U.S.-based software giant Microsoft has teamed with Japanese non-profit group T-Engine Forum to develop a "two-in-one" operating system for network appliances and other electronic devices.
The Japan-based T-Engine Forum, comprising 250 companies, oversees Tron (The Real-time Operation system Nucleus), the world's most widely-installed operating system.
It is used in everything from digital cameras, engine management systems to fax machines to office copiers.
"Nearly 100 percent of the operating systems used in cell phones now being sold in Japan are Tron," University of Tokyo professor Sakamura Ken was quoted as saying in Look Japan magazine last year.
He was a member of the team which created Tron, which was released into the public domain, free of license fees, in 1984.
"It isn't a household name like the names of personal computer operating systems because it is used in products and devices, but worldwide there are one billion copies in use, tens of times more than Microsoft's OS," he said in the report.
Tron's one-millionth of a second response speed is a thousand times faster than that of Windows CE, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun.
Aki Araki, Microsoft Japan press relations officer told CNETAsia that the collaboration would combine Tron's fast real time features with Windows CE .Net's graphical user interface. Among the first devices to use the new system will be network appliances with on-screen menus and icons.
"It could be used in kiosks, where you buy tickets with a touch screen. CE .Net will provide what you see on the monitor," she said.
Besides adapting Windows CE to work on the T-Engine platform, the work would center on developing software dubbed T-Bus, she said.
T-Bus will sit between the T-Kernel, the next-generation Tron system and Windows CE, and will control communications between the two.
The joint effort will allow Microsoft to entry into new markets and revenues, according to the Asahi Shimbun.
Network appliances are predicted by some to eclipse Windows-based desktop PCs in the coming years and the T-Engine collaboration could be seen as a lifeline for Microsoft, Yoshio Tsukio, a professor at the University of Tokyo was quoted as saying in the Asahi Shimbun report.
Windows CE also faces a threat from the open-source embedded Linux operating system, which has a kernel free of license fees.
The T-Engine/CE operating system will be showcased at the TronShow in Tokyo in December. Consumer devices equipped with the hybrid OS are expected in late 2004.
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