Japan's largest embedded conference of the year reportedly featured a growing number of Linux-related demonstrations, compared to previous years. Linux appears to be making inroads among Japanese consumer electronics vendors, and to be gradually taking marketshare away from iTron, long the top Japanese embedded operating system.

The observations belong to Maciej Halasz, a TimeSys marketing manager, who today posted a concise podcast about the Embedded Systems Expo & Conference (ESEC) held last week in Tokyo. Halasz observed, “Adoption of Linux seems to be growing. Companies are really looking to implement Linux.”

Halasz sounded especially impressed with a demonstration that used balls shot into the air to demonstrate Linux's growing real-time capabilities. He suggested that combined with more powerful processors, real-time characteristics may be helping Linux take marketshare from iTRON, long the top RTOS (real-time operating system) among Japanese consumer electronics vendors.

Another factor in Linux's success, Halasz suggests, is that Linux comes with source code, whereas iTRON and other TRON variants do not. Launched in 1984, TRON (an acronym for “The Real-time Operating system Nucleus”) is really just a set of design guidelines aimed at helping companies write their own RTOSes adapted to specific processors, Halasz said.

ESEC also featured demonstrations of several new processors, including TI's ARM11-based i.MX31, several chips based on ARM9261 cores, and the IXP435, Intel's new dual-core XScale (ARM) based network processor. Also prominent were SuperH and Xilinx processors, which attract “large interest” in Japan, according to the podcaster.

Halasz's full podcast can be downloaded here.

 
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