B-right/V R2 Introduction
The B-right/V R2 Operating System
Steven J. Searle
Web Master, TRON Web
The BTRON Computing Model
Although it may not seem like it, what can broadly be termed<br>"personal computing devices" are based on only three<br>conceptual models. In order of their historical appearance, they<br>are: the "stand alone computer model," which first came<br>into being as the batch processing mainframe with a command line<br>interpreter; the "networked stand alone computer model,"<br>which saw its first incarnation as the object-oriented workstation<br>with a graphical user interface (GUI); and the "network interface<br>computer model," a terminal-like computer for single users<br>in an environment where all computers are linked together. The<br>golden age of the first conceptual model has long passed, and<br>the current age is a transitional period in which we are moving<br>from the second conceptual model to the third.
What may be surprising to many is that the third conceptual<br>model was first conceived not in the U.S., which has rightly earned<br>the distinction of the "world's systems house," but<br>rather in Japan, which has historically been viewed as a country<br>that creates great hardware but is poor at software--particularly<br>systems software. However, in the mid 1980s, long before computing<br>platforms based on either the IBM-PC or Macintosh operating systems<br>were considered for use as interfaces to a "network of networks"<br>called the Internet, the TRON Project began work on the BTRON-specification<br>operating system, which was conceived as a real-time human-machine<br>interface to a "hypernetwork in which all computers and computerized<br>devices throughout human society would be interconnected."
The network interface computer differs from the standard personal<br>computers of today mainly in terms of size. Network interface<br>computers have very small operating systems, and hence they require<br>very little in the way of hardware resources to run. This allows<br>them to be built at very low cost, which in turn allows organizations<br>that employ them to save considerable amounts of money on management<br>information systems. But all network interface computers are not<br>based on the same design precepts.
One computing model for the network interface computer, the<br>"network computer" proposed in the late 1990s in the<br>U.S., was conceived of as a machine that would operate inside<br>a company's local area network (LAN). Since it would always be<br>used in conjunction with a company-owned server, programs and<br>data could be stored there and downloaded as necessary. In fact,<br>Sun Microsystems Inc., one of the companies that is strongly pushing<br>for the adoption of network computers in the U.S., is planning<br>to take this paradigm and apply it to the Internet. The company<br>plans to offer its freeware StarOffice productivity suite via<br>StarPortal,<br>a Web site from which users can download data and applications<br>and do data processing inside their browsers. People signing up<br>for this service will only need a browser and an Internet connection.<br>However, there is a problem with this computing model in that<br>current browsers are huge applications, and they run on even larger<br>operating systems, so the cost savings will mainly be limited<br>to software. (For a critique of Sun's efforts with StarOffice,<br>click here.)
That's where the BTRON-specification operating system is different.<br>BTRON lies between today's gargantuan personal computer operating<br>systems--which have become as large as mainframe computer operating<br>systems and continue to get bigger with each new upgrade!--and<br>the stripped down operating systems of LAN-based network computers.<br>BTRON is compact, which is why basically the same BTRON3-specification<br>source code can be used in both PDAs and IBM-PC/AT compatibles,<br>and yet it is extremely powerful. The design specification calls<br>for word processor and graphics editor functions as standard equipment,<br>but the commercial implementation by Personal Media Corporation<br>called B-right/V has, in addition, a spreadsheet program, a scripting<br>language, an e-mailer, a card database program, a Web browser,<br>PC communications software, plus various utilities, such as file<br>converters--and that's not even to mention a World Wide Web-like<br>hypertext filing system at the system level.
As a result, a BTRON-specification computer requires no Internet<br>or LAN connection to do data processing, but the hardware required<br>to run the latest BTRON implementation, B-right/V R2, is minimal:<br>an Intel 486DX microprocessor-based PC, 16 megabytes of main memory,<br>and a few hundred megabytes of hard disk space. In other words,<br>a BTRON-based system can be manufactured almost as cheaply as<br>a network computer, although it has all the functionality of a<br>standard computer. And if that sounds too good to be true, it<br>gets better. B-right/V R2 has for the first time in the history<br>of personal computing implemented a true multilingual computing<br>environment that allows users to employ up to approximately...