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Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!hitachi!billg
From: billg@hitachi.uucp (Bill Gundry)
Newsgroups: comp.std.misc,comp.arch,comp.os.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: TRON Hammerlock??
Message-ID: <116@hitachi.uucp>
Date: 6 Jul 89 15:59:56 GMT
References: <2140@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>
Organization: Hitachi America - Semiconductor & IC
Lines: 41

From article <2140@umbc3.UMBC.EDU>, by chimiak@umbc3.UMBC.EDU (Dr. William Chimiak):
> Could it be that Japan hopes to develop adequate software and hardware
> for a domestic market they have targetted?  Now that they have a
> standard that the US cares nothing about, those machines (no matter how
> inferior or superior) are national standards for a selected market.
> They have a hammerlock on the their market and they still support
> popular non-Japanese systems for foreign sales and have a clever
> impediment to foreign sales.  In addition, if TRON meets design goals,
> then they will storm foreign markets.


Well, this is a popular theory, most recently advanced by the U.S. Trade
Delegation.   At one time the CEC, Central Education Commitee, put out
out an  RFP for educational computers that specificed the TRON OS.  The feeling
was that Japan, by using TRON in the schools would then make
it a standard in Japan.  The TRON specification seems to have gone away.

At this time there really isn't a particular market that TRON serves
exclusively.  Most current pieces of hardware and software will serve
the Japanese market as well as the rest of the world.  TRON is a wide
ranging concept for computing,  not a particular piece of hardware
or software to answer a particular problem.

As stated in earlier articles, TRON is an "open" standard, but a 
process difficult for US companies to participate in, and not well
promoted overseas. Some standards, the 32-bit VLSI and BTRON,
are available in English.  If TRON does become a widely used standard
in Japan there is nothing to stop U.S. companies from making TRON
products.

Whether or not TRON *storms* foreign markets is a question, like most
standards efforts, that will be answered in time.  If TRON serves a purpose
and solves the problems that the creators see then it will survive, if
not ......

Speaking for myself,

Bill Gundry	...uunet!hitachi!billg

Hitachi America  - Semiconductor & IC Division 
only be answ