TRON project

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TRON (acronym for The Real-time Operating system Nucleus) is an open architecture real-time operating system kernel design. The project was started by Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo in 1984.^[1] The project's goal is to create an ideal computer architecture and network, to provide for all of society's needs.^[2] For different scenarios, the need for different OS kernels was identified. (See, for example, papers written in English in TRON Project 1988 ^[3])

The Industrial TRON (ITRON) derivative^[4] was one of the world's most used operating systems in 2003,^[5] being present in billions of electronic devices such as mobile phones, appliances and even cars.^[6] Although mainly used by Japanese companies, it garnered interest worldwide.^[6] However, a dearth of quality English documentation was said to hinder its broader adoption.^[7] The situation has improved since TRON Forum has taken over the activities to support TRON Project since 2015. (See the specification page that lists many English documents. )

The focus of these activities was a non-profit organization called TRON Association which acted as the communication hub for the parties concerned with the development of ITRON specification OS and its users in many fields including home electronics, smart house industry, etc.

In 2002, T-Engine Forum was formed to provide an open source RTOS implementation that supersedes the ITRON specification OS, and provides binary compatibility additionally. The new RTOS was T-Kernel. The activities of TRON Association to support TRON Project were taken over by T-Engine Forum in 2010. In 2015, T-Engine Forum changed its name into TRON Forum. ^[8]

Today, ITRON specification OS and T-Kernel RTOS are supported by popular Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) libraries such as wolfSSL.^[9]