I-51-01E-004

ITRON Newsletter No.4
ITRON Technical Committee, TRON Association

Katsuta Building 5F, 3-39, Mita 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, JAPANTEL: (03) 3454-3191
FAX: (03) 3454-3224

ITRON-related Publications

Tetsuhiro Kodama (YHP, Ltd.)
Tetsuo Takagi (Nippondenso Create Co., Ltd.)
Katsuhito Fukuoka (Toshiba Corporation)
Hiroaki Takada (University of Tokyo)

Listed in another page are the publications preparedand issued by the ITRON Technical Committee asof August 1, 1993. The ITRON-ITRON Standard Handbook is a one-volume compilation of theITRON (Ver.2.0) and ITRON2 speci cations. Eachof the publications below can be obtained directlyfrom the sources indicated.

(d) Introduction to the latest ITRON-related products\ITRON-speci cation real-time OS AAAOS86"
Naoaki Tanaka (Three A's Computer Co., Ltd.)\ITRON-speci cation real-time OS ARIOS960M"
Kiyohiro Magariyama (System Algo Co., Ltd.)ITRON Product Seminar
As announced in Newsletter No.2, the latest ITRON
Product Seminar was held in July. These seminars areheld once a year for the purpose of introducing thelatest results of work on ITRON speci cations and toprovide updates on their implementations. This wasthe third time the event was held. Approximately 90
persons attended this very successful seminar.
A reception was held following the seminar, giving
those in attendance a chance to meet informally andshare information. Around 50 persons stayed to enjoy
the human fellowship.
The seminar contents are outlined below.
Date:(e) Special Speech\The TRON project and ITRON in the future"
Ken Sakamura (University of Tokyo)

ITRON Q&A
Some of the questions most frequently directed to theITRON Technical Committee are taken up here because of their general interest.
Q. Can application programs developed originallyfor ITRON Ver.2.0 be readily ported toITRON3.0?

July 14, 1993; 10:00am { 5:00pm

A. The ITRON speci cations leave many aspects
that must be decided based on the CPU andother implementation requirements. Whether
porting will be easy or not depends on how those
implementation-dependent matters were decided.
Another factor is the kinds of functions used by
the application. As a general answer, in cases
where ITRON3.0 is implemented with carefulattention paid to ease of porting from the earlier
ITRON version, a large portion of application
programs should be portable with simple mechanical changes alone.
To give a speci c example, if the functions of theearlier ITRON up to level 3 are mapped to theITRON3.0 speci cation level S and some of thelevel C functions, the di erences in the speci cations are as follows.

Shinagawa Ward General Community Hall,large conference room on 6th oor

Place:

Presentations:(a) Overview of the ITRON Subproject
Kiichiro Tamaru (Toshiba Corp.)(b) Outline explanation of ITRON3.0 Speci cation
Hideo Tsubota (Mitsubishi Electric Corp.)(c) Panel discussion:\Development environments for real-time OSs"
Chairman: Tsuyoshi Shimizu (Hitachi, Ltd.)Norihiko Itoh (Microtec Research, Inc.)y This newsletter is reprinted from TRONWARE vol.23 andTRON PROJECT BIMONTHLY No.29.

1I-51-01E-004

ITRON-related Publications

NameTypePrice
Publisher
ISBN No.
ITRON-ITRON Standard Handbook Speci cation (Japanese)
4,800Yen Personal Media Co. 4-89362-079-7
ITRON3.0 Standard Handbook
Speci cation (Japanese)
4,000Yen Personal Media Co. 4-89362-106-8
ITRON/FILE Standard Handbook
Speci cation (Japanese)
3,000Yen Personal Media Co. 4-89362-092-4
ITRON Standard Guidebook '92-'93
Textbook (Japanese)
3,500Yen Personal Media Co. 4-89362-197-6
ITRON Speci cation Ver.2.01.00.00
Speci cation (English) 12,000Yen TRON Association{ITRON2 Speci cation Ver.2.02.00.10
Speci cation (English) 15,000Yen TRON Association{NOTES:- Prices do not include consumption tax.
- Prices indicated for TRON Association publications apply to Association members.
- English-language speci cations are also distributed free of charge via the Internet. The method for downloading is
explained in Newsletter No.2.

The error codes have been substantially reorganized.
{ A task starting code has been added as a parameter to sta tsk. When porting, a dummy task
starting code may be assigned.
{ The 1-bit event ag has been eliminated. It must
be replaced by a 1-word event ag. This is alargely mechanical procedure.
{ The system call names tsk sts,
wai tsk,pget blk, and rel blk have been changed to
ref tsk, tslp tsk, pget blf, and rel blf, respectively. These are now supported at level E.
In many cases wai tsk can be replaced bydly tsk. There are changes also in the callinginterface of tsk sts.
{ There are changes in the calling interface ofdef int.
{ The name of iXX sts has been changed toref iXX.
{ ret wup is now supported at level E. This combines the functions of wup tsk and ret int, so it
can easily be replaced by system calls at level Sor below.
{{The name get blk has been changed to get blf.

Q. In the ITRON3.0 rendezvous function, why is itthat acp por and fwd por are not supported bythe connection functions (that is, these system
calls cannot be used to manipulate ports in othernodes)?
A. In order to support acp por and fwd por in theconnection functions, it would be necessary toadd a special packet or procedure to the connection protocol. Speci cally, if acp por were
supported in the connection functions, a problem would arise when the task issuing cal por,the task issuing acp por, and the port were allin di erent nodes (e.g., nodes A, B, and C). In
this case it would not be clear whether the answer message is to be sent directly from node A
to B or via node C.
Moreover, compared to cal por there would seemto be less of a need to support acp por in the connection functions. In designing the ITRON3.0
connection function speci cations, importancewas given to simplicity for the sake of application to small-scale systems and to ease the implementation load. Supporting these less importantfunctions was seen as complicating the connection
protocol and therefore not advantageous.
If, however, there is a stronger demand by users
for these functions in the future, consideration
will be given to supporting them by de ning anextended protocol.

In addition, where dis int or ena int wereused, in many cases these should be replaced byloc cpu and unl cpu.
Q. So what is to be done about the earlier ITRONlevel 4?
A. The functions of the earlier ITRON level 4 are
all included in ITRON3.0 level E. Here again,
the di erences in speci cations are as follows.

Q. Does ITRON3.0 allow for supporting all of thelevel S functions and only some of the level Efunctions?

The name ??? sts has been changed to ref ???,and the calling interface has been modi ed.
{ The calling interfaces of def cyc and def alm
have been modi ed.

{A. Yes, it does. In this case it should be clearly
indicated that the product is \a ITRON3.02

I-51-01E-004
speci cation kernel with all level S and somelevel E functions."
Q. How does an implementor go about obtaining themanufacturer's code that can be referenced withthe get ver system call?
A. In the product registration system operated by
the TRON Association for implementations of theITRON speci cations, the Association assigns amanufacturer's code to products at the time they
are registered, if one has not been assigned previously. To obtain a manufacturer's code, products
can be registered with the Association under thissystem. Details of this registration system areavailable from the Association, orcan be found in
the ITRON Standard Guidebook '92-'93, section
I.5.

3