In 1989, a magical high-tech house appeared on the streets of Tokyo, Japan, capable of independent thought, perception, and action.
This house was equipped with thousands of sensors, continuously measuring temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, and light, allowing it to automatically turn on lights, open windows to let in a pleasant breeze, or close windows and turn on the air conditioning.
It would automatically water plants, flush toilets, turn on faucets, and dry your hands.
It even analyzed urine and recorded the information in a personal health database.
……
The smart home we often talk about today was already realized in this smart house over 30 years ago!
This is the TRON Intelligent House, a concentrated demonstration of TRON (Real-Time Operating System Core) by Japan’s industry and academia.
Behind TRON is Japan’s ambitious attempt to break free from the standards dominated by American companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Intel, and to independently develop its IT industry.
Unsurprisingly, this attempt was decisively crushed by the Americans.
1
The IT industry has two towering mountains: one is the operating system, and the other is the chip.
At the peaks of these two mountains are American companies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Apple….. They control the most important technological standards and firmly hold the entire IT ecosystem.
Just like today’s China, at that time, Japan’s computer industry was also following and imitating the United States, constantly copying.
After the rapid development of the 1960s and 70s, Japan’s economy had risen to the second largest in the world and reached a turning point, wanting to transition from a follower to a leader.
In 1984, Professor Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo proposed TRON.
The core idea of TRON is “ubiquitous computing“, which, compared to traditional desktop computing, allows for computing at any time, using any device, in any location, and in any format.
In “ubiquitous computing”, computers can exist in various forms, such as personal computers, mobile phones, rice cookers, coffee pots, refrigerators, washing machines, video recorders, etc., and it can even be a pair of glasses.
The brilliance of TRON lies in the fact that it is the world’s first complete, integrated software and hardware computer architecture specification.
Of course, a single TRON cannot handle all devices; it defines different architectures for different scenarios.
ITRON (Industrial TRON): primarily used for embedded systems
BTRON (Business TRON): used for personal computers, workstations, PDAs, and other devices
CTRON (Central and Communication TRON): used for mainframe computers and network communication devices
If everyone used TRON, it could indeed unify different computer systems and create a “powerful distributed system”, becoming a social infrastructure like the power grid or water supply system.
Japanese companies were also ambitious, gearing up to seize the high ground occupied by Americans.
Hitachi, Fujitsu, and Mitsubishi Electric each invested 100 researchers to develop computer chips based on TRON specifications, hoping to capture 25% of the 32-bit microprocessor market by 2000.
The TRON-based operating system would compete with Unix and MS-DOS (at that time, Windows was not yet popular).
Sakamura confidently stated, “Japan is an economic superpower and must play a role; heavyweight competitors must be ready to compete for the championship title.”
2
Among the different scenarios defined by TRON, BTRON, which consumers can directly perceive, is the most eye-catching.
In 1989, Japanese electronics giant Panasonic launched the BTRON PC, which shocked the industry with its advanced features.
The BTRON PC had an 80286 Intel chip running at 8 MHz and only 2 MB of memory, but it could display color moving video in separate windows.
More importantly, the TRON architecture was open, allowing both hardware and software to be publicly accessible, with membership fees to the TRON Association ranging from $4,600 to $23,000.
This was unlike Microsoft’s operating system, which was not only closed-source but also quite expensive.
At that time, NEC’s PCs were the market leaders, running Microsoft’s operating system.
Microsoft saw this as a serious threat, as TRON was aiming to take its market share, and quickly lobbied in Washington: some people in the Japanese government were supporting nationalist practices, which could lead to serious consequences…
At this time, Japan’s economy was at its peak, with a large number of Japanese products overwhelming American companies with their superior quality and low prices. American workers were very angry with Japanese companies, openly smashing Japanese cars and audio products.
The last straw soon arrived.
The Japanese education department required that all 700,000 computers in schools nationwide must use the TRON system.
This seemingly small action by Japan alerted the Americans: if the education system used TRON, it could then expand into the commercial sector and other markets, disrupting our American hardware and software standards, “what malicious intent!”
In 1989, the American software industry organization ADAPSO issued a report with a simple and blunt conclusion: TRON “has strong nationalist overtones and will hinder foreign companies from entering the Japanese market.”
The American government quickly intervened, declaring this a market intervention and threatening to impose sanctions.
Japanese broadcasting companies repeatedly aired footage of angry American workers smashing Japanese televisions and cars, causing panic among Japanese government and business leaders, fearing restrictions on access to their most important export market.
In the end, Japan yielded and abandoned its plan to introduce TRON into schools, and almost all Japanese companies involved in BTRON-related activities canceled their projects, leading BTRON to become history.
Japan’s assault on the IT peak was crushed by the United States.
3
With BTRON aimed at PCs being crushed, the Japanese shifted their focus to embedded ITRON.
Japan’s electronic products are very famous, such as digital cameras, camcorders, rice cookers, air conditioners, fax machines, karaoke machines, microwave ovens, printers, telephones, and automotive engine controllers.
All these products require an embedded operating system; if a separate operating system were written for each device, it would not only be cumbersome and time-consuming but also very error-prone.
The ITRON specification is a standard real-time operating system kernel that can be customized for any embedded system, perfectly matching the needs of these electronic products, and thus was ported to various microprocessor architectures, quickly becoming the de facto standard for embedded systems in Japan.
Japan’s “pure” software industry is not very developed, but embedded systems are very strong, which may be part of the reason.
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