Milestone-Proposal talk:TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984
Advocates and reviewers will post their comments below. In addition, any IEEE member can sign in with their ETHW login (different from IEEE Single Sign On) and comment on the milestone proposal's accuracy or completeness as a form of public review.
Original Citation Title and Text -- Administrator4 (talk) 13:26, 26 October 2022 (UTC)
TRON Real-time Operating System family, 1984
Real-Time Operating Systems family under the generic TRON name (TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus) has been designed and produced by Prof. Ken Sakamura at the University of Tokyo and TRON project that started in 1984. It is estimated that copies of TRON real-time OS family are used in billions of embedded computer devices all around the world today.
First contact from proposers to the advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 00:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for undertaking an advocate for our proposal. I am glad that we, Tomohiro Hase and Chiaki Ishikawa, will work with you and do our best as proposers. I read a sentence "Within 2 months, advocate works with proposers to select independent expert reviewers" in explanation of B.2 in Status Report. I can introduce some candidates of expert reviewers if you needs. Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
2nd contact from proposers to advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 02:02, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for working as advocate for our proposal.
According to the status deadline in B2 in the Milestone Wiki status report ( https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestones_Status_Report ), our submission needs to have the advocate assign expert reviewers by December 3. So, you may be looking for expert reviewers just now. We'd like to facilitate your role as much as possible. Real-time OS for embedded computers is an arcane topic. So we may introduce expert reviewers in the technical domain of this submission if you feel it is necessary, for example.
Please let us know what you think.
Thank you in advance for your attention over this submission. Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
TRON RTOS 1984 Industry Impact -- Jimfarrell (talk) 17:50, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
TRON RTOS 1984 had a significant impact in providing industry with a consistent and capable OS that was compatible across platforms. TRON RTOS is a key element of the TRON Project, that seeks to standardize computer systems for the benefit of all users worldwide.
Jim Farrell Former Editor-in-Chief IEEE MICRO 1985-1987
Re: TRON RTOS 1984 Industry Impact -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 05:53, 10 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you, Jim san for your support of this proposed Milestone.
Those who does not know Mr. Jim Farrell, please let me introduce him and about the IEEE Micro issue to which Ken Sakamura contributed as guest editor. Let me call him Jim.
Jim was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE MICRO magazine in the late 1980s. (1985-1987)
He was one of the very few early overseas observers who found TRON Project that had taken off in Japan in 1984. After he became aware of TRON Project, he invited Ken Sakamura, the leader of TRON project which produced TRON RTOS family, to submit a few articles on the TRON Project as a guest editor in April 1987 issue of MICRO.
Before this issue of IEEE MICRO, 20 Japanese technical papers related to TRON Project including TRON RTOS family had appeared. At least one book and a report that referenced the TRON Project and TRON RTOS family had been published in Japan. The 1st TRON Project symposium had been held in Tokyo and published its proceedings. A few announcements of products based on TRON RTOS specification had been made. Several workshops on the TRON Computer architecture including TRON RTOS family had been held in Japan. (All these are recorded in [A1] of appendix.)
HOWEVER, only a couple of English articles had appeared if I recall correctly. One of them is the reference in the proposal: "[33] Ken Sakamura, Development of TRON Chip: A single chip VLSI Computer Architecture in the 1990's in VLSI 85: VLSI Design of Digital Systems : Proceedings of the IFIP TC 10/WG 10.5 International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, pp.115-124, Tokyo, Japan, 26-28 August 1985 "
When Jim contacted us many years ago for Ken's guest editorship which I helped eventually, I had to ask Jim where he learned of TRON Project when there were only a couple of English articles. He said he heard it from one of his contacts which he had cultivated through his career in the semiconductor industry. He had worked at Motorola and VLSI Technology Inc by then. His extensive experience in the computer industry is impressive. You can find an interesting blog that contains short bio of Jim, written by someone who researched RFID technology more than a decade ago. https://notepad.onghu.com/te/en/articles/jim-farrells-t-engine-uid-articles-in-rfid-product-news/index.html
That Jim invited Ken Sakamura as a guest editor of IEEE MICRO resulted in the very valuable early records of this proposed Milestone. The proposal references the articles in April 1987 issue of IEEE MICRO extensively.
Thank you, Jim san, for your support of this proposed Milestone and the collaboration over the years which helped the result of TRON Project including TRON RTOS Family to reach people outside Japan. Take care.
Regards,
Chiaki Ishikawa
Senior Researcher / International Liaison
YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory
One of the proposers of this submission
3rd contact from proposers to the advocate -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 01:36, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for undertaking the role of an advocate and working for our proposal.
I wrote in two messages to you in this Wiki BBS on November 2nd and 7th, 2022. However, I have not received any reply from you yet.
According to the status deadline in B2 in the Milestone Wiki status report ( https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestones_Status_Report ), our submission needs to have the advocate assign expert reviewers by December 3. In other words, we have only 3 weeks to do it on schedule. You may be looking for expert reviewers on your end just now. We'd like to facilitate your role as much as possible. Real-time OS for embedded computers is an arcane topic. So we may introduce expert reviewers in the technical domain of this proposal if you feel it is necessary.
Please let us know your thought.
Thank you in advance for your attention over this proposal. Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
P. S.; As you may not watch this Wiki BBS these days, I'll send this message to IEEE History Committee e-mail address. And I'll ask them to forward it to you.
4th contact from proposers to the advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 22:29, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for selecting expert reviewers for our proposal. We are glad to hear that from you. We am looking forward to hear comments from you, expert reviewers and all to make our proposal better. Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
5th contact from proposers to the advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 04:20, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for working the role of an advocate for our proposal.
Here is a sample letter from advocate to expert reviewers: https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Sampleexpertsletter. I heard from expert reviewers yesterday that they has not received any letters or mails from you as advocate yet. They can begin review along the contents of this letter. Could you please send the mail like sample letter above URL as soon as possible. Thank you.
Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
6th contact from proposers to the advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 01:29, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for working the role of an advocate for our proposal.
We heard from the IEEE History Center that the advocate might have communication difficulties. Can you see this IEEE Milestone Wiki website? Could you please tell us what we can support for you if you cannot do it?
Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
Re: 6th contact from proposers to the advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 01:15, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for working the role of an advocate for our proposal. As you might not access this site, Milestone Wiki ETHW, I sent our proposal (https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Milestone-Proposal:TRON_Real-time_Operating_System_Family,_1984) to you as PDF and plain text files this morning.
Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
Expert review report from Steve Diamond to the advocate -- Sldiamond (talk) 01:34, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Dr Prokhorov:
Thank you for your email. I’m honored to be asked to review the TRON RTOS IEEE Milestone Proposal.
You requested feedback on three questions:
1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate? 2. Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation? 3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
I will address each below.
1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
Yes, in my opinion, the proposed Plaque Citation is an accurate and concise statement of this important technical contribution. ITRON was the first member of TRON RTOS family. According to an article published in the April 1987 issue of IEEE Micro Magazine, the first commercial implementation based on the early version of the ITRON specification was released in 1984. The papers provided in the references for the proposal are evidence of the careful planning and implementation that resulted in the TRON RTOS family. As the citations show, today many appliances and systems are based on the TRON RTOS family.
2. Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation?
Yes, the evidence presented is sufficient and accurate. The proposal includes a narrative supported by 37 references from journals and other relevant sources in the appendix. The articles published in the April 1987 issue of IEEE Micro Magazine were the first collection of English-language articles about the TRON RTOS family and the TRON Project in general. IEEE Micro Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief from 1985-1987 was James J. Farrell III. Mr. Farrell had learned of the TRON project in Japan, and he invited Ken Sakamura as a guest editor to provide feature articles, especially regarding the TRON RTOS and the TRON Project in general for the IEEE Micro April 1987 issue, which are useful for the evaluation of early achievements. From 1995-1998, I was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Micro Magazine. When my term ended, based on his work and the importance of the TRON RTOS and TRON Project, I asked Ken Sakamura to succeed me as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Micro Magazine.
3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
Yes, I believe it does. Today's electronics, information and communication systems all depend on available operating system technologies. By the mid-1980s—more than 30+ years ago—the TRON RTOS achieved the following remarkable milestones:
(a) TRON RTOS foresaw the advent of 16/32-bit CPUs in embedded systems.
Mainstream applications in embedded systems were running on 8-bit CPUs when the TRON RTOS family was proposed. However, the TRON RTOS family was forward-looking in that it was based on OS specifications that were applicable to 16bit/32bit CPUs in anticipation of the future.
(b) The TRON RTOS family was designed as a real-time OS from its inception.
The TRON RTOS was designed for and achieved real-time response which was essential for embedded applications. The most common OSs of the day were either time-shared on mainframes or single threaded on PCs.
(c) The TRON RTOS family was promoted under the philosophy of “Open and Free.”
While the traditional software vendors tried to promote closed proprietary OSs, the TRON RTOS family was proposed and promoted from the outset under the overall framework of “Open and Free” approach from the beginning. As a result, a healthy ecosystem of software vendors, CPU vendors and users has grown around TRON RTOS—an ecosystem who has a continuing stake in the creation, maintenance, and support of the TRON RTOS family and its applications.
Today many information appliances are being controlled by real-time operating systems, especially for consumer applications in home but also for application in office equipment, industrial systems, automobiles, space applications, and other areas. There are many companies working in these fields and the market is actually growing, especially in view of the IoT applications.
The latest member of TRON RTOS family, the μT-Kernel, was standardized as IEEE Standard 2050-2018, “IEEE Standard for a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Small-Scale Embedded Systems.” The standard’s abstract reads as follows:
“A real-time operating system (RTOS) called μT-Kernel for small-scale embedded systems such as systems with a single chip microcomputer including 16-bit CPUs, systems with a small amount of ROM/RAM, and systems without a memory management unit (MMU) are specified in this standard”.
IEEE Std. 2050-2018 supports the wide base of users who are using the TRON RTOS family in the embedded systems development sector and facilitates the continued growth of the TRON RTOS ecosystem in the Internet of Things era.
In conclusion, I fully support this proposal as an IEEE Milestone.
Regards, Steve Diamond
Re: Expert review report from Steve Diamond to the advocate -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 03:48, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Steve Diamond
Thank you very much for uploading your report with your careful review. At our proposal, the main evidence of the early activity is papers of the IEEE MICRO Magazine. We are glad that you had confirm these evidences from experience of as one of the editor in chief of them. We feel honored that you have accepted three solicitation points of our proposal, foresight superior specifications, value of the Real-time as the OS and concept of Open & Free.
Best regards, Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers, 2022-15.
Re: Expert review report from Steve Diamond to the advocate -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 06:33, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Mr. Steve Diamond,
Thank you for the review posted here and mail address.
We are progressing very rapidly thanks to your help.
We appreciate it very much.
Have a happy holiday season.
Kind regards,
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the co-proposers
Senior Researcher / International Liaison
YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory (headed by Dr. Ken Sakamura, the leader of the TRON Project)
PS: I helped Ken by reviewing the submissions to IEEE MICRO when he was the EIC of IEEE MICRO. Time flies.
Review of Milestone Proposal, “TRON Real-time OS family 1984” -- Masaki Gondo (talk) 15:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
Here are brief answers to the questions posed, and my conclusion.
1) Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?: Yes. The wording is accurate.
2) Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation? Yes. Although my involvement in TRON started in the middle of the 1990s, I have studied and learned these publications in order to understand the concepts and background of the TRON real-time OS family and the project behind it. The concept has been well alive in the more recent years of the TRON Project, through the years of T-Engine which started around the year 2000, up until now. This is also evident in magazines like TRONWARE.
In terms of my own involvement from the 1990s to today, I can tell that the applications of the TRON RTOS family mentioned in appendix A-2, A-3, etc. agree with the popularity of the TRON RTOS family in the embedded industry which I observed first-hand. I will elaborate on my observation in my answer to question 3.
3) Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
Yes.
The real-time OS family produced by the TRON Project under the leadership of Dr. Ken Sakamura is for all types of consumer and industrial devices. The TRON RTOS family, a set of RTOS specifications and sample implementations, which he proposed and designed, is based on open philosophy and can be used freely by anyone due to non-restrictive licensing. It allowed commercial RTOS vendors, including eSOL where I work, to base their RTOS products and services on this. This resulted in the TRON RTOS family being adopted widely in the consumer electronics industry and beyond. The TRON RTOS family now has a highly active ecosystem consisting of developers, tool vendors, semiconductor manufacturers, users, and academia. The IEEE 2050-2018 standard, “IEEE Standard for a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Small-Scale Embedded Systems”, which has been created based on one of the specifications of the TRON RTOS family is a great contribution to the embedded systems industry. The unique feature of the TRON RTOS family: There are other open-source OS specifications such as Linux or other small RTOSes; however, the TRON RTOS family has very unique benefits that others do not. One of the differentiation the TRON RTOS makes is in its architecture, where it defines multiple profiles of OS specifications, ranging from a compact profile that can be used in resource-constrained microcontroller-based embedded systems, which are often seen in low-end home electronics appliances, up to a process-model based profile that offers the real-time capability with UNIX-like process model that allows its use in more complex embedded systems such as car-infotainment systems. This multi-profile-based design, all sharing the same OS kernel, is unique, and allows the reuse of many of the system-level components among the different profiles, leading to lowering the development cost, shortening the time to market, and facilitating further innovations, thus helping the developers in the consumer electronics industry.
There is a long history of the contribution of the TRON RTOS family: eSOL adopted TRON specification from its very early stage in the late ’80s, released the first uITRON-compliant RTOS for the ARM architecture, PrKERNELv4 for ARM in 1997, which was widely used in various consumer electronics devices worldwide, such as digital still cameras and mobile phones, as it became embedded in the reference design provided by major semiconductor companies worldwide. The PrKERNEL based on the ITRON specification dominated the booming phase of the digital camera market, used in hundreds of millions of devices around the world along with the newly emerged ARM-DSP hybrid SOCs for digital cameras. This ITRON kernel was the standard OS for multiple generations of US-based semiconductor companies which had the leading share of the market, and the kernel was also used in multiple Asian and Japanese semiconductor companies for nearly a decade.
In 2005, eSOL launched eT-Kernel, a commercial version of T-Kernel, which was then the latest member of the TRON RTOS family produced by the TRON Project under Dr. Sakamura's leadership. eSOL also launched eT-Kernel Multi-Core Edition, also developed in close collaboration with Dr. Sakamura. eT-Kernel has been widely adopted in the broad spectrum of embedded devices, ranging from car-infotainment devices, high-end multifunction printers, high-end digital still cameras, etc. all in the consumer electronics industry. The reach of eT-Kernel goes beyond industrial automation devices, and even to space satellites. eT-Kernel has been marketed and used worldwide in these markets. In recent years, there are strong demands in automotive systems, and eT-Kernel has been used by OEMs and Tier-1s (leading automotive suppliers) in the US, Europe, and Asia, in such systems as infotainment systems, digital dashboards, intelligent automotive camera applications, to name a few.
Wide range of design wins of the TRON RTOS family from the perspective of eSOL: Many readers of this letter may not recognize the TRON RTOS family. Since embedded system software is ‘embedded’ and not designed to be recognized as computers, we are generally not allowed to publicize which systems use our products based on the TRON RTOS family. However, to provide a glimpse of its adoption worldwide, here is the list of devices from various manufacturers for which eSOL has permission to publish their use of TRON RTOS technologies including the middleware:
- Automobile data logger, driver status monitor, etc.: DENSO
- On-board AV, car navigation systems: TOYOTA, BOSCH, DENSO, Pioneer, SUZUKI, Clarion, Fujitsu Ten
- Audio equipment: portable recorder, multi-tracker, and mixer units by FOSTEX, multi-track recorder units by ZOOM, stereo audio recorder by TEAC, multi-track AV control center by ONKYO, digital recorder, phrase-recorders, and portable recorder by ROLAND
- Game consoles: "Wii U" and "Wii" by NINTENDO (file system middleware)
- Printers: Colorio printers by EPSON, large-size printers by Roland DG
- Digital still cameras: models by Olympus Imaging, Ricoh Imaging (PENTAX K-3), CASIO, and Kodak
- Information appliances: portable storage device by NEC Access Technica, multi-media storage viewer units by EPSON, photo player by SHARP
- Digital home appliances: DVD recorder and DVD video cam units by Hitachi, TV models by SHARP, phone by SHARP, PHS models by KYOCERA, Sawing machine by Brother Industries, Ltd., radio server by Olympus Imaging
- Musical instruments: Suzuki Musical Inst., Primotone music box by Brother Industries, Ltd.
- Office equipment: CopyBoard by Plus Stationery Company.
- Industrial modules: surveillance camera by iXs Research Corp., sequencer unit by Mitsubishi Electric, 2D bar-code scanner by DENSO
- Aerospace (modules and satellites): SERVIS by NEC Toshiba Aerospace, SpaceCube-II, SpaceWire module, and IKAROS by JAXA (Japanese Space Agency)
- Network equipment: Network monitoring equipment by Avaldata Corp.
- LSI for network function: YAMAHA
These are only a portion of the implementation examples that use eSOL's commercial offering of the TRON RTOS Family. The total number of deployments, i.e., devices that use eSOL’s TRON-based RTOSes exceeds hundreds of millions.
The number of devices that run the generic TRON RTOS family, including the RTOS offerings from other sources, should exceed one billion devices. This fact alone should make this proposal worth consideration.
As seen even from the partial exposure of its design wins, the adoption of the open and high-performance TRON RTOS family across the consumer electronics industry and beyond is highly extraordinary. Without the TRON RTOS family, eSOL would have not been able to help its customers in all these different applications worldwide, and the industries would have suffered from the lack of a standard that is widely applicable to a vast range of embedded systems, which could have slowed the pace of innovations the industries have achieved in the last 33 years. As I mentioned earlier, the IEEE 2050-2018 standard based on one of the TRON RTOS specifications is a great contribution to the embedded industry.
This concludes my review of the proposal, and I am firmly convinced that the proposal merits the IEEE Milestone recognition.
Re: Review of Milestone Proposal, “TRON Real-time OS family 1984” -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 14:48, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Masaki Gondo
Thank you very much for sending us the detailed report. Your report is full of many suggestions and serves as a reference to update of our proposal.
Unfortunately it seems to be difficult for the advocate to read Gmail nor accesses this Website. I will transfer your report to the advocate by another way.
Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers, 2022-15.
Re: Re: Review of Milestone Proposal, “TRON Real-time OS family 1984” -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 00:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Masaki Gondo
Thank you very much. By my transfer, the advocate received your expert review report yesterday. F. Y. I.
Best regards, Tomohiro Hase, one of proposers, 2022-15
Re: Review of Milestone Proposal, “TRON Real-time OS family 1984” -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 05:17, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Mr. Gondo,
Thank you for your review.
I was involved in the preparation and execution of 2022 TRON Symposium (TRONSHOW) that promotes the dissemination of the R&D results of the TRON Project including the TRON RTOS Family: Dec 7-9, 2022, Tokyo. https://www.tronshow.org/2023-tron-symposium/en/08.html
TRON Forum is the NPO that manages the symposium.: https://www.tron.org/
Since TRON Forum does not do its own R&D or marketing and basically is a conduit of information in TRON ecosystem consisting of developers and users of research labs, universities and commercial enterprises, and offers training seminars with the help of its members, it relies on the reporting of members regarding the design wins of TRON RTOS Family. So, detailed design adoptions of TRON RTOS Family in commercial systems from someone like Mr. Gondo is very informative and helpful in grasping the industry impact of TRON RTOS Family.
Thank you very much for taking the time to write the review and offering the available design win information.
Kind regards, Chiaki Ishikawa, one of the co-proposers.
7th contact from proposers to the advocate. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 01:29, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much for working the role of an advocate for our proposal.
As you know, we had already received two expert review reports last week. We thank expert reviewers who gave us excellent suggestions. We'd like to update our proposal according to all comments if necessary. Could you please tell us what we should do next before you will decide to recommend smoothly on the B.2 stage.
Best regards, Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposer, 2022-15
Encouraging Comment from Konstantinos Karachalios, Managing Director, IEEE-Standards Association -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 22:00, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
I have received a request from Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios, the managing director of IEEE Standards Association to post his encouraging comment to this milestone proposal discussion wiki page. He has asked me to post the following comment in lieu of him because he has had difficulty creating an account at ETHW for him for the last few weeks.
--- begin quote ---
Through the leadership and foresight of Prof Ken Sakamura, the TRON consortium was guided to sign an agreement with IEEE SA. This agreement makes it possible to adopt versions of the TRON RTOS family, μT-Kernel, turning them into globally open IEEE standards. The standard IEEE 2050-2018 for a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Small-Scale Embedded Systems was the first to be established. This is a very significant step in creating open specifications based on a robust governance system in the era of IOT. IEEE 2050-2018 was established in a record-breaking short time, which suggests the broad acceptance of the TRON RTOS in the industry world-wide. It is a very significant enrichment for IEEE's standardization ecosystem.
--- end quote ---
What Dr. Karachalios referred to as "the TRON consortium" is the current TRON Forum mentioned in the proposal. I believe that the record-breaking short time which took IEEE-SA to adopt μT-Kernel 2.0 into IEEE 2050-2018 standard is a testament to the wide adoption of TRON RTOS family in the industry over the years and the robust and complete API it offers. Thus there was no opposition to the standard proposal if I recall correctly.
Dr. Karachalios handled the important step of transferring (sharing) the copyright of the original documentation of μT-Kernel 2.0 so that IEEE can publish the 2050-2018 standard document which heavily borrows from the original (bulk of it was from the original.)
His biography can be found in the following IEEE-SA URL from which I quite a few sentences below:
https://www.ieee.org/about/management-council.html
A globally recognized leader in standards development and intellectual property, Dr. Ing. Konstantinos Karachalios is managing director of the IEEE Standards Association and a member of the IEEE Management Council.
As managing director, he has been enhancing IEEE efforts in global standards development in strategic emerging technology fields, through technical excellence of staff, expansion of global presence and activities and emphasis on inclusiveness and good governance, including reform of the IEEE standards-related patent policy.
... the rest omitted. See the above URL ...
I would like to thank Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios for his encouraging comment.
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the co-proposers
Senior Researcher / International Liaison
YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory
Re: Encouraging Comment from Konstantinos Karachalios, Managing Director, IEEE-Standards Association -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 01:54, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Dr. Konstantinos Karachalios
Thank you very much for your kindly comment. You presented keynote speech in the international conference, IEEE GCCE 2018, that I founded on Oct. 11th, 2018 at Nara, Japan. http://www.ieee-gcce.org/2018/keynotes.html In the lecture, you talked about the significance of the IEEE standard. In addition, you explained that the TRON as the latest IEEE standard is very important. All of us, more than 350 audiences, were impressed with your speech.
Thank you again in advance for your attention on the Milestone proposal.
Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of proposers.
Impact for smart house by TRON RTOS. -- Masao isshiki (talk) 22:25, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
I'd like to introduce the impact for smart houses that proposers don't describe.
For the realization of the current smart house, TRON RTOS did a pioneer contribution as shown in the following references (Japanese Version).
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9B%BB%E8%84%B3%E4%BD%8F%E5%AE%85
https://www.personal-media.co.jp/book/tron/v01.html
That is, first TRON house with 1,000 CPUs and sensors was built at Nishiazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan on December 1989.
Several experiment smart houses using the TRON RTOS were built afterwards since then.
I recommend strongly the TRON RTOS family to the IEEE Milestone.
Dr. Masao Isshiki.
Institute Professor, Smart House Research Center, Kanagawa Institute of Technology.
Re: Impact for smart house by TRON RTOS. -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 06:47, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Prof. Masao Issiki
Thank you very much.
I remembered articles of the following magazine, inspired by your kindly talk.
Sakamura K.: "TRON-concept Intelligent House", The Japan Architect, 65, 4, April 1990.
“The world’s smartest houses”, and “TRON: Ultimate global computer network", Popular Science, pp. 60-61, September, 1990.
Best regards, Dr. Tomohiro Hase, IEEE Fellow, one of IEEE Milestone proposers, 2022-15
Re: Impact for smart house by TRON RTOS. -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Dear Dr. Masao Isshiki,
Thank you for posting about TRON Smart House.
The first house was called TRON Intelligent House in 1988. "Smart House" was not a popular phrase back then.
I remember writing a prototype of a program that monitored rain drops via a hand-crafted sensor and closed windows.Rain drop sensor was created by someone else. It was not in the market then.
The proposers were focused on the RTOS itself and could not expand the description to include applications auch as smart house. Thank you for reminding us of this contribution of TRON RTOS family to create the world's first large scale smart house where people lived.
Kind regards,
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the co-proposers
PS: The first TRON Intelligent House was also featured in another Popular Science article, different from one Prof. Hase mentioned. I could find a few other English web pages and video clips about the house. Interested readers may want to check them out.
Popular Science:
Cover Photo of Popular Science Popular Science 237 (3) 1990
page 58: From Japan: Intelligence with Classic Style.
Video of the first TRON Intelligent House
TRON Smart House (first TRON Intelligent House)
Video of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd TRON Intelligent House
[2011-09] TRON Intelligent House (including the 2nd and subsequent Houses)
Excerpt from Takeda Award speech by Ken Sakamura
TRON Open ArchitectureL An Essential Element for Future Ubiquitous Computing
Overview:
TRON Intelligent House
Looking back on the occasion of 30th anniversary of TRON Project
30 years of TRON Project - TRON Intelligent House
Advocate approval of 2022-15 TRON (uploaded on advocate's behalf by Administrator4) -- Administrator4 (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
Report on Milestone-Proposal #2022-15:
TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984
The TRON project is one of the earliest and most successful projects for the development of realtime computer systems. Moreover, it continues to intensively develop and improve at the present time. There is no doubt that the TRON project has had a significant impact on the development of real-time operating systems and their applications.
Historically, interest in the creation of such systems arose in the late 1980s, when there was an understanding of the prospects for the development of microprocessor systems for the development of computer technology. In 1984, an initiative group led by Ken Sakamura from the
University of Tokyo began working on a project to create an "ideal" computer architecture and network, taking into account the prospects for their development. TRON RTOS has been futureoriented from the very beginning. This is what ultimately determined its success and the
subsequent successful development of the TRON project.
Here are the most significant ideas laid down by the initiators of the project that later led to its
success.
As envisioned by the project's creators, the system has to run on a variety of computers
with a bit depth between 8 and 64 bits and tens of kilobytes of RAM.
TRON RTOS has been developed from the very beginning as a real-time operating system.
Ultimately, it allowed it to be integrated into many applications: microcontrollers for
household appliances, electronic devices for reading books, terminals, electrical
installation control systems, medical devices, and other devices.
TRON RTOS has been developed with the philosophy of "Open and Free" from the very
beginning. As a result, a healthy ecosystem of software vendors, processors, and users has
grown around TRON RTOS. An ecosystem that is constantly interested in building,
maintaining, and supporting the TRON RTOS family and its applications.
The broad adoption of embedded systems based on the TRON RTOS operating system was a result
of its continual development. The latest member of the TRON RTOS family, μT-Kernel, has been
standardized as IEEE 2050-2018, "IEEE Standard for a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for
Small-Scale Embedded Systems".
The TRON family of real-time systems has been in existence and has been continuously expanding
for almost forty years. ITRON was the first member of the TRON RTOS family. According to an
article published in the April 1987 issue of IEEE Micro Magazine, the first commercial
implementation based on an early version of the Industrial TRON (ITRON) specification was
released in 1984. ITRON was one of the most used operating systems in the world. By 2003, it
was present in billions of electronic devices such as mobile phones, household appliances, and
cars.
This is the best proof of how important the TRON RTOS legacy is on a global scale and how it
has affected the development of real-time operating systems, consumer applications, office
equipment, industrial systems, cars, space applications, and other fields.
2
The proposal includes a detailed description of the history of the creation and development of
TRON RTOS, supported by 37 links to magazines and other sources. The evidence presented by
the submitters is convincing. The references to the documents are accurate.
Stephen L. Diamond and Forest Tan Su Lim were invited to evaluate the Milestones Proposal as
independent experts.
Dr. Stephen L. Diamond was the 2003 President of the IEEE Computer Society and a member of
the IEEE Board of Directors in 2009–2010 and 2005–2006. He currently serves as the Chair of the
IEEE Cloud Computing Initiative, Chair of the IEEE Strategic Planning Ad Hoc Committee, and
Immediate Past Chair of the IEEE Marketing & Sales Committee. From 1995-1998, Stephen L.
Diamond was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Micro Magazine.
Dr. Forest Tan Su Lim is a professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology. He is Vice Chairman
of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society (Singapore Chapter) and an IEEE Senior Member.
Forest Tan Su Lim is a recognized expert in the field of real-time operating systems, in particular
operating systems for embedded microprocessors. As part of his research, he published an article
in IEEE MICRO (T. N. B. Anh and S. -L. Tan; "Real-Time Operating Systems for Small
Microcontrollers", IEEE Micro, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 30-45, Sept. .-Oct. 2009). This article contained
a comparative analysis of real-time operating systems, including μITRON and μT-Kernel, which
are members of the TRON RTOS family.
Independent experts support the proposal to include the TRON Real-time Operating System
Family project in the IEEE Milestones list.
In his review, Dr. Stephen L. Diamond, in particular, notes the following outstanding achievements
of TRON RTOS.
“By the mid-1980s—more than 30+ years ago—the TRON RTOS achieved the following
remarkable milestones:
(a) TRON RTOS foresaw the advent of 16/32-bit CPUs in embedded systems.
Mainstream applications in embedded systems were running on 8-bit CPUs when the TRON
RTOS family was proposed. However, the TRON RTOS family was forward-looking in that it
was based on OS specifications that were applicable to 16bit/32bit CPUs in anticipation of the
future.
(b) The TRON RTOS family was designed as a real-time OS from its inception.
The TRON RTOS was designed for and achieved real-time response which was essential for
embedded applications. The most common OSs of the day were either time-shared on mainframes
or single threaded on PCs.
(c) The TRON RTOS family was promoted under the philosophy of “Open and Free.”
While the traditional software vendors tried to promote closed proprietary OSs, the TRON RTOS
family was proposed and promoted from the outset under the overall framework of “Open and
Free” approach from the beginning.”
Dr. Forest Tan Su Lim in his review pointed out the following important achievements of the
TRON RTOS project.
“The TRON RTOS family
- is an open and free real-time operating system family,
3
- has a 'full specification', that has a rich set of APIs and
- has good performance.
These characteristics contribute significantly to the wide availability of a highly sophisticated
complete OS in the embedded world.
- Open & Free
The TRON RTOS family has a rich set of APIs and is open and free, allowing both researchers and developers to freely modify it, making it easy to use in applications. This contribution is significant.
- Full specification and rich APIs
We found that, among the RTOSs available at the time, µITRON and µT-Kernel had open specifications (Open &Free) and that they covered all the functions required for embedded systems. At the time, only the TRON RTOS family offered the Rendezvous synchronisation features introduced during the design of the ADA programming language. which is important for large-scale embedded systems consisting of many asynchronous tasks communicating with each other. I think it is this completeness of the specification that led to IEEE 2050-2018, an important IEEE standard for the embedded systems industry, being based on the TRON RTOS family.
- Good performance
The total size of ROM + RAM is smaller than that of other RTOSs, indicating that the TRON RTOS kernel source has been optimised in terms of size over the years. The open and free availably of high performance RTOS family which can be provided by many vendors independently is a significant contribution to the educational and industrial sectors.” Both independent experts, Dr. Stephen L. Diamond and Dr. Forest Tan Su Lim, confirm that - the proposed Plaque Citation is an accurate and concise statement of this important technical contribution; - the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation. In addition, several reviews of the TRON project have been published on the IEEE Milestones Wiki. All reviews are positive. The authors of the reviews confirm the project's high rating. Jim Farrell Former Editor-in-Chief IEEE MICRO 1985-1987 noted in his review that TRON RTOS 1984 had a significant impact in providing industry with a consistent and capable OS that was compatible across platforms. TRON RTOS is a key element of the TRON Project, which seeks to standardize computer systems for the benefit of all users worldwide. Jim Farrell Former was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE MICRO in the mid-1980s. Thanks to him, the first publication about the TRON project in English appeared in the April 1987 issue of the magazine. Konstantinos Karachalios, the managing director of the IEEE Standards Association, supports the TRON project in his review. In particular, he highlights that the latest member of the TRON RTOS family, μT-Kernel, has been adopted as the IEEE 2050-2018 for Small-Scale Embedded Systems standard. This indicates the broad acceptance of the TRON RTOS in the industry worldwide. Every one of those opinions was taken into account before I made my final decision. I also received an extended review from Masaki Gondo. He was nominated by submitters as an independent reviewer. However, in a presentation at one of the conferences, he indicated that he 4 is "CTO at eSOL, the firm that offers OSIX/AUTOSAR/TRON RTOS". Masaki Gondo cannot be regarded as an independent expert, so I did not consider his viewpoint while reaching a decision. Conclusion. I support the inclusion of the TRON Real-time Operating System Family in the IEEE Milestone list as a globally significant achievement that has had and continues to have a strong influence on the development of software for real-time systems and embedded devices for nearly four decades. Sergei Prokhorov Proposal advocate IEEE senior member IEEE History Committee member Chair of IEEE Computer Society Russian chapt
Citation revised by proposers -- Tomohiro Hase (talk) 00:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
As the advocate approved that proposers revise our citation, I'll do it as follows.
(New Citation) Real-Time Operating Systems family under the generic TRON name (TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus) has been designed and produced by TRON project that started at the University of Tokyo in 1984. It is estimated that copies of TRON real-time OS family are used in billions of embedded computer devices all around the world today.
Advocate approval (reformatted from PDF) -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 06:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
We already have the upload of Advocate approval in - 14 Advocate approval of 2022-15 TRON (uploaded on advocate's behalf by Administrator4) -- Administrator4 (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
However, I note some formatting issue probably arising from PDF to text conversion. I received a PDF version from the advocate on Dec 31. From it, I could produce an HTML file with better formatting. I removed the meta tags from it such as DOCtype, html, body so that I can insert it into this discussion page. (Well, actually, this is not a perfect world. I had to tweak the generated HTML file quite a bit, even going back to the original PDF and produced a DOC file to tinker with the generated HTML file from the doc file, even.)
So here it is.
--- begin quote
Report on
Milestone-Proposal #2022-15:
TRON Real-time Operating
System Family, 1984
The TRON project is one of the earliest and most successful projects for the development of real- time computer systems. Moreover, it continues to intensively develop and improve at the present time. There is no doubt that the TRON project has had a significant impact on the development of real-time operating systems and their applications.
Historically, interest in the creation of such systems arose in the late 1980s, when there was an understanding of the prospects for the development of microprocessor systems for the development of computer technology. In 1984, an initiative group led by Ken Sakamura from the University of Tokyo began working on a project to create an "ideal" computer architecture and network, taking into account the prospects for their development. TRON RTOS has been future- oriented from the very beginning. This is what ultimately determined its success and the subsequent successful development of the TRON project.
Here are the most significant ideas laid down by the initiators of the project that later led to its success.
As envisioned by the project's creators, the system has to run on a variety of computers with a bit depth between 8 and 64 bits and tens of kilobytes of RAM.
TRON RTOS has been developed from the very beginning as a real-time operating system. Ultimately, it allowed it to be integrated into many applications: microcontrollers for household appliances, electronic devices for reading books, terminals, electrical installation control systems, medical devices, and other devices.
TRON RTOS has been developed with the philosophy of "Open and Free" from the very beginning. As a result, a healthy ecosystem of software vendors, processors, and users has grown around TRON RTOS. An ecosystem that is constantly interested in building, maintaining, and supporting the TRON RTOS family and its applications.
The broad adoption of embedded systems based on the TRON RTOS operating system was a result of its continual development. The latest member of the TRON RTOS family, μT-Kernel, has been standardized as IEEE 2050-2018, "IEEE Standard for a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Small-Scale Embedded Systems".
The TRON family of real-time systems has been in existence and has been continuously expanding for almost forty years. ITRON was the first member of the TRON RTOS family. According to an article published in the April 1987 issue of IEEE Micro Magazine, the first commercial implementation based on an early version of the Industrial TRON (ITRON) specification was released in 1984. ITRON was one of the most used operating systems in the world. By 2003, it was present in billions of electronic devices such as mobile phones, household appliances, and cars.
This is the best proof of how important the TRON RTOS legacy is on a global scale and how it has affected the development of real-time operating systems, consumer applications, office equipment, industrial systems, cars, space applications, and other fields.
The proposal includes a detailed description of the history of the creation and development of TRON RTOS, supported by 37 links to magazines and other sources. The evidence presented by the submitters is convincing. The references to the documents are accurate.
Stephen L. Diamond and Forest Tan Su Lim were invited to evaluate the Milestones Proposal as independent experts.
Dr. Stephen L. Diamond was the 2003 President of the IEEE Computer Society and a member of the IEEE Board of Directors in 2009–2010 and 2005–2006. He currently serves as the Chair of the IEEE Cloud Computing Initiative, Chair of the IEEE Strategic Planning Ad Hoc Committee, and Immediate Past Chair of the IEEE Marketing & Sales Committee. From 1995-1998, Stephen L. Diamond was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Micro Magazine.
Dr. Forest Tan Su Lim is a professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology. He is Vice Chairman of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society (Singapore Chapter) and an IEEE Senior Member. Forest Tan Su Lim is a recognized expert in the field of real-time operating systems, in particular operating systems for embedded microprocessors. As part of his research, he published an article in IEEE MICRO (T. N. B. Anh and S. -L. Tan; "Real-Time Operating Systems for Small Microcontrollers", IEEE Micro, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 30-45, Sept. .-Oct. 2009). This article contained a comparative analysis of real-time operating systems, including μITRON and μT-Kernel, which are members of the TRON RTOS family.
Independent experts support the proposal to include the TRON Real-time Operating System Family project in the IEEE Milestones list.
In his review, Dr. Stephen L. Diamond, in particular, notes the following outstanding achievements of TRON RTOS.
“By the mid-1980s—more than 30+ years ago—the TRON RTOS achieved the following remarkable milestones:
(a) TRON RTOS foresaw the advent of 16/32-bit CPUs in embedded systems.
Mainstream applications in embedded systems were running on 8-bit CPUs when the TRON RTOS family was proposed. However, the TRON RTOS family was forward-looking in that it was based on OS specifications that were applicable to 16bit/32bit CPUs in anticipation of the future.
(b) The TRON RTOS family was designed as a real-time OS from its inception.
The TRON RTOS was designed for and achieved real-time response which was essential for embedded applications. The most common OSs of the day were either time-shared on mainframes or single threaded on PCs.
(c) The TRON RTOS family was promoted under the philosophy of “Open and Free.”
While the traditional software vendors tried to promote closed proprietary OSs, the TRON RTOS family was proposed and promoted from the outset under the overall framework of “Open and Free” approach from the beginning.”
Dr. Forest Tan Su Lim in his review pointed out the following important achievements of the TRON RTOS project.
“The TRON RTOS family
- is an open and free real-time operating system family,
- has a 'full specification', that has a rich set of APIs and
- has good performance.
These characteristics contribute significantly to the wide availability of a highly sophisticated complete OS in the embedded world.
* Open & Free
The TRON RTOS family has a rich set of APIs and is open and free, allowing both researchers and developers to freely modify it, making it easy to use in applications. This contribution is significant.
* Full specification and rich APIs
We found that, among the RTOSs available at the time, µITRON and µT-Kernel had open specifications (Open &Free) and that they covered all the functions required for embedded systems. At the time, only the TRON RTOS family offered the Rendezvous synchronisation features introduced during the design of the ADA programming language. which is important for large-scale embedded systems consisting of many asynchronous tasks communicating with each other. I think it is this completeness of the specification that led to IEEE 2050-2018, an important IEEE standard for the embedded systems industry, being based on the TRON RTOS family.
* Good performance
The total size of ROM + RAM is smaller than that of other RTOSs, indicating that the TRON RTOS kernel source has been optimised in terms of size over the years. The open and free availably of high performance RTOS family which can be provided by many vendors independently is a significant contribution to the educational and industrial sectors.”
Both independent experts, Dr. Stephen L. Diamond and Dr. Forest Tan Su Lim, confirm that
- the proposed Plaque Citation is an accurate and concise statement of this important technical contribution;
- the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation.
In addition, several reviews of the TRON project have been published on the IEEE Milestones Wiki. All reviews are positive. The authors of the reviews confirm the project's high rating.
Jim Farrell Former Editor-in-Chief IEEE MICRO 1985-1987 noted in his review that TRON RTOS 1984 had a significant impact in providing industry with a consistent and capable OS that was compatible across platforms. TRON RTOS is a key element of the TRON Project, which seeks to standardize computer systems for the benefit of all users worldwide. Jim Farrell Former was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE MICRO in the mid-1980s. Thanks to him, the first publication about the TRON project in English appeared in the April 1987 issue of the magazine.
Konstantinos Karachalios, the managing director of the IEEE Standards Association, supports the TRON project in his review. In particular, he highlights that the latest member of the TRON RTOS family, μT-Kernel, has been adopted as the IEEE 2050-2018 for Small-Scale Embedded Systems standard. This indicates the broad acceptance of the TRON RTOS in the industry worldwide.
Every one of those opinions was taken into account before I made my final decision.
I also received an extended review from Masaki Gondo. He was nominated by submitters as an independent reviewer. However, in a presentation at one of the conferences, he indicated that he is "CTO at eSOL, the firm that offers OSIX/AUTOSAR/TRON RTOS". Masaki Gondo cannot be regarded as an independent expert, so I did not consider his viewpoint while reaching a decision.
Conclusion. I support the inclusion of the TRON Real-time Operating System Family in the IEEE Milestone list as a globally significant achievement that has had and continues to have a strong influence on the development of software for real-time systems and embedded devices for nearly four decades.
--- there was a signature in the original
PDF --
Sergei Prokhorov
Proposal advocate
IEEE senior member
IEEE History Committee member
Chair of IEEE Computer Society Russian chapter
--- end quote
Suggest editing last sentence of citation to put verbs in past tense and remove passive voice. -- Administrator4 (talk) 19:41, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggest changing:
"It is estimated that copies of TRON real-time OS family are used in billions of embedded computer devices around the world today."
to:
"Copies of TRON real-time OS family have been used in billions of embedded computer devices around the world."
Re: Suggest editing last sentence of citation to put verbs in past tense and remove passive voice. -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 07:04, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the suggestion.
We solicit advice from the advocate and came up with the following change which is now in the main proposal. The last sentence now reads
TRON real-time OS family copies have been used in billions of embedded computer devices worldwide.
EDIT: So, the whole citation now reads,
Real-Time Operating Systems family under the generic TRON name (TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus) has been designed and produced by TRON project that began at the University of Tokyo in 1984. TRON real-time OS family copies have been used in billions of embedded computer devices worldwide.
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the proposers
Expert review report from Forest Tan Su Lim to the advocate. Review received on December 30, 2022 -- Sergei Prokhorov (talk) 11:44, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Dear Dr Prokhorov: Thank you for your email. I am honored to be asked to review the TRON RTOS IEEE Milestone Proposal. Your requested feedback on three questions. I will address each below.
1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate? Yes, the proposed Plaque Citation is an accurate and concise statement of this important technical contribution. As you may know, Prof. Ken Sakamura will receive 2023 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Technology Award. The citation for the award is “For leadership in creating open and free operating systems for embedded computers used in consumer electronics”. The Plaque Citation describes accomplishment of his team very well.
2. Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Citation? Yes, the evidence presented is sufficient and accurate. I am a researcher of the Operating System in 2000’s. Especially, I was interested in a performance comparison of suitable Real-Time Operating Systems for embedded MPU's. I surveyed the existing real-time operating systems of the past. As part of my survey, I came across the references to TRON RTOS family in IEEE MICRO mentioned in the proposal. I can attest that the references are accurate and good. I published the following article in IEEE MICRO as a co-author. We compared various real-time operating systems known at the time for 16-bit microcontrollers and obtained benchmark numbers of a selected few. Because of the rich API set and ready availability μITRON and μT-Kernel, both of which are the members of TRON RTOS family were among the RTOS which we benchmarked. T. N. B. Anh and S. -L. Tan; "Real-Time Operating Systems for Small Microcontrollers", IEEE Micro, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 30-45, Sept.-Oct. 2009. We did not quote the older IEEE MICRO articles from the 1980s, instead quoted a couple co-authored by Ken Sakamura from 1990s in our article. I was honored to find that our paper was referenced in the Milestone proposal. Thus, from my personal research, I confirm that all the IEEE MICRO references in proposal are precise and other references describe the later development of TRON RTOS family up to now very well. At the same time, I would suggest References in the Milestone proposal adds the following paper which we quoted in our IEEE MICRO article because it was very instrumental in getting the TRON RTOS family known to the computing community outside Japan in the mid-1990s. Milestone proposers may not have felt it was necessary since the time period was not that of the birth of TRON RTOS family. K. Sakamura and H. Takada, ‘‘μITRON for Small-Scale Embedded Systems,’’ IEEE Micro, vol. 15, no. 6, Nov./Dec. 1995, pp. 46-54.
3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement? Yes, I believe it does. The TRON RTOS family
- is an open and free real-time operating system family, - has a 'full specification', that has a rich set of APIs and - has good performance.
These characteristics contribute significantly to the wide availability of a highly sophisticated complete OS in the embedded world. The explanation in the proposal using the references should be clear on the above points, but I would like to add some explanations from my personal experience.
- Open & Free
As I will explain later, the TRON RTOS family has a rich set of APIs and is open and free, allowing both researchers and developers to freely modify it, making it easy to use in applications. Commercial RTOSes are often black boxes and difficult to use, especially for research. Also, because it is easy to modify, it is suitable for education, and there are many examples of its use in classrooms and research communities. We wrote a paper discussing the performance of a few RTOS including TRON RTOS family because TRON RTOS family was easy to obtain and had a rich set of APIs. In Singapore, the Centre for High Performance Embedded Systems (CHiPES) at Nanyang Technological University, now renamed the Hardware & Embedded Systems Lab (HESL), has been conducting research on embedded systems. I have learned that the embedded OS used on CPU boards for embedded systems research at HESL has been standardised using TRON RTOS family and used as a development platform by everyone at the centre. I have also heard that Republic Polytechnic is also using TRON RTOS family in the same way in their embedded system development classes. The TRON RTOS family is thus influencing industry from the field of education, as people educated there are using it in industry. This is mainly because TRON RTOS is an open and free. This contribution is significant.
- Full specification and rich APIs
When writing the paper comparing embedded RTOSs described below, we found that, among the RTOSs available at the time, µITRON and µT-Kernel had open specifications (Open &Free) and that they covered all the functions required for embedded systems. It also has a full range of primitives for synchronisation, such as message exchange and semaphore handling, mutex, for example. At the time, only the TRON RTOS family offered the Rendezvous synchronisation features introduced during the design of the ADA programming language. which is important for large-scale embedded systems consisting of many asynchronous tasks communicating with each other. The completeness of this specification is also important for porting existing applications. I think it is this completeness of the specification that led to IEEE 2050-2018, an important IEEE standard for the embedded systems industry, being based on the TRON RTOS family. The fact that RTOSs with such a full specification are offered in the spirit of Open & Free is certain to contribute to the wide use of RTOS, and features and performance of RTOS improves in the industry as a whole. This is because those with lesser specifications or performance will be eliminated by natural selection unless they have some other selling point.
- Good performance
We looked at performance of several real-time OSs for small and embedded CPUs in a published paper which was quoted in the answer to question 2. We selected a number of OSs and obtained benchmark numbers, not only at the specification level. micro ITRON and micro T-Kernel were among the selected RTOSs for benchmark evaluation. These two OSs were chosen for benchmarking largely because their specifications are published in the spirit of Open & Free, they have complete API set for our purpose, they have already been ported to many 16-bit CPUs, and the execution and development environments were readily available. This shows that the open and free approach of the TRON RTOS family has been successful. Our paper shows that the total size of ROM + RAM is smaller than that of other RTOSs, indicating that the TRON RTOS kernel source has been optimised in terms of size over the years. Also, very important task processing, e.g. task switching time, was very fast, clearly faster than other operating systems. Thus, benchmark comparisons showed that the real-time responsiveness, which is so important for an RTOS, is also excellent for the TRON RTOS family. Again, it is clear that the open and free availably of high performance RTOS family which can be provided by many vendors independently is a significant contribution to the educational and industrial sectors. Based on the personal experience of researching TRON RTOS family before, and coupled with the accomplishments mentioned in the proposal, I believe the proposed milestone represents a significant technical achievement worthy of IEEE Milestone designation.
For the above reasons, I recommend TRON RTOS to IEEE Milestone.
Best regards, Dr. Su-Lim, Tan Singapore Institute of Technology.
further rewording recommendations -- Amy Bix (talk) 17:31, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
I recommend further rewording to eliminate more of the passive voice, tighten up the phrasing, and make the plaque more meaningful, especially to non-experts who want to understand the significance of this technology. Perhaps something such as:
In 1984, University of Tokyo researchers began designing the TRON Real-Time Operating Systems family. These specifications and source codes were provided openly and freely, facilitating innovations by developers and commercial users. TRON real-time OS family copies were adopted worldwide in billions of embedded computer devices, including aerospace and industrial equipment, automotive systems, and home electronics.
{note: I am not sure that it is essential to put in the detail that "TRON stands for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus" so I have omitted that)
Re: further rewording recommendations -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 17:02, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the suggestion.
I think it is in the right direction to make it easy for lay people to understand what the TRON RTOS family is used for.
However, I feel it has two issues.:
1. Only the contribution of the researchers at the U. of Tokyo is mentioned while the development and deployment was a project effort including members from the industry.
2. In that sense, I feel we should mention "TRON Project" in the citation to show it is a project effort one way or the other.
We are pondering how to modify the suggested wording to rectify the two issues above. We will try to post a modification hopefully in a day or two.
Thank you again for the valuable suggestion.
Regards,
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the co-proposers
Re: further rewording recommendations -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 14:24, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Dear all,
After consultation with our advoicate, and many false starts, we have come up with the following new citation based on the suggestion from Amy Bix.
In 1984, researchers at the University of Tokyo with partners began designing and implementing the TRON real-time OS family as part of a new computer architecture project. The specifications and sample source codes have been provided openly and freely, facilitating innovations by developers and users. TRON real-time OS family has been adopted worldwide in billions of embedded computer devices, including aerospace and industrial equipment, automotive systems, and home electronics.
Rationale for change.
1st sentence.:
- Added "with partners" to stress the project-wide effort.
- Mentioned "TRON Project" implicitly via "as part of a new computer architecture project". We had to omit its name due to word count limit, but we have to explain the nature of the project.
- Added "and implementing" to "designing" which now reads "designing and implementing".
- The reason for adding "implementing" is that we now say "(sample) source codes" in the second sentence and source code is not exactly designed, but rather the result of implementation (design, edit, test, debug, ...).
2nd sentence.:
- Added "sample" before "source code" since the commercial users do not have to reveal their source code used in real devices thanks to a generous license called T-License. (Version 2.2 as of now)
- Removed "commercial" from "developers and commercial users" since academic users were also very important in the early days of deployment of TRON RTOS family, and even today.
3rd sentence:
- TRON real-time OS family copies have been" is shortened to save words into "TRON real-time OS family has been".
I agree that enumerating the names of target application areas make it easy for lay people to understand what applications benefit from TRON RTOS family.
The proposers have been embedded computer developers themselves, and I am afraid we look through the eyes of seasoned RTOS system developers only.
Also squeezing "openly and freely" in the short citation is very nice since it reflects the philosophy of TRON Project and TRON real-time OS family.
Thank you again for reviewing the citation in detail.
I will change the citation in main proposal shortly.
Regards
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the proposers
Re: Re: further rewording recommendations -- Amy Bix (talk) 18:05, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Many thanks for this clear explanation! Just maybe a few more suggestions to tighten up the wording (having fewer words always makes a plaque look better) - how about
In a 1984 computer architecture project, University of Tokyo researchers, with partners, began designing and implementing the TRON real-time OS family. Specifications and sample source codes were provided openly and freely, facilitating innovations by developers and users. TRON real-time OS family copies have been adopted worldwide in billions of embedded computer devices, including aerospace and industrial equipment, automotive systems, and home electronics.
Explanation - I rearranged the first sentence to tighten up the wording but keep in your "with partners" and "computer architecture project" clauses (I don't think we need "new" in there, since having the word "began" makes it clear that this was a new project....) The committee may also remove 1984 - sometimes there's a feeling that if the date is in the plaque title, then it's not necessary to repeat it.
And in the last sentence, just for grammar reasons, I'm not sure that "TRON real-time OS family has been adopted" works - it reads strangely. So I recommend going back to "TRON real-time OS family copies have been adopted"
thank you again!
Re: Re: Re: further rewording recommendations -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 05:12, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you again for your suggestion.
After looking at the new suggestion, I came up with a modification of the first sentence. The whole paragraph reads like this now.
In 1984, a computer architecture project team at the University of Tokyo began designing the TRON real-time OS family, and helping external partners commercializing it. Specifications and sample source codes were provided openly and freely, facilitating innovations by developers and users. TRON real-time OS family copies have been adopted worldwide in billions of embedded computer devices, including aerospace and industrial equipment, automotive systems, and home electronics.
What do you think? Only the first sentence is modified. Now it is 66 words.
The rationale for this change is given is as follows.
1. A 1984 computer architecture project -> In 1984, a computer architecture project
This is because the project has existed since then up to now.
2. Implementing -> commercializing
“Implement” is easy to understand for RTOS engineers, but may not be so clear to general audience. The rewriting was to make this citation reach more audience. So I wanted to find a better word.
The external members (non-university partners, i.e., commercial enterprise partners of the project) wanted to sell the final product (with program binary, source code, user manual, etc.) , i.e., commercializing it. So I chose the word “commercialize”.
Also, the sentence was modified to make it clear that it was the EXTERNAL partners who did the commercialization, and not the U of Tokyo people. Back in 1984, the University of Tokyo, a government-run university had strict restrictions on the commercial activity by its staff, thus commercialization needed to be done by external parties.
If this looks good, I will modify the citation in the proposal.
Kind regards,
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the proposers.
Re: Re: Re: Re: further rewording recommendations -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 05:36, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
After a correspondence with Dr. Amy Bix, I have decided to update the citation in the proposal. Thank you again for the suggestions to make the citation reach more audience.
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the co-proposers
The Citation Does Not Provide the Meaning of the "TRON" Acronym -- Bberg (talk) 17:52, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
The TRON acronym should be explained in the citation. Modifying the first portion of the first sentence can fix this oversight, and doing so would only increase the word count from 66 to 69:
"In 1984, a computer architecture project team at the University of Tokyo began designing The Real-time Operating system Nucleus (TRON) OS family ..."
Re: The Citation Does Not Provide the Meaning of the "TRON" Acronym -- Zephyrus00jp (talk) 00:01, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing out this oversight. And we are still within 70 words limit.
So the whole citation now reads as follows.
In 1984, a computer architecture project team at the University of Tokyo began designing The Real-time Operating system Nucleus (TRON) OS family, and helping external partners commercializing it. Specifications and sample source codes were provided openly and freely, facilitating innovations by developers and users. TRON real-time OS family copies have been adopted worldwide in billions of embedded computer devices, including aerospace and industrial equipment, automotive systems, and home electronics.
Yes, the words count is 69 words. (I initially put the number "70", but it was caused by my inserting Japanese character, ”（", instead of plain ASCII "(" before "TRON)" which confused MS-WORD of which word count feature I used to check the word counts.)
I will change the citation in the proposal.
Best regards
Chiaki Ishikawa
One of the proposers
Updating the body of the Proposal -- Dmichelson (talk) 16:41, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
This one of a few Milestone proposals in which an expert reviewer's report does a better job of capturing the essence of the achievement than the original proposal did.
Because the proposal serves as the basis of the detailed entry in ETHW, I strongly suggest that the proposal be updated to reflect the clarity and thoroughness of the reviewer's response.
