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T-Engine Enables Ubiquitous Computing 118

Posted by timothy from the does-not-stand-for-turbo dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Japanese-government sponsored research consortium that include five chip makers and 17 other Japanese high-tech firms, has announced that the T-Engine, a ubiquitous computing platform is ready for prime time. The engine is featured in a IEEE Computer Society article (PDF) and discussed more on Windley's Technometria. The system is based on the iTron real-time OS and includes multiple boards for different applications."
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T-Engine Enables Ubiquitous Computing More

T-Engine Enables Ubiquitous Computing

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  • Recycling Great Technology! (Score:3, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:20AM (#12930222)
    It's the return of the Model T engine [modelt.ca]!

  • um? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:21AM (#12930225) Homepage
    So it's an embedded computing platform?

    Ok, if I was a company [like say Motorola] and wanted to make some sort of portable device [say a cellphone perhaps?] I'd take a READILY AVAILABLE ARM core and drop the sucker into my design.

    What really are they offering there other than perhaps a "standard" [though amongst ARM cores there are standards and they use well documented interfaces, etc...]

    Is this just better because it's newer or?

    Tom

    • Re:um? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisumNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:31AM (#12930278) Homepage Journal
      Is this just better because it's newer or?

      its better because its older, not newer. i-tron, and its descendants, are the results of 30 years of computer-science research on ways to get collaborative computing systems into operation.

      the ARM core scenario is derived from the desire to have common platforms being used by multiple, different vendors. it was i-tron which prompted the industry to adopt ARM and similar initiatives, and it is the i-tron philosophy of common cores and platforms which have allowed ARM to flourish in the embedded world in the first place.

      JAVA was an 'Americanization' of the i-tron initiative, only it hasn't had as much success in the embedded world because of the lack of hardware adaptation that i-tron has prompted; at least, with the big Asian chip foundries, anyway, this is true, and we all know that the embedded space is dominated by the Asians ...

      this latest instatnce of the T-Engine is the realization of some very old, honored traditions in the embedded space. the dream of having your microwave oven use your cell phone for that little extra calculation power it needs to get your meringue fluffed right is just one step closer ..
      • I'd really be impressed when thay get a microwave oven to fluff meringue. All this time I've been using a whisk! ;)

        Still, I think it's interesting that things like cell phones are as standard as they are. That old joke about standards beign so great because there are so many to choose from... tends to ring true.

        Of course, the other joke is how standards codify obsolescence. What do you think this will do to hte ability to upgrade later? (Especially things people don't replace every year, like... microwave
        • Standards can be back-compatible, eg Java is a pedantic specification, and has gone 1.0 through 2-3 major upgrades (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.5). PS: hadn't heard the 2nd joke, thanks, a good one.
      • If my microwave oven is using my cell phone for a little extra power then my cell phone is pumping out god damn too much radio waves.

        -
      • we all know that the embedded space is dominated by the Asians

        The first thing that springs to mind is that they're the only ones small enough to fit!

        Well, I was amused.

    • Re:um? (Score:3, Informative)

      by RegularFry ( 137639 )
      So it's an embedded computing platform?
      Nope, it's a standard for implementing a family of embedded computing platforms.

      This is better because it gives you a highly configurable operating system, with all that that implies, on top of your READILY AVAILABLE ARM core. Or an i486. Or any of a small bucketload of other SOC configurations. Anywhere from 8-bit to 32-bit. You get scheduling. You get (soon, I think - can't remember if it's actually in yet) a TCP/IP stack. You get memory management. And mor
    • Except that Motorola has it's own cores based on the PPC. Like everything else it is a trade off. Everyone and their dog can use an ARM core. You get a trade off between time to market and how easy someone can match your features.

  • wtf mate? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by inkdesign ( 7389 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:22AM (#12930236)
    "With any luck your 2007 Toyota Camry and your Mitsubishi food processor will be exchanging recipes in the not too distant future."

    I'd prefer my car stick to driving, thank you.

  • Resistance... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Gandul ( 806695 )
    is futile; all your devices will be assimilated!!

  • Embedded Development (Score:3, Insightful)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:29AM (#12930270) Homepage Journal
    Standards Conformance usually gets cut when doing embedded development if conformance ruins the cost of components or power the device requires.

    I don't think they will be able to get everyone to hew to the party line; there will be too many economic reasons to deviate.

    Otherwise, sounds neat.
    • It sounds like they have some ideas on not just the hardwrae side but on the software and protocols for interoperability. If so, then maybe they are trying to say "Hey do it our way, and here is some hardware. But if you roll your own hardware, license our software." Could be a good strategy.

    • Re:Embedded Development (Score:4, Interesting)

      by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisumNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:36AM (#12930313) Homepage Journal
      I don't think they will be able to get everyone to hew to the party line; there will be too many economic reasons to deviate.

      umm .. take any single Asian-produced cell phone, and at its heart you will find pieces of the i-tron initiative. it has already been proven in this space that there are far, far greater reasons to comply with the party line than to deviate. insta-deviation for the sake of it is anathema to the i-tron initiative; it is this very powerful fact that has resulted in such growth in the Asian core and embedded mfr. market in the first place.

      american electronics/semiconductor giants ridiculed i-tron, and its resulting policies, in the 80's, and Asia has been eating the carcass of former US' manufacturing prowess for lunch. if it weren't for i-tron, philosophically, we wouldn't be buying EUro 5,- MP3 players, made in Taiwan instead of Kansas, at the Aldi checkout lines ..

      if you're a US comp-sci person, and you haven't boned up on i-tron, you've got some history lessons ahead of you. quick, before its too late.
    • Uh, mods? Insightful? Everyone *is* hewing the party line! Well, in Japan, anyway. The whole point of this standard is that it's scalable enough that the component cost can be controlled, and the interoperability gains you get are worth it - as is not having to retrain/retool for a new embedded platform when your design criteria change.

      And yes, it does sound neat.
    • This diagram [sakamura-lab.org] on this page [sakamura-lab.org] shows in general terms how they're addressing this.

  • iTron (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Yjam ( 893817 )
    "TRON, ITRON, and ITRON do not refer to any specific product or products."

    This is from the official TRON website.
    So now... how are they going to sell something based on nothing.

    I too can build and sell the top-notch-most-powerfull stuff ever built.. and I won't be selling it cheap.. oh, of course this would only be theory-reselling.

    I've seen nowhere in TFA that this techno is actually going to be used. Bu anyway, if it's gonna be.. maybe we should all beware of the Attach of the Killer Tomatoes [imdb.com] wh
    • The word UNIX do not refer to any specific product also !
      And are you trying to tell me, that all UNIX based systems are unsignifficant for us ??
      • "And are you trying to tell me, that all UNIX based systems are unsignifficant for us ??"

        Well... UNIX based systems are great of course.

        Try to sell me any piece of hardware and state "that'll work on UNIX", and I'm sure I could drop dead laughing.

        Tell me { it's ok tu use with | it uses } Solaris, Linux, HP-UX,...

    • Re:iTron (Score:2, Insightful)

      by torpor ( 458 )
      So now... how are they going to sell something based on nothing.

      what i think you need to do is recognize the difference between the word 'initiative' and 'implementation'.

      lets take this to another context: Free/Open Source Software.

      F/OSS is an initiative. Linux is an implementation.

      Get the point? iTron is an initiative which has borne much, much fruit. Look around you, find a "Made in Asia" component which contains a computing system. Therein, you will spy aspects of the iTron initiative, undernea
      • TFA: The system is based on the iTron real-time OS

        They clearly state this. but when I have a look into what is iTron [sakamura-lab.org] I don't see anything actual?!? Maybe did I missed something. I'm realy sorry if that's the case, but then can you link to some hard-vaporware.proof(tm) material (actual uses of iTron I mean)?

        Oh, and I got your point about 'initiative' vs 'implementation' of course. What I'm after is an implementation for them to use!

        • Re:iTron (Score:2, Informative)

          by torpor ( 458 )
          check the table headed "Table 4: ITRON-specification kernel implementations".. each one of these companies has an iTron kernel implemented somewhere.

          i myself have personally worked with/reverse engineered the Morson Japan kernels, as these are commonly used in high-end/professional digital audio devices, such as the Yamaha A3000/A4000/A500 samplers, digital mixers, etc.

          iTron is out there, but you really have to pry open the box ..
        • >(actual uses of iTron I mean)? TOYOTA cars : fuel injection control system software and such.
          • (Sorry I hit the submit button instead of Preview button.) > Actual uses of ITRON

            Toyota cars: fuel injection system.

            Many digital cameras including Video camera from Japanese vendors.
            example: Panasonic NV-GS150.

            Probably more than 90% of mobile phones used for NTT DoCoMo (large mobile phone carrier) service.

            Many automobile audio/audio equipment e.g. Toyota GBOOK-compatible DVD voice navigation system.

            Printers /FAX machines /Copiers

            One problem associated with the tracking of the use o

    • I think 1 thing needs to be pointed out - T-Engine does not use ITRON. It used a real-time kernel called the "T-Kernel" which is also an open spec like ITRON. The T-Kernel spec is inspired by the ITRON spec, but there are differences. When ITRON was created, certain features (like virtual memory) were not considered important enough to include (for that generation of products), but the T-Kernel does move in that direction. ITRON was (is) an OS spec that was created by an industry consortium and adopted

  • hmmmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by new death barbie ( 240326 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:36AM (#12930307)

    if there aren't security and privacy implications, you're probably not doing anything very fun.


    I think I used to date this guy...

  • ob. link (Score:3, Informative)

    by pario ( 675744 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:36AM (#12930317)
    As always, the TRON Web [super-nova.co.jp] is the most valuable source of infomation on the TRON project in English.
    You can find some good articles on the T-Engine platform here [super-nova.co.jp].
    • Actually, if you are looking for information in English for the T-Engine, TRONWeb (already linked) is just one source. The other is http://www.onghu.com/te/ [onghu.com] which is a new site, but with good links (IMHO) to introductory material and recommended reading. I hope to add more information in the coming weeks!

      Cheers, ..o.

      p.s I maintain the site, so this is a bit of a shamelss plug.
  • I've been waiting for a system of this calibre to come along for quite a while. To me, the T-Engine specification, along with iTron, is a tool that can revolutionize how we look at our daily life. For some, it means that they may not have to worry about having to leave their PC to make coffee during a Gentoo install. This specification can and will change the way we look at how we view computers in our daily lives. This is the age of the computer, plain and simple. This system will make computers an even more important, and more critical part of our daily lives.
    • You're probably going to run out of water, so you will have to leave your computer.

      And wouldn't it be nice to get up and take a break while you're pouring heat into the envirionment and wasting CPU cycles? Its not like Gentoo needs much interaction during the install.
    • I have been waiting for a 3-in-one pizza oven/PC/beer-cooler.
      Use the excess heat from the CPU to cook that pizza, and ramp up the cooling system to keep my cans nice n frosty.

      "Looks like we've got company arriving tonight"
      "sure thing, I'll play another couple of levels of Half-life to get the oven nice n hot!"
  • Over a decade ago, Transputers were supposed to revolutionize how we compute, but they unfortunately went nowhere. I had actually wanted to get involved with them, porting over a ray-tracing platform I was developing at the time.

    Oh well, dream on...

  • Commerical and criminal abuse of this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @07:44AM (#12930350)
    When everything is networked, the potential for commercial and criminal abuses becomes that much higher.
    1. A phisher sends a small worm to your stereo, the stereo asks the user to re-input the password on the DRM system, the phisher collects that password and uses it to re-sell all your music (possibly making you lose the right to listen to it). Even at $0.02/song and a 5,000 song collection, the phisher gets $100 per cracked stereo.
    2. Phishers attack one, low-level device hoping that the phished password from that device is also used on other, more important devices. How many people might use the same password on their stereo's DRM system, their refrigerator's automatic reordering system, their car's ignition system, or their bank's online account access?
    3. Spams starts arriving on ALL audio devices -- audio pop-ups ("audiups"?) start intruding on iPODs, VOIP phones, stereos. Worse, the infection could attack anything with a sound chip. Imagine suggestive Viagra ads coming from your pop-up toaster oven.
    4. A sleazy marketer buys access to or plants spyware in your vehicle's navigation system. You start getting pop-ups for oil-lube places or the database of locations of competitors becomes corrupted misleading the driver on their location.
    5. Digital cameras become spam-sending zombies. Anyone who walks within bluetooth range of you suddenly finds an image file on their device that contains an ad for whatever is the latest spam du jour.
    6. ...... I'm sure there are a million other scenarios, but its early and my coffee hasn't sunk in.
    The point: Cool technology, but I wonder if the core OS has needed security layers to prevent exploits like these. I wonder if the systems designers have embedded a strong sense of permissions on processes and interfaces.
    • Have we learned nothing from the new Battlestar Galactica? If you have everything networked then the Cylons we will build in the future will throw the Super-Robot equivalent of a temper tantrum and turn all our devices against us. Honey, I don't think we need the i-Tron equipped vibrator.
    • Maybe a simple solution would be to have embedded bio-identification systems. Devices like a small fingerprint scanner could be used in order to power up a head unit in a car or as the start button on a microwave...
    • Security has been considered and is to be provided using a piece of hardware called eTRON. eTRON can be used for encrypting communications, digital IDs, and even monetary transactions like tickets, etc. Every T-Engine platform is equipped with an eTRON interface (Standard, micro, nano, pico) so that security in the system should be transparent to the system designer.

      Take a look through the Overview of T-Engine:
      http://www.t-engine.org/english/whatis.html [t-engine.org]

      If you're keen to find out more, the main links:
  • I've been hearing about the TRON project for something like 20 years now, starting with the TRON microprocessor... the ultimate CISC. We're talking about a processor that has "insert a record into a doubly linked list" as a fundamental instruction. And they're still pushing this super-CISC as an improvement over RISC.

    Has anyone outside MITI actually done an objective comparison of TRON with any contemporary RISC? The examples I've seen are ludicrous... comparisons "proving" that TRON is faster than RISC by comparing individual highly specialised TRON instructions with a straightforward unoptimized translation of the same code to an unspecified RISC processor. They don't even do any common subexpression elimination... who would write code like this?
    MOV @(RDQ_TBL+4,R2*8),Rn
    MOV R1,@(RDQ_TBL+4,R2*8)
    MOVA @(RDQ_TBL,R2*8),@(R1,FOR)
    MOV Rn,@(R1,BACK)
    MOV R1,@(Rn,FOR)
    http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/tronvlsicpu.html [super-nova.co.jp]

    • Benchmark It! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Dareth ( 47614 )
      You and the anonymous coward ubergeek who replied to this need to settle this once and for all.

      Benchmark Quake on these for a DEFINATIVE answer as to the superior machine.

      Stupid geek techno babble doesn't impress the ladies as much as a good frag!
    • It's an academic boondoggle that has enough support to keep it alive, but not enough to actually keep it up to date. Implementations of it, like T-engine, feel like circa 1990 era SDKs, particularly if you want to write actual user applications (you know, if you have a job) rather than low level drivers. For the most glaring example, there is no way (in the SDK that I have, at least) for process-based user applications to write to the screen. None. Yes, I'm serious. The one example in the SDK that atte
      • Um, if you wnat to create a GUI application on the T-Engine platform, you are supposed to use middleware programs such as PMC T-Shell Development Kit [personal-media.co.jp] (screenshot in PDF [personal-media.co.jp]) that runs on top of T-Kernel. This development kit is a direct descendant of the BTRON operating system and still rather primitive, but the situation is not as bad as you portrayed it to be in your post.
        • We only differ in our interpretations of just how bad that makes the situation. Seriously, life's too short - and there are too many well featured alternative platforms - to deal with that kind of insanity.
          • Actually, if you use an embedded operating system like MicroC/OS-II, you would have to do the same - write the driver for the screen to have access to it!

            Yes, there are options - you could use an RTOS that came with the GUI. But, then you could also use T-Engine (the complete kit) which comes with enough examples and a screen driver that lets you write to it.

            But that said, the T-Engine kit comes with drivers for touch panel, LCD screen, RS232, PCMCIA, USB host, USB mass storage and CF storage. The kit l
    • Arrgg... My poor little eyes. I'm blind! all this yellow...

      who would write code like this?
      Letme guess... those who program for TRON? ;)
    • Well, the TRONCHIP subproject is considered to be dead for quite a while, or at least so I read. The last TRONCHIP to be produced was the Gmicro/400 [google.com], which came out in 1994.
    • As I understand it, Japanese companies in Japan (as against their overseas offices) embraced ITRON (and micro-ITRON) as their RTOS of choice. As a result, most of your consumer electronics today (since many come from Japan) run ITRON or micro-ITRON. NTT Docomo phones run ITRON and most recently, I saw a phone from BenQ at CommunicAsia 2005 in Singapore that runs ITRON.

      While *TRON was all about specifications, it somehow enabled the Japanese companies to use a "software platform" that was created in conj
  • Although it will be tough to get the T-Engine out of the Hive...

  • Nobody cares about TRON outside of Japan (Score:4, Informative)

    by heli_flyer ( 614850 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @08:10AM (#12930488)
    I used to work at Hitachi America so I know about TRON/iTRON/microITRON/etc. It's this weird, baroque API that's non-POSIX and not standard C library compatible. Kind of like an extreme example of Not-Invented-Here syndrome. For some reason Hitachi Japan thought everyone wanted it without realizing that nobody outside Japan cared about it. We kinda tried to humor them..."sure, we will distribute microITRON if customers ask for it".
    • It's this weird, baroque API that's non-POSIX and not standard C library compatible.

      That's not necessarily bad. Particularly in embedded systems, where most of the resources POSIX and stdio manage (files, virtual address spaces, etc) don't exist. Real-time programming deals with an environment more like the internals of the UNIX kernel than userspace, which is why things like microkernels are so attractive even if they don't directly make implementing a POSIX environment any easier... what they do is crea

  • And only because of the T-Name. Deutsche Telekom "T-Com" (german previously state-owned telecom company) will most likely sue [heise.de] them [heise.de].

    Hopefully they don't use magenta [heise.de] in their official announcement. :-)

    (Caution, links in german language)

  • TRON is in decline (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Tuesday June 28, 2005 @09:16AM (#12931065) Homepage

    I can remember when the cool parts of TRON were still going -- the bTRON desktop, which had its own hyper-ergonomic keyboard with about eight shift keys, and the TRON charset which included Unicode and Mojikyou, so you could actually have a fair shot at representing old Asian texts on a computer without using image files for the characters.

    Now, only the embedded iTRON part of the project is left. And it's been very successful -- I think at one point it was the most-used OS in the world, although to someone from a Linux/standard C background it seems kind of weird. But there's seriously no news here -- T-Engine is the attempt of the TRON project to remain relevant now that hardware can run embedded Linux or Windows or Symbian and what have you, and it's too little too late.

    TRON rocked once, and for industrial robot arm controllers and what have you maybe it still does, but it's never going to break into the IT world now.

  • UID (Score:2)

    by mattr ( 78516 )
    You may be more interested about a related project, ubiquitious id also by Ken Sakamura, at the uID Center [uidcenter.org].
  • check here: http://www2.t-engine.org/bbs/ [t-engine.org]

    Now it is in Japanese. English and Chinese version will be available in future.
  • Looks like a lot (300+) of companies have shelled out at least a 100k yen ($900) to join the industry consortium:

    http://www.t-engine.org/english/member.html [t-engine.org]

  • I know what the word Ubiquitous means.
    I know what the word Computing means.

    But what does it mean when you put them together?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Hmmm. BeOS seems to have an interesting file system and GUI, but the OS underneath is a bit language-specific and hoggy for my taste. How about implementing BeFS and the BeOS GUI on top of TRON? You could call it "Beatron" and finally have an OS that's got enough pop-culture references to achieve a kind of pop-Zen perfection and eliminate Microsoft.
    • I think it does merit a individual topic.

      "Off beat OS" category might fit the needs :-)

      No, I didn't the phrase first. A VMware engineer who helped me in running a version of BTRON-specfication desktop OS (mentioned in the above post) inside VMware running under x86 Linux used the phrase during e-mail exchange as in "an off beat OS like this one helps us in locating dormant bugs."

      Seriously, since TRON project produced many results (not only OS,) a broader category name may be necessary.

      "Less known

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