2025 TRON Symposium-TRONSHOW- "TRON X AI 2" has begun accepting pre-registrations for attendees.
https://www.tronshow.org/index-e.html

The TRON Forum has redesigned its "IEEE Milestone" page to commemorate the awarding of two IEEE Milestones: "TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984" in October 2023 and "The Pioneering TRON Intelligent House, 1989" in November 2024. Please take a look.
https://www.tron.org/ieee-milestones/

TRON Programming Contest 2025

Win your share of five million yen in our AI and RTOS innovation contest, featuring an IEEE Milestone RTOS with a 60% global market share

TRON Forum (Chair: Ken Sakamura, Professor Emeritus, the University of Tokyo) will hold “TRON Programming Contest 2025” (hereafter, “this Contest”) from Tuesday, January 21, 2025. Total amount of prizes is five million Japanese YEN. There are multiple submission categories, and a Grand Prize, Excellence Awards, and Special Awards will be awarded for each submission category.

This Contest is for engineers and students from Japan and overseas to compete in the fields of microprocessor applications, middleware, development environment, and tools using "µT-Kernel 3.0"(※), the world standard TRON RTOS.

The theme of this Contest is “TRON × AI — Utilizing AI.” We look forward to receiving your innovative submissions that incorporate AI technology. This Contest will be held in special collaboration with STMicroelectronics K.K. and Renesas Electronics, and in cooperation with Infineon Technologies K.K. and Personal Media Corporation, etc. This Contest also receives technical co-sponsorship from the IEEE Consumer Technology Society West Japan Joint Chapter. For the details on this Contest, please visit the following website.

TRON Programming Contest 2025
https://www.tron.org/programming_contest-2025/

(※) μT-Kernel 3.0 is an RTOS that is fully compatible with the "IEEE 2050-2018" standard for RTOSs adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and it runs on microprocessors from various manufacturers. It is a member of TRON Real-time OS family which was recognized as an IEEE Milestone in 2023.

Comment of Ken Sakamura, Chair of TRON Forum

On the occasion of the “TRON Programming Contest 2025,” we have set a new theme of “TRON × AI — Utilizing AI.”
Embedded systems are currently at a major turning point. In the past, embedded systems have been only required to execute their predetermined functions accurately. However, the advancement of AI is changing this situation. We are entering an age when embedded systems are also required to adapt to the environment, learn, and make smarter decisions.

μT-Kernel 3.0 has been used worldwide as a real-time OS for embedded systems that is fully compliant with IEEE international standard. How can we use AI on this OS to create new value? This is not just a technical challenge, but also a challenge to figure out how the new embedded systems should be in the age of the IoT and edge computing.

In this contest, contestants can use the latest microprocessor boards from the special cooperating companies and cooperating companies. By combining the hardware with μT-Kernel 3.0, various possibilities can be expanded, such as AI processing on the edge side and collaboration between cloud AI and edge nodes. We are looking forward to innovative ideas from contestants that go beyond conventional embedded systems.

The advancement of technology is accelerated by the creativity of the people who use it. We hope that this contest will be a place where excellent ideas are born that will show the shape of the next generation of embedded systems.

Contact

Nobuyuki Kashiwa and Hiroyuki Yamada, TRON Forum
+81-3-5437-0572 / press@tron.org

Overview of the "TRON Programming Contest 2025" (Tentative)

Schedule

Registration entry period: from Tuesday, January 21, 2025 to Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Program submission period: from Friday, May 30, 2025 to Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Awards ceremony: December 2025 (TBD)

What are called for

Programs in the fields of applications, middleware, development environment, and tools using "µT-Kernel 3.0," the world standard TRON real-time OS (RTOS) and the latest microprocessor boards provided by four major microprocessor manufacturers. Contestants will compete in technologies that bring out the characteristics of RTOSs, such as real-time performance, power saving, and small memory footprint, as well as development environments, tools, etc. that take advantage of new technologies.
The theme of the Contest in 2025 is “TRON × AI — Utilizing AI.” We look forward to receiving your innovative submissions that incorporate AI technology.

Selection

Judging meeting will be held by the following judges.

Chief Judge
Ken Sakamura (Chair of TRON Forum, IEEE Life Fellow / Golden Core Member, IEEE Computer Society, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo)

Judges
Takashi Goto (Infineon Technologies Japan K.K.)
Paolo Oteri (STMicroelectronics K.K)
Akihiro Kuroda (Renesas Electronics Corporation)
Akira Matsui (Personal Media Corporation)

Prizes

Total amount of prizes is five million Japanese YEN.

• There will be a Grand Prize, Excellence Awards, and Special Awards for each submission category.

Eligibility

• Those who agree to the Application Rules.
• Any party including individuals, groups and corporations.
• There is no restriction on nationality, age, resident area, etc. Minor applicants shall obtain the permission of the guardian.

Application Procedures

Details on entry requirements and application procedures will be announced on the contest website.

Contest website URL

https://www.tron.org/programming_contest-2025/

Details

Organizer
TRON Forum

Special Cooperation
STMicroelectronics K.K.
Renesas Electronics Corporation

Technology Co-sponsorship
IEEE Consumer Technology Society West Japan Joint Chapter

Cooperation
INIAD collaboration Hub for University and Business (cHUB), Toyo University / Infineon Technologies Japan / Personal Media Corporation / Ubiquitous Computing Technology Corporation / Japan Embedded Systems Technology Association

The year 2024 marked the 40th anniversary of TRON Project since its inception in 1984. In that memorable year, we had the honor of “The Pioneering TRON Intelligent House, 1989” being recognized as an IEEE Milestone. This achievement of TRON Project has been recognized as an IEEE Milestone, which TRON Project received for two consecutive years following the year 2023's "TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984." The project's approaches, both from the bottom-up infrastructure technology and top-down application requirements have been highly evaluated. The TRON Intelligent House, built in 1989, was an experimental house that pursued energy saving and comfort by implementing a comprehensive home equipment control system using computers, which was a groundbreaking development 35 years ago. I am very proud that its historical value has been recognized internationally. Last fall, I was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, in recognition of my many years of research contributions to computer science in Japan. I would like to express my sincere gratitude for your warm support over the years.

Last December, we moved the venue of the annual TRON Symposium to Shibuya PARCO DG Building in Shibuya City, Tokyo, and renewed the exhibition format, focusing on presentations in seminar style, using the hybrid symposium as baseline. In addition, TRON Forum held the "TRON Programming Contest" in collaboration with four major microcomputer manufacturers in 2024. The 2nd TRON Programming Contest will be held this year. In the past, many embedded systems were developed as products that operated independently, but now that we have entered the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), where all kinds of devices are connected to networks, embedded system engineers are required to have new skills. Through this contest, we would like to support embedded system engineers to update their skills and hope to expand the new possibilities of the IoT.

Thus, the approaches of TRON Project have the potential to address today's social issues. Due to last year's “hottest summer in recorded history,” even in Japan, where there has been less concern about climate change than in Europe and the United States, people are becoming more aware of the threat of climate change. The 2023 TRON Symposium looked at the deployment from digital transformation (DX) to green transformation (GX), and was held under the theme of “DX2GX." And the theme for last year's TRON Symposium was "AI X TRON." Due to the rapid advances of AI, there are concerns about an increase in energy consumption in data centers. However, if an ideal combination of the popularization of the IoT technology and the progress of AI can be achieved, it could be the key to maintaining a comfortable lifestyle while also making the global environment sustainable.

In order to meet the demands of the current era, we will continue to work on further technological innovation, making use of our 40 years of experience and achievements. TRON Project will continue to strive to contribute to society in terms of both infrastructure and applied technologies. Thank you all for your continuing support.

Ken Sakamura

Thank you very much for attending the 2024 TRON Symposium-TRONSHOW-'AI X TRON'.

This year's TRON Symposium will review the achievements of the past 40 years, and discuss the new possibilities that TRON Project will open up through its fusion with AI. The symposium is an opportunity to share the past, present, and future prospects of TRON Project through the keynote speech and each session.

https://www.tronshow.org/index-e.html

Happy New Year. Thank you for your continuing support for TRON Project and best wishes to all of you for the new year.

As the title of this e-mail suggests, the year 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of TRON Project since its inception. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many people who have supported TRON Project. Thank you very much.

On this 40th anniversary year, TRON Project received the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Technology Award from the IEEE and an IEEE Milestone.

The IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Technology Award recognizes outstanding contributions in the field of consumer electronics technology. About 35 awards have been issued. In the past, many outstanding engineers have received the award, including Ray Dolby, Martin Cooper, Linus Torvalds and Steve Wozniak.

Furthermore, I feel that the awarding of the IEEE Milestone is a great honor for TRON Project as a whole. This milestone is awarded to an international invention, product, or project in recognition of its industrialization and long-term contribution to society. A commemorative nameplate is given and installed forever, and I deeply feel the weight of it. (it weighs about 10 kilograms actually). There are about 240 IEEE milestones in all, commemorating achievements rather than individuals, and ENIAC, for example, has been awarded in the computer field.

At the TRON Symposium ─ TRONSHOW which is held every December, the people involved were invited to speak at the special session "Significance of IEEE Milestone Award Commemoration," which was held on the first day.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone who has supported us in receiving these international recognitions, and we would like to thank everyone who has given us tremendous support since the early days of TRON Project.

Forty years have passed since we first began aiming for the world of the IoT, and TRON Project is now evolving toward the new possibilities of AI + IoT with the advent of generative AI.

As AI + IoT advances, there is a demand for higher performance of individual edges, but if this is simply linked to the expansion of computing resources at the edge, the more AI + IoT advances, the more it will consume global resources in society as a whole. With this in mind, the theme of this symposium was "DX2GX ̶ The Future of Carbon Neutral Society Envisioned by ICT."

In the keynote speech, I talked about the potential contribution of ICT to measures against climate change, with a view to further technological innovation and future prospects. TRON Project has long advocated the IoT-Aggregator model as one candidate for technological innovation. Rather than unnecessarily increasing the performance of the edge, TRON Project separates the functions that are always necessary from those that are necessary in limited situations, and if advanced processing is required for the latter in particular, it is externalized via the network.

In realizing the ideal of this IoT-Aggregator model, it is necessary to increase the number of possible connections between devices and cloud by an order of magnitude, while simultaneously reducing network power consumption and communication latency by an order of magnitude. This can be achieved with "IOWN," an all-optical network. Mr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, Senior Vice President of NTT, introduced the IOWN in detail at this symposium. By combining IOWN, which has dramatic performance compared to current networks, with 1/100th the power consumption, 125 times the transmission bandwidth, and 1/200th the latency, with the TRON OSs, which excels in real-time performance, the edge will have minimal safety and communication functions only in the future--a "thin edge," so to speak.

The symposium also featured a session with the winners of the "Daiwa House Industry Open Data Challenge for Smart Logistics," and a session introducing the "Open Data Platform for Public Transportation and Digital Vitalization of Local Economy" with Mr. Katsumi Ise, Executive Vice President, East Japan Railway Company (JR East), and Mr. Manabu Miyasaka, Vice Governor, Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Many people's attention was drawn to these sessions and others.

In September 2023, "The Ministry for the Future," a climate change science fiction with my commentary, was published by Personal Media Corporation, an Executive Committee member of TRON Forum. I spoke about the technology and social institutions that appear in "The Ministry for the Future" as a starting point for topics in my keynote speech at the symposium. Since the publication of the original book by Kim Stanley Robinson in October 2020, this climate change science fiction has been mentioned as "one of the must-read books" by former U.S. President Barack Obama and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. At the symposium, through "GX Session ─ The Ministry for the Future," the evolution of embedded systems and the IoT required for Green Transformation (GX) and the role expected of Digital Transformation (DX) were discussed by Kaoru Kuwata, Executive Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and, Toshihiro Ohnuma, Japan Lead, Geo Partnerships, Google LLC.

In addition, TRON Forum opened TRON Programming Contest on December 11, 2023. This is a programming contest for engineers and students from Japan and abroad to compete in the fields of microprocessor applications, middleware, development environment, and tools using μT-Kernel 3.0. The contest will be held with special cooperation from four major microprocessor manufacturers.: Infineon Technologies K.K., STMicroelectronics K.K., NXP Semiconductors, and Renesas Electronics. The contest also receives technical co-sponsorship from the IEEE Consumer Technology Society West Japan Joint Chapter.

Ten microprocessor boards from each of the four special cooperating companies and micro:bits (50 in total) are available. Microprocessor boards will be given to the entrants who have been selected after the screening of the submitted plans. These microprocessor boards shall be used to develop the entries. TRON Forum will accept entry applications until Sunday, March 31, 2024. If you are up to the task, please visit the special contest webpage and take advantage of this opportunity to enter the contest.

In just one year since its full-scale release, generative AI is impacting all industries on a global scale. Faculty of Information Networking for Innovation And Design (INIAD), Toyo University where I serve as dean, has already fostered many young students in the new technology by making ChatGPT freely available to all students. In TRON Project, we would like to work with people who are proficient in these new technologies to see how embedded systems can contribute to addressing climate change and energy issues.

Thank you all for your continuing support of TRON Project this year.

January 1, 2024

TRON Forum will particpate in "2023 TRON Symposium - TRONSHOW".
Please click here to visit pre-registration page.

TRON Forum (Chair Ken Sakamura, IEEE Life Fellow/IEEE Computer Society Golden Core Member, Dean of Faculty of Information Networking for Innovation and Design, Toyo University Director, YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo ) is pleased to announce that TRON RTOS family, has been recognized as IEEE Milestone by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

An IEEE Milestone recognizes a significant technical achievement that occurred at least twenty-five years ago in an area of technology represented in IEEE.

The official name of the Milestone is "TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984." The TRON project was started in 1984 by a computer architecture project team and its partners under the leadership Ken Sakamura at the University of Tokyo. This is an open innovation project, which was rare at the time, to establish an efficient development environment for embedded systems in anticipation of the era when what we now call the IoT environment becomes commonplace. The TRON real-time OS family was planned, researched, and developed as the core of this development environment. This OS is widely used and continues to improve and evolve. The specification of a family member, µT-Kernel 2.0, has been adopted as an IEEE standard (2050-2018).

The Milestone citation 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 commercialize it. Specifications and sample source code 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.

"IEEE Milestone recognition is a great honor for the project and its members and users of the TRON RTOS family who have produced numerous products that are part of our daily living and social infrastructure. I am delighted that our activity of TRON Project is recognized this way," Sakamura stated on this occasion.

Under Sakamura's leadership, TRON Forum will continue to provide, improve, and promote the TRON RTOS family, their development and network environment that support them so that they can be used easily in consumer markets. The Forum would like to thank the members and partners for their past cooperation and continued support in future promotional activities.

Milestone plaque dedication ceremony is being planned this fall at the University of Tokyo campus where the plaque will be permanently displayed.

About IEEE

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. Through its highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, professional and educational activities, IEEE is the trusted voice in a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers, and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power, and consumer electronics. Learn more at https://www.ieee.org

About IEEE Milestone

The IEEE Milestones in Electrical Engineering and Computing program honors significant technical achievements in all areas associated with IEEE. It is a program of the IEEE History Committee, administered through the IEEE History Center. Milestones recognize the technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity found in unique products, services, seminal papers and patents.

IEEE established the Milestones Program in 1983 in conjunction with the 1984 Centennial Celebration to recognize the achievements of the Century of Giants who formed the profession and technologies represented by IEEE.

Each milestone recognizes a significant technical achievement that occurred at least twenty-five years ago in an area of technology represented in IEEE and having at least regional impact. To date, more than two hundred thirty Milestones have been approved and dedicated around the world.
Learn more at https://ieeemilestones.ethw.org/Main_Page 

About TRON Project

TRON Project is a computer architecture development project by collaboration of industry and academia and started in 1984. Ken Sakamura (IEEE Life Fellow/IEEE Computer Society Golden Core Member, Dean of Faculty of Information Networking for Innovation And Design (INIAD), Toyo University / Director of YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory) is the project leader and the project has conducted research and development activities in RTOSs for embedded systems, their development environment, the IoT network and other topics.

The architecture, the achievement of this project, has been widely used in embedded systems in various industries ranging from consumer products such as automobile engine control, digital cameras, smartphones, etc., to industrial products including the machine control inside factories. TRON Project has proposed and promoted Open Architecture since its inception. TRON Project actively suggests standard specifications to international standardization associations such as ITU-T, ISO, and IEEE SA, and contributes to the international standardization of the infrastructure technology.

There is an NPO, TRON Forum that promotes the activities of TRON Project. For details of the project, please see its website.
https://www.tron.org/

About TRON Open Architecture

TRON Project has proposed and promoted Open Architecture since its inception. In its vision, computers based on open architecture will be embedded into many devices, and realize the IoT networking environment that supports our lives.

The results of TRON Project such as the whole source codes of TRON RTOSs including T-Kernel and μT-Kernel are published, and can be copied and modified. These outputｓ have been recognized as important element of “TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984” as IEEE Milestone.

International Standardization Activity by TRON Project

In addition to making open specification and open source code available, TRON Project actively suggests standard specification to international standardization associations such as ITU-T, ISO, and IEEE SA, and contributes to the international standardization of the infrastructure technology.

“IEEE 2050-2018 - IEEE Standard for a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) for Small-Scale Embedded Systems” was based on the specification of μT-Kernel 2.0, an RTOS developed by TRON Forum. The latest version, μT-Kernel 3.0, conforms to IEEE 2050-2018 completely. This again is an important element of “TRON Real-time Operating System Family, 1984” as IEEE Milestone.

TRON Project has proposed an identification system, ucode, for identifying many devices and data in the IoT age, and a code system based on it has become ITU-T Recommendations. (Y.4804/H.642.1. The project has contributed to the standardization of related standards, ITU-T Y.4551/F.771, Y.4802/H.642.2.）

• Press release (PDF)