TRON Project

TRON (acronym for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus) is an open real-time operating system kernel design. The project was started by Prof. Dr. Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo in 1984. The project's goal is to create an ideal computer architecture and network, to provide for all of society's needs.

The Industrial TRON (ITRON) derivative was one of the world's most used operating systems in 2003, being present in billions of electronic devices such as cellphones, appliances and even cars. The operating system is mainly used by Japanese companies, although interest in ITRON is growing worldwide. However, it has been said that there is much misinformation in the English speaking world about TRON due to the majority of the documentation being in Japanese.

The TRON project was integrated into T-Engine Forum in 2010.

TRON itself does not specify the source code for the kernel, but instead is a "set of interfaces and design guidelines" for creating the kernel. This allows different companies to create their own versions of TRON, based on the specifications, which can be suited for different microprocessors.

While the specification of TRON is publicly available, implementations can be proprietary at the discretion of the implementor.

The TRON framework defines a complete architecture for the different computing units:

In 1984, the TRON project was officially launched. In 1985, NEC announced the first ITRON implementation based on the ITRON/86 specification. In 1986, the TRON Kyogikai (unincorporated TRON Association) was established, Hitachi announced its ITRON implementation based on the ITRON/68K specification, and the first TRON project symposium is held. In 1987,Fujitsu announced an ITRON implementation based on the ITRON/MMU specification, Mitsubishi Electric announced an ITRON implementation based on the ITRON/32 specification, and Hitachi introduced the Gmicro/200 32bit microprocessor based on the TRON VLSI CPU specification. In 2004, the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara mentioned "TRON was once killed by the former Minister of International Trade and Industry, Hashimoto, because he was at that time under the pressure of United States." This story is supported by an article on a website dedicated to the TRON Project, citing Microsoft's lobbying against it. The result was the threat of a Super-301 (complete stop of import based on section 301 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988) against everything related to TRON. This led to many companies dropping TRON in fear to lose the possibility to export to the United States.

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