ITRON Newsletter No. 44 (HTML Edition)

ITRON Open Seminar

As of this writing, plans were being made for the ITRON Open Seminar on July 4 and 5 (Tuesday and Wednesday). The location this year is Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Center) and Tokyo Fashion Town Building, both in Ariake, Tokyo. The ITRON Open Seminar is held each year to introduce the very latest news about the ITRON specifications, including implementations and uses, as well as development tools being made available. As of last year the event was expanded from one day to two.

The first day (Tuesday July 4) has been set aside for seminars presenting updates on the ITRON Project. The second day (Wednesday July 5) is for giving detailed expositions of ITRON specifications and for introducing the results of the JCG project. The first and second days can be applied for separately, with separate fees for each day.

Overview of first day program

The morning session on the first day presents a status update on the ITRON Project. Special attention is being given to the validation service planned for the µITRON4.0 specification, including a detailed look at the validation specifications. The afternoon session starts off with a panel discussion on making use of upstream design tools in real-time and embedded systems, and on the involvement of the ITRON Project in such tools, which are expected to assume growing importance. The session following is for introducing development tools supporting products and operating systems adopting the ITRON specifications, and for presenting development cases applying an ITRON-specification OS. The first day closes as in past years with a special guest speech by TRON Project leader Ken Sakamura, followed by a reception.

Date: Tuesday, July 4, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (reception following)

Place: Tokyo Big Sight Conference Hall, 6th floor (Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo)

Capacity: 250 persons

Admission (including tax):

TRON Association members: 5,000 yen

General public: 8,000 yen

Students: 5,000 yen

*Includes attendance at reception (advance reservation required)

Program:

10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Update on ITRON Project work

Kiichiro Tamaru, Hiroaki Takada (ITRON Committee)

1:00 to 2:45 p.m. Panel Discussion: Upstream design tools effective for real-time systems? (tentative)

(panel members to be announced)

3:00 to 5:00 p.m. ITRON-specification products, applications and development cases

Six presentations are planned introducing ITRON-related products, their applications and development case studies

5:15 to 6:00 p.m. Special Guest Speech

Ken Sakamura (Univ. of Tokyo)

6:00 following: Reception

Overview of second day program

The morning session on the second day is devoted to the ITRON debugging interface specification. Under study for more than a year, this specification defines the interfaces between an ITRON-specification OS and debugging environments. Now that the initial round of studies has been completed, the specification is currently being test-implemented to verify its effectiveness.

The afternoon session on day two introduces the JCG project, which completed development in March of this year. The JCG project was one of the development themes adopted for the next-generation digital applications infrastructure project sponsored by the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA). It was aimed at implementing middleware that will enable consumer appliances running on a µITRON-specification real-time kernel to connect to networks. The tangible results of the project are being made available as free software. The three specific developments include (1) a JTRON platform, (2) embedded CORBA, and (3) GUI middleware. This session describes the specifications of the software developed in the project, the application areas of each, and how they can be ported and put to effective use.

Date: Wednesday, July 5, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Place: Tokyo Fashion Town, 9th floor (Ariake, Koto-ku, Tokyo)

Capacity: 100 persons

Admission (including tax):

TRON Association members: 8,000 yen

General public: 12,000 yen

Students: 8,000 yen

Program:

10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon ITRON Debugging Interface

10:00 to 10:45 Debugging interface specification overview

10:45 to 11:30 Actual interface specification and test implementation

11:30 to 12:00 Q&A

1:00 to 5:00 p.m. JCG Project Results

1:00 to 1:15 JCG project overview

1:45 to 3:00 GUI middleware

3:15 to 4:30 Embedded CORBA

4:30 to 5:00 Q&A

Preparations made for North American office of ITRON Committee

The ITRON Committee met in Chicago on March 1, during the Embedded Systems Conference Spring held there from late February to early March, to discuss the establishment of a North American office. A preparatory group was set up at that time, chaired by Donald L. Dunstan of US Software. The group will be laying out plans for the work of the North American office, as well as defining its role, in preparation for an official launch in September.

ITRON Committee welcomes new member

The ITRON Committee was joined in April 2000 by ERG Co. Ltd., as an observer member. The updated list of ITRON Committee members can be found on the ITRON Project Web site.

ERG Co., Ltd.

ERG Co., Ltd. is an engineering company with 25 years of involvement in a wide range of fields, and specializing in the development of basic software products. It provides its customers with personalized solutions, drawing on high-quality products and a high level of technical know-how. The company's current software lineup includes the following ITRON-related products.

• PrKERNELv4 (implementing µITRON4.0 specification)
• PrKERNEL (implementing µITRON2.0 specification)
• PrNET (implementing ITRON TCP/IP API specification)

Further development is being carried out with the aim of expanding the lineup of ITRON-specification products.

ITRON-specification Product Registration Update

The product listed below was newly registered as an ITRON-specification product in the interim from the issue of the last Newsletter to April 1, 2000. An up-to-date list of all registered products is available at the ITRON Web site.

ITRON-related Publications

Listed below are the publications prepared and issued by the ITRON Committee as of April 1, 2000. Please contact the sources indicated to obtain copies.

The revised edition of the µITRON3.0 Standard Handbook contains the latest version of the µITRON3.0 specification (Ver. 3.02.02). The changes made between the old version of the µITRON3.0 Standard Handbook (Ver. 3.00.00) and Ver. 3.02.00 are detailed in the ITRON Standard Guidebook 2. The changes from Ver. 3.0.2.00 to Ver. 3.02.02 involve only organizational changes and additional explanations, not affecting the technical contents.

The ITRON-µITRON Standard Handbook is a one-volume compilation of the µITRON Ver. 2.0 and ITRON2 specifications. Printed editions are no longer available, but the entire contents are available from the publisher's Web site.

The ITRON Standard Guidebook 2 is written with µITRON3.0 in mind. The earlier ITRON Standard Guidebook '92 - '93 remains as a valuable reference for use with the µITRON Ver. 2.0 and ITRON2 specifications, even though the dates in its title are now past.

ITRON-related Publications

New Products

Products recently registered with the ITRON-specification product registration system are introduced here.

ExRon-SA

Firmware Systems, Inc.

Overview

ExRon-SA is a multitasking OS implementing the µITRON3.0 specification for Intel's Strong ARM processor (SA-1100).

Features

• Implements the µITRON3.0 specification.
• Supports system call functional extension with reference to the µITRON3.0 specification Level X, enabling advanced functions to be programmed into application systems.
• Comes in a recommended configuration, with system calls optimized for high-performance embedded systems. Can be customized by the addition or deletion of system calls, etc., on request.
• Supported by programs such as the ExRon Task Tracer for visual monitoring of task states, and by various multitasking system development tools.
• Shipped with the ExRon Initializer, used for easily defining tasks, semaphores and other resource information.
• In addition to this product, others supporting ARM RISC microprocessors ARM7TDMI and ARM9TDMI are available.
• Sold directly by the developer, ensuring knowledgeable support.

Provision format

ExRon-SA is provided as source code under flexible licensing arrangements. Please contact the vendor for details.

Development environment

Supports the ARM SDT2.5 . In addition, Firmware Systems as manufacturer of the Exella Series (cross-C compiler, debugger, etc.) provides the ExRon Task Tracer and multitasking system development tools, and is ready to develop custom tools on request.

For more information:

Firmware Systems, Inc. Marketing Group
Uchi-honmachi 55 Building, 2F, 1-3-10 Uchi-honmachi, Chuo-ku, Osaka 540-0026, Japan
TEL: 06-6944-0317
Email: fsk-info@firmwaresystems.co.jp
URL: http://www.firmwaresystems.co.jp

This newsletter is a special edition for WWW of the one appeared in TRONWARE vol.63.

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