T-Engine

 

■Overseas Activity

We have seen active research and development using T-Engine and T-Kernel in various regions such as Europe, China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

 

●Establishment of T-Engine Forum China（tentative name）

There have been many contacts from China regarding the research and development that uses T-Engine and T-Kernel. But keeping constant contact with all the partners by T-Engine Forum was difficult, not to mention supporting them in depth. So a new welcome move is to establish a channel for contact in China. In December, an organization, tentatively called T-Engine Forum China, is established and will conduct the promotion and support for T-Engine and T-Kernel in China. It is very new and its plan for activity will be announced at the inauguration ceremony planned in early 2010.
There have been other activities in China: the establishment of uID/RFID Open Laboratory, Fudan University, in Shanghai is one such example.

 

●Fudan University, uID/RFID Open Laboratory (Shanghai)

In July 2006, the YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory in cooperation with Sakamura Laboratory at the University of Tokyo jointly established the "Shanghai/Fudan University uID/RFID Open Laboratory" with Fudan University in Shanghai, China as a site for research/ development/promotion of ubiquitous ID technology in China. Within the Open Laboratory, a permanent, technology exhibition space was set up for introducing ubiquitous ID technology and T-Engine related technology. In China, Fudan University is considered to be the most prestigious university in the south, ranking with Beijing University in the north, and has a history of more than 100 years. The Software School housing the uID/RFID Open Laboratory was set up in Zhangjiang in the east of Shanghai. Research on OSs, language processing, and e-Commerce are being carried out, and their research on RFID for e-Commerce is considered to be the most advanced in all of China.

T-Engine Forum expect such existing centers of activity will join hands with the newly established T-Engine Forum China to proceed with the promotion activities.

 

 

●Europe

We did not hear much about T-Engine Development in Europe until this year. The situation has changed greatly in 2009. The car of the year 2009, Opel Insignia, uses an infotainment system made by Bosch GmbH (DVD 800 Navi, etc.) in which eCROS, an OS based on T-Kernel, developed by a T-Engine Forum member, eSoL Corporation, is used.

Bosch GmbH sales engineers had tough time selling T-Engine/T-Kernel in Europe due to the scarcity of information and relative unfamiliarity to the customers. So, they set out to change the situation by writing an article on T-Engine/T-Kernel for German magazines. Since not many magazines carry articles on embedded system development, the publication needed to wait for almost one year after the original draft was written. However, finally, ELECTRONIK PRAKSIS (published by Vogel) has carried an article co-authored by Dr. Ken Sakamura, chair of TEF. Since the article appeared in October, 2009, the number of download requests for T-Kernel coming from Germany jumped up. Thus the interest on T-Kernel has increased very much.

T-Engine Forum will continue its promotion work all over the world.

 

 

 

■Research and Development in Many Places

This year has been a very important historical year when the lectures on T-Engine/T-Kernel has finally found its way to undergraduate courses aside from graduate courses.

 

●Singapore

Singapore has become a major center for research and development for T-Engine and T-Kernel in Asia. The following organizations and companies have promoted T-Engine and T-Kernel for research, education and commercial use.

• CHiPES (Centre for High Performance Embedded Systems)
  NTU (Nanyang Technological University)
• RP (Republic Polytechnic)
• Viometrix
• TEADEC (T-Engine Application Development Centre)

●CHiPES、NTU (T-Engine/T-Kernel)

CHiPES is one of the founding member of TEADEC (explained later). The first overseas porting of T-Kernel to a new processor, Infineon TriCore, has been done at CHiPES. CHiPES has actively developed new software and ported many libraries to this new T-Engine platform. TM-Console, IMS, TCP/IP stack, file system and other results have been already reported at the past TRONSHOW exhibitions.

CHiPES has been using the T-Engine/T-Kernel platforms for its research and development. Currently, major interest in power saving is studied on the platform. CHiPES plans to expand its use of T-Engine/T-Kernel for campus-wide embedded system courses, out from its laboratory.

 

 

●RP (T-Engine/T-Kernel)

Republic Polytechnic is a higher level educational institute, and has used T-Engine / T-Kernel for its student projects since 2008, and plans to offer a course starting in January, 2010.

Lecturers and research assistants of RP on the embedded system projects and courses include former CHiPES researchers. We can see that the network of researchers and developers have taken root in Singapore.

 

●Viometrix (T-Engine/T-Kernel)

Viometrix Pte Ltd. is an engineering consultation firm which was established by graduates of CHiPES at NTU. It offers consultation on embedded systems design, business development, and it sends a personnel to local standardization committee for product code standard to sit in as international standard liaison. Viometrix also has done interesting works in intelligent transport systems and other leading technological field. Its activity covers wide application area.

One of the founders of Viometrix has started a personal web page that collects English information on T-Engine and T-Kernel, which has been read very widely in the English-speaking programming community.

http://www.onghu.com/

 

Based on the popularity of of this website, TEDN (T-Engine Developer Network) has been developed by Viometrix under a contract with T-Engine Forum. This site will provide information exchange forum to the English speaking oversees programming communities so that they can exchange information on T-Engine and T-Kernel, and other topics related to embedded systems development.

http://www.t-engine.info/

 

●TEADEC

TEADEC (T-Engine Application Development Centre) is a non-profit organization with the goal of promoting T-Engine and T-Kernel technology. It was established in October, 2003 by the backing of EDB (Economical Development Board of Singapore Government), CHiPES NTU, Renesas Systems Solutions (RSS).

TEADEC has played a great role in disseminating information on T-Engine and T-Kernel in Singapore and surrounding regions. It has held seminars and offered training in Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and China. It has made a great contribution so far.

Singapore government has the policy of not continuing support for a once successfully launched project. RSS has been absorbed into Renesas Technology Corporation now, and its plan of activity in Singapore has changed in nature. So, organizations mentioned above, CHiPES, NTU, RP, Viometrix, and others will continue to support the activity of TEADEC and its spirit. TEADEC website will be merged into TEDN in the future.

 

●Vietnam

Ho Chi Min city University of Technology saw the Establishment of HCMUT Renesas SUPER H Laboratory in 2004. The name Renesas reflects the contribution of RSS in establishing this laboratory. TEADEC, with the support of RSS mostly, offered training to the staff of this laboratory in the same year. The research and development using T-Engine and T-Kernel followed very quickly. Already, a textbook on T-Engine and T-Kernel has been written in Vietnamese. This laboratory has become an important center of embedded system development in southern Vietnam. Vietnam. The famous robocon (robot contest) club BKIT has its office here.

MP3 player with the necessary middleware, graphics library, etc. has been developed on T-Engine AT HCMUT. Notable event is that an undergraduate course on embedded system development has started in September of 2009. The curriculum has been created from scratch based on the past training for graduate students, and course material was prepared. Japan's T-Engine Forum offered material support during the preparation.

 

 

 

 

Ubiquitous ID Technologies

 

■Participation in CASAGRAS (an FP7 project of EU)

CASAGRAS (Coordination and Support Action for Global RFID-related Activities and Standardization) is an EU-funded project that has surveyed the emerging technology and standards related to RFID since 2008, and carried on fundamental study on the technology. In Europe, the phrase, "The Internet of Things", is often used to refer to the merging of the real world and the virtual world using computer networks and RFID technology. CASAGRAS has been an important project that surveyed what is necessary to achieve this "the Internet of Things" vision, and proposed the comprehensive framework of necessary technology and standards to EU community at large.

YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory was selected as full partner in the project, a sole member from Japan. It has participated in writing the whitepapers during CASAGRAS's execution, and contributed to the drafting of the final report. By proposing ubiquitous ID technology, it has contributed the creation of the future vision that is disseminated to EU countries.

CASAGRAS was slated to be 18 months project initially, however, during the evaluation of mid-term whitepapers, EU government decided to ask the project to print the final report as a book and hold a large public conference where the result is explained the public. So, after a four months preparation, the final conference was held in London in October, 2009 and full partners and others gave presentations.

The final report, the whitepapers published during the execution of CASAGRAS, and the presentations done at the final conference are available at the following URL.

http://www.iot.eu.com/

Already, CASAGRAS-2 is being planned, and many inquiries concerning joint projects with European organizations have poured in to YRP UNL after they saw the final conference presentation of CASAGRAS.