., Ltd.
Victor Company of Japan, Limited
Wacom Co., Ltd.
Wind River Systems, K.K.
Yamaha Corporation
Yamaichi Electric Mfg. Co., Ltd.
Yamatake-Honeywell Co., Ltd.
Yaskawa Electric Mfg. Co., Ltd.
Yazaki Corporation
Yokogawa Electric Corp.
Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard, Ltd.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH TRON PROJECT SYMPOSIUM------------------------
TRON Project 1990
Open-Architecture Computer Systems
Key Note Address
Programmable Interface Design in HFDS
K. Sakamura (Department of Information Science, Faculty of Science,
University of Tokyo)
Chapter 1: TRON
Considerations of the Performance of a Real-Time OS
A. Yokozawa, K. Fukuoka, K. Tamaru (Toshiba Corporation)
Dynamic Stepwise Task Scheduling Algorithm for a Tightly-Coupled
Multiprocessor ITRON
N. Nishio, H. Takada, K. Sakamura (Department of Information
Science, Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo)
A Graphical Debugger for HI8
D. Wallace (Hitachi Europe Limited)
HI8-3X: A mu-ITRON-Specification Realtime Operating System for
H8/300 Series Microcontrollers
M. Kobayakawa, T. Nagasawa, T. Shimizu, H. Takeyama (Microcomputer
System Design Department, Semiconductor Development & Design Center,
Hitachi, Ltd.)
Chapter 2: BTRON
Design Policy of the Operating System Based on the BTRON2 Specification
K. Sakamura (Department of Information Science, Faculty of Science,
University of Tokyo)
A Study on a Hypermedia Editor on BTRON1 Specification Operating System
K. Kajimoto, T. Nonomura (Kansai Information and Communiations
Research Laboratories, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.)
Chapter 3: CTRON
CTRON Software Portability Evaluation
T. Ohta, T. Terasaki (NTT Network Systems Development Center)
T. Ohkubo, M. Hanazawa (NTT Electrical Communications Laboratories)
M. Ohtaka (NEC Corporation)
Portability Consideration of i386TM-Based Basic OS (OS/CT)
K. Oda, Y. Izumi, H. Ohta, N. Shimizu, N. Yoshida (Toshiba
Corporation)
OS Subset Structure Achieving AP Portability
H. Shibagaki, T. Wasano (NTT Network Systems Development Center)
An Evaluation Method of Kernel Products Based on CTRON
H. Kurosawa, O. Watanabe (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
Y. Kobayashi (NTT Network Systems Development Center)
Development of CTRON Operating System for Communication Processing
M. Hatanaka, Y. Adachi, N. Shigeta, Y. Ohmachi, M. Ohminami (NTT
Communications and Information Processing Laboratories)
Chapter 4: CHIP (1)
Implementation and Evaluation of Oki 32-bit Microprocessor 032
Y. Mori, Y. Haneda, Y. Arakawa, T. Mori, M. Kumazawa (OKI Electric
Industry Co., Ltd.)
Design Considerations of On-Chip-Type Floating-Point Units
M. Suzuki, T. Kiyohara, M. Deguchi (Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co., Ltd.)
The Design Method of High Speed Cache Controller/Memory (CCM) for the
GMICRO Family Microprocessors
A. Yamada, H. Nakagawa, M. Hata, M. Satoh, K. Nishida (LSI Research
and Development Laboratory, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
T. Hiraki (Kita-Itami Works, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
The Evaluation of M32/100's Bitmap Instructions Used in the Graphic
Primitive
M. Sakamoto, T. Shimizu, K. Saitoh (LSI Research and Development
Laboratory, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
Chapter 5: CHIP (2)
Inline Procedures Boost Performance on TRON Architecture
C. Franklin, C. Rosenberg (Green Hills Software, Inc.)
A Forth Kernel for Gmicro1
H. Neugass (Microsystems Consultant)
The Gmicro Microprocessor and the AT&T UNIX Operating System
C. Reiher, W.P. Taylor (INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation)
SRM32: Implementation of Symbolic ROM Monitor on GMICRO F32 Series
Y. Kimura, H. Shida, S. Sasaki (Fujitsu Devices Inc.)
H. Ito (Fujitsu Limited)
Performance Evaluation of TOXBUS
K. Okada (NTT Communication Switching Laboratories)
M. Itoh, S. Fukuda (Fujitsu Limited)
T. Hirosawa (Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.)
T. Utsumi (Toshiba Corporation)
K. Yoshioka (Hitachi Limited)
Y. Tanigawa (Matsushita Electronics Corporation)
K. Hirano (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
Appendix: Additional Contributions
Realtime OS TR90 Based on Micro-ITRON Specification
K. Yamada, S. Takanashi (Toshiba Corporation)
Y. Okada, M. Tamura (Toshiba Microelectronics Corporation)
Communication Terminal for Heterogeneous Network Based on BTRON HMI
N. Enoki, H. Oka, A. Yoneda, M. Ando (Kansai Information and
Communications Research Laboratories, Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co., Ltd.)
Pitfalls on the Road to Portability
J.D. Mooney (West Virginia University)
Realization of the Micro-CTRON Kernel under pSOS+
A. Chao (Software Components Group, Inc.)
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