WHAT'S NEW−ARCHIVE 2003/June

Regular Ordinary General Meeting and Officer Appointments

The TRON Association held its 15th regular general meeting on June 13. Documents such as the last year's annual business plan report and accounting result for revenues and expenditures were approved without modification. This new year's fiscal-year business plan and budgetary plan include commitment to training of real-time OS technical specialists in the near term, development of advanced IT solutions, research and surveys on trends in technology, and promotion of the application of the TRON specification multi-character OS in the IT field. These also have been adopted without modification. Officers were also elected at the general meeting. New appointments are as follows: as chairman, Naoyuki Akigusa, president of Fujitsu Ltd.; as deputy chairman, Hideo Inayoshi, executive managing director of Renesas Technologies Corporation; and as managing director, Takao Nakano.

ITRON Specification Study Group 2003 Programs

In FY2003, the ITRON Specification Study Group will conduct the following activities. - Preparing the final Device Driver Design Guidelines report, as well as sample drivers. - TRON Portability Study Group activities (a joint project with the T-Engine Project) - Investigating the possibility of standardization of dynamic update functions based on specifications implemented in TOPPERS/IDL - Publication of the English specifications of the μITRON4.0 Memory Protection Function Extension - Researching these other proposed topics 　 - C++API specifications 　 - IPv6 compatibility of TRON TCP/IP API specifications 　 - Time protection 　 - Component-based software design 　 - Multi-core support We encourage the reader to participate in standardization programs for the ITRON specification.

T-Engine (t101) Board Powered by a Toshiba TX Series RISC Processor

Toshiba Corporation and Toshiba Information Systems (Japan)Corporation has been preparing this T-engine board for release in close cooperation with each other. The t101 conforms to the standard T-Engine specification and supports the upcoming series of T-Engine middleware and hardware. It also provides a way to take advantage of the variety of middleware and drivers expected from Toshiba Information Systems. The board will be exhibited at ESEC 2003 and released toward the end of the third quarter of 2003. Toshiba Information Systems (Japan) Corporation: http://sies.tjsys.co.jp/

Activities of the TRON Association North American Liaison Office

Since July 2002, Accelerated Technology (the Embedded Systems Division of Mentor Graphics) has been charged with handling the business of the North American Liaison Office of the TRON Association. Serving as staff are Neil Henderson as director, Kyle Craig as manager, and Yuri Yoshida as coordinator. The Liaison Office handles promotional activities for the TRON Project and is currently involved in the following: - Showcasing T-Engine and ITRON at North American trade shows. - Building the network for establishing the North American chapter(representing the TRON Association in North America) and taking steps to transform it into a working organization. The office has undertaken aggressive programs since last July with the following results, to name just a few. - Designing a new promotional logo - Producing an English version of a brief introductory pamphlet on the TRON Project - Creating a promotional video for advertizing the TRON Project (CD version) - Launching a website for the North American Liaison Office of the TRON Association (at http://www.na.assoc.tron.org/) - Representing the TRON Project in an exhibit at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) 2003 - Organizing the North American TRON Conference The office is strengthening partnerships with members who have developed business in North America, while focusing efforts on greater local penetration of the TRON Project. We appreciate the collaboration, support, and guidance of parties concerned.

On the Real-Time OS Trend Survey

At Embedded Technology 2002, held from November 20th to 22nd, Japan System House Association and the TRON Association conducted a questionnaire-based survey on embedded system technology and market trends by interviewing developers of embedded systems who attended. The survey, which has been given every year since FY1996, targets the current nature of embedded system development technology, challenges and key criteria for real-time OS, and usage trends for OS based on the ITRON Specification. This year, the results indicated that the ITRON Specification serves as the basis for 42.6% of real-time operating system APIs, clearly demonstrating steady growth in the use of ITRON-specification operating systems. Survey results are scheduled to be published on the TRON Association website.

Karaoke Microphone from Matsushita Uses the TOPPERS/JSP Kernel

The Do!Karaoke microphone from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. incorporates the TOPPERS/JSP OS Kernel, which is based on the ITRON4.0 OS specification. The microphone (model SY-MK7) accepts SD Memory Cards. After users simply insert an SD Memory Card with songs and image data and connect the microphone to a television or vehicle-mounted monitor, the microphone is ready for karaoke fun. All the functions of a regular karaoke machine - including scoring and tone control - are available in a device the size of a microphone. http://panasonic.jp/music/select/dokaraoke/