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Article from 1994 about DAVID with background info about Microware
author roug
date Mon, 21 Apr 2003 16:56:47 +0000
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1 <?xml version="1.0" ?>
2 <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
3 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd" >
4 <!-- This article was copied from
5 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/microware.html -->
6 <article>
7 <articleinfo>
8 <author><firstname>Stephen</firstname><surname>Jacobs</surname>
9 <authorblurb>
10 <para>Stephen Jacobs is a contributing editor for Videomaker magazine.</para>
11 </authorblurb>
12 </author>
13 <title>David Versus Goliath</title>
14 <abstract>
15 <para>Little Microware has a rock called OS-9 in its sling as it takes on
16 the giants in the battle to own the multimedia set-top box.</para>
17 </abstract>
18 <copyright>
19 <year>1993</year>
20 <year>2002</year>
21 <holder>The Cond&eacute; Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.</holder>
22 </copyright>
23 <publisher><publishername>Wired Digital, Inc.</publishername></publisher>
24 <pubdate>Sep 1994</pubdate>
25 <issuenum>2.09</issuenum>
26 </articleinfo>
27
28
29 <para>
30
31
32 In case you hadn't noticed, everyone's talking interactive TV these days.
33 Product trials, broken deals, mergers, start-ups - there's a rash of ploys
34 to make your boob tube brilliant by hooking a computer to it. To many in
35 this country, the word computer is still wedded to images of Silicon Valley
36 and Microsoft, the company that strides the personal computing landscape
37 like a Goliath. Chairman Bill Gates has said Microsoft is spending a cool
38 US$100 million a year on developing software for multimedia, interactive
39 television, and the information superhighway. The popular wisdom says that
40 what Bill wants, Bill gets. Yet some of the hottest developments in software
41 for interactive television are happening nowhere near Silicon Valley;
42 they're happening thousands of miles away in the Midwest.
43
44
45 </para><para>
46
47
48 Des Moines, Iowa, is not the city that most of us would pick as the site of
49 a burgeoning industry revolution. But then, Des Moines surprises. Sure, it's
50 a small Midwest town surrounded by flat and well-farmed land, but that's not
51 all there is to it. There's a Thai restaurant whose zillion-page beer list
52 boasts brews from all over the world. There's a monumental modern Civic
53 Center whose concert hall hosts world-class guitarists. And there's
54 Microware Systems Corporation, a 200-employee, privately held corporation
55 that makes an operating system called OS-9.
56
57
58 </para><para>
59
60
61 Microware is headquartered in a 25,000-square-foot building just down the
62 road from the offices of the National Pork Producer's Council. So far, it
63 may not sound like anything to get excited about. OS-9 was created to
64 control manufacturing and robotics applications. The latest addition to its
65 product line, Digital Audio Video Interactive Decoder (DAVID), is a version
66 of OS-9 for set-top terminals, the cable decoder boxes of interactive
67 television.
68
69
70 </para><para>
71
72
73 DAVID is the program that runs "under the hood," the skeleton around which
74 user interfaces will be built by manufacturers of the terminals. It must be
75 a pretty impressive set of bones - it's been licensed to 15 manufacturers of
76 set-top terminals for interactive television, including IBM, Philips, Zenith
77 Corporation, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Kyocera, GoldStar, Samsung, Adaptive
78 MicroWare, Divicom, and EURODEC. By the time you read this, more will be on
79 board. Oracle's media servers will communicate with these DAVID-based
80 set-top boxes in Bell Atlantic interactive television trials in New Jersey
81 and Northern Virginia. (A groundbreaking Federal Communications Commission
82 decision in June cleared the way for Bell Atlantic to compete with cable in
83 providing video programming in Tom's River, New Jersey.) Other announced
84 interactive TV trials that are using DAVID include Nynex's Manhattan and
85 Rhode Island trials; Cox Communications's trial in Omaha, Nebraska; Telecom
86 Australia's system; and Hong Kong Telecom's system.
87
88
89 </para><para>
90
91
92 Though Microware's operating system was developed for manufacturing and
93 process control, it also has been used in multimedia for some time. DAVID
94 has its roots in the operating systems for Tandy's Color Computer 3 and
95 Philips CD-I, which are versions of OS-9 with platform-specific modules.
96 Even so, conventional wisdom puts a small, relatively unknown software
97 company at a disadvantage against a major player like Microsoft.
98
99
100 </para><para>
101
102
103 Predictably, Microware President Ken Kaplan doesn't see it that way.
104
105
106 </para><para>
107
108
109 "I don't know what other people think, but I just don't think Microsoft's
110 gonna be a player. I just think it's too late. We've been working on this
111 for two, three years. We've got real product. By the time they figure out
112 how to put Windows on a set-top box, we'll have a couple of million boxes
113 out there and working. At least that's the plan," says Kaplan.
114
115
116 </para><para>
117
118
119 Since 1977, Microware has been developing ROMable (i.e., small enough
120 to fit in the Read Only Memory chips on a system's motherboard)
121 real-time operating systems, and doing quite well, thank you.
122 Microware began when, as Drake University students, Ken Kaplan and
123 Larry Crane (vice president of advanced research) got a grant from the
124 National Science Foundation to write software for first-generation
125 microprocessors. They started with the Motorola 6800 - the precursor
126 to the 68000 series of CPUs that would drive the Macintosh. This work
127 led them to develop RT/68, a small, efficient multitasking operating
128 system for industrial applications. Kaplan and Crane founded Microware
129 to develop and sell RT/68, putting a small ad in <emphasis>Byte</emphasis> magazine.
130 Orders began rolling in from around the world. Physicist Rudolf Keil
131 at the University of Heidelberg used RT/68 to control lasers for
132 physics research. More than an early user, Keil was one of the first
133 Microware customers to begin working with the company. He ended up
134 leaving the university to become Microware's German
135 distributor.
136
137 </para><para>
138
139
140 Motorola was so pleased with RT/68 that in 1978 the company asked Microware
141 to develop a Basic language for the 6809 processor, the bridge chip between
142 the 6800 and Motorola's popular 68000 series. Microware began developing the
143 Basic and an operating system to go with it. That was the beginning of OS-9.
144 Kaplan and his team modeled OS-9's I/O and process handling after those in
145 Unix, which at the time was a relatively unknown operating system.
146 Microware's decision to use Unix as a model may have been a gamble then, but
147 it has proved to be a fortuitous choice: Unix has since grown to become the
148 lingua franca of the Internet. As a result, the OS-9 of a decade ago was
149 more ready for the information superhighway than many other operating
150 systems are today.
151
152
153 </para><para>
154
155
156 OS-9 is popular in industrial applications worldwide for robotics,
157 telecommunications, or any other type of application that requires a small,
158 on-board operating system to handle a large number of processes extremely
159 quickly. The head of Microware's French office, Nick Rainey, ticked off
160 several applications that have made OS-9 popular in Europe:
161
162
163 </para><para>
164
165
166 "CERN, the particle accelerator; the French pay-phone systems that now run
167 off 'smart cards' - that's OS-9; British Telecom; subway systems. I had a
168 big surprise when I went to open the Russian office. They took me over to
169 see the space flight simulators, and they'd been running the whole system
170 off a version of OS-9 that they'd bootlegged from some Germans somewhere.
171 They were really glad to see us!"
172
173
174 </para><para>
175
176
177 OS-9 made early inroads in Japan, when Fujitsu made 6809-based personal,
178 multitasking computers for the Japanese market. In the US, OS-9 can be found
179 in NASA simulators as well. Flight simulators, maintenance, and testing
180 equipment for McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, and Boeing also run off of OS-9.
181 Microware's sales are pretty well divided into thirds between the US,
182 Europe, and the Pacific Rim.
183
184
185 </para>
186
187 <section>
188 <title>
189 Coming into view
190 </title>
191
192 <para>
193
194
195 Microware seemed to burst into public view from nowhere when Bell
196 Atlantic announced specifications for its interactive services in
197 January 1994. The specs could only be met by terminals running DAVID.
198 This was a surprise, as Bell Atlantic had released a preliminary set
199 of specs several months before that appeared to be based on Modular
200 Windows, Microsoft's now-dead operating system for multimedia. In
201 reaction to the Bell Atlantic announcement, the January 18 <citetitle>Wall
202 Street Journal</citetitle> ran a feature story about Microware. Since then,
203 Kaplan and company have been signing set-top box contracts right and
204 left.
205
206
207 </para><para>
208
209
210 Modular Windows is kind of a mystery. Apparently, it was to have been
211 a smaller, faster, trimmer version of the Windows operating system for
212 set-top boxes. It has been replaced by a new system from Microsoft
213 called Tiger. The <citetitle>Wall Street Journal</citetitle> piece left the impression
214 that Bell Atlantic ran DAVID and Modular Windows in competition and
215 chose Microware over Microsoft.
216
217
218 </para><para>
219
220
221 Not true, says Microware's multimedia marketing manager Arthur Orduna. "We
222 didn't go head-to-head with Modular Windows because there was nothing to go
223 head-to-head with."
224
225
226 </para><para>
227
228
229 Orduna says Bell Atlantic asked Microware to assemble an OS-9 comparison
230 chart, something that would list the specifications and merits of several
231 different operating systems. Microware was unable to obtain the information
232 it needed on Modular Windows.
233
234
235 </para><para>
236
237
238 "First I called Microsoft directly, and all I could get was 'Give us your
239 number and we'll call you back.' Then we asked a friend of ours to call
240 Microsoft as a developer and ask about Modular Windows, the normal sort of
241 play-acting shit we get from our competitors. What our friend got for an
242 answer was 'Well ... give us all the specs and information about the system
243 you're developing and we'll call you back.' "
244
245
246 </para><para>
247
248
249 Microware struggled to find someone who knew or would talk about
250 Modular Windows. They finally found a source at Tandy, where Modular
251 Windows was being used in the development of a home entertainment
252 system prototype. (Microsoft wouldn't talk about it with
253 <citetitle>Wired</citetitle>, either, but at press time has just announced its Tiger
254 database for interactive set-top
255 boxes.)
256
257 </para><para>
258
259
260 "We talked to this technician who worked on their interactive project," says
261 Orduna. "He really didn't have specs either, but he bitched and bitched
262 about the integration process and how difficult it was to implement Modular
263 Windows on a consumer platform. So I called back the project manager at Bell
264 Atlantic and told him 'I'm faxing you back this OS-9 comparison chart, and I
265 really have to apologize beforehand for the gaping holes in there on the
266 Modular Windows part because we don't know them. But, we have the number of
267 this engineer you can call, and he can give you some insight on what it's
268 like to integrate Mod Windows on a consumer platform.' A couple days later
269 they said, 'OK, you're it.' "
270
271
272 </para><para>
273
274
275 As a corporate entity, Bell Atlantic didn't make an agreement with Microware
276 or specify DAVID as <emphasis>the</emphasis> operating system for its set-top terminals. It
277 merely published a set of specifications that only DAVID could meet. No deal
278 has been cut between the two companies, allowing each to keep its freedom
279 and avoiding any accusations of monopolistic or restrictive behavior on the
280 part of Bell Atlantic.
281
282
283 </para>
284 </section>
285 <section>
286 <title>Multimedia experts?</title>
287
288 <para>
289
290
291 CERN and French smart cards may sound far removed from the world of home
292 entertainment systems, but Microware got its foot in that door a long time
293 ago. The company has been slowly building a presence in consumer electronics
294 since the early '80s. That's when Tandy used OS-9 in the Radio Shack Color
295 Computer, fondly remembered by some as the CoCo 3.
296
297
298 </para><para>
299
300
301 "We did the original operating system for the Tandy Color Computer," says
302 Kaplan. "We did a windowing GUI for that called Multiview. So we always
303 thought that OS-9 would be a good operating system for consumers. No one
304 back in those days was thinking about multimedia."
305
306
307 </para><para>
308
309
310 What they were thinking about was game machines. In the mid-1980s Microsoft
311 announced MSX (Microsoft Extended Basic), a product that was supposed to be
312 an industry standard for computer/game machines like the Commodore 64 and
313 the Atari 800. Microsoft worked with ASCII Corp. in Japan to push the
314 standard to a consortium of manufacturers including Sony, Matsushita, and
315 Yamaha. The plan was to introduce it in Japan and then bring the systems to
316 the states. It was not successful. In January 1986 Microsoft announced its
317 long-term commitment to CD-ROM development. By February 1986 Microsoft and
318 ASCII Corp. had dissolved their relationship.
319
320
321 </para><para>
322
323
324 Meanwhile, Microware's work for Tandy brought the firm to the attention of
325 Philips. Philips had made an early video game system called the Magnavox
326 Odyssey and had asked Microware to collaborate on a new product - originally
327 envisioned as a type of rack-mountable game system. (It eventually evolved
328 into CD-I.) After evaluating systems from 60 other companies, Philips
329 decided to ask Microware to develop CD-I's CD-RTOS, the operating system in
330 every Philips CD-I System.
331
332
333 </para><para>
334
335
336 Microware got the CD-I contract in January 1986, and in the summer of 1986
337 Kaplan got a phone call from Silicon Valley. Bill Gates wanted to buy the
338 company. Kaplan didn't want to sell but was willing to talk about joint
339 ventures. Gates wasn't. The negotiations ended there before they had
340 started, and Gates's picture earned a place of honor on Kaplan's dart board.
341
342
343 </para><para>
344
345
346 In the meantime, to support CD-I development, Microware formed two joint
347 ventures in the interactive media field. The first is called OptImage. "Both
348 Philips and Microware had to develop software and hardware to make discs,"
349 says Kaplan. "It's a chicken-and-egg problem. We needed to make discs to
350 test our software, to test the prototypes. It wouldn't be a core business
351 for either Philips or Microware, but somebody had to do it." Another
352 Microware joint venture called MicroMall has been running CD-I-based
353 shopping and information kiosks in several areas, including Chicago, as a
354 preliminary step in designing shopping services for interactive television.
355 The digital interactive "catalogs" at the heart of the systems use digital
356 stills, audio, and video to display items from J C Penney, Land's End, and
357 others.
358
359
360 </para>
361
362 </section>
363 <section>
364 <title>
365
366 Getting on the Net
367 </title>
368
369 <para>
370
371
372 While he was working with Philips on CD-I, Kaplan began hearing about
373 another form of future multimedia
374 delivery.
375
376 </para><para>
377
378
379 "Not long after we got involved with CD-I and understood digital audio and
380 digital video, it became clear that ultimately audio and video could be
381 delivered by a network," says Kaplan. "Maybe it would be even better to
382 deliver it via a network rather than via optical disk, but the transmission
383 technology and the digital video compression weren't quite there yet. I
384 remember back in '86 the Philips engineers said, 'There's a way to do it; we
385 can't make the silicon yet, but in four or five years we will.' So it was
386 known back then that it was doable."
387
388
389 </para><para>
390
391
392 OS-9's popularity in the telephone-switching world had landed Microware on
393 an advisory committee for Bell Atlantic. At about the same time that Philips
394 was beginning to talk about digital video, the phone companies were talking
395 about it as well. Bell Atlantic was starting to talk about sending digital
396 video over copper wires. Bell Atlantic asked Microware if the OS-9 inventor
397 wanted to participate in some of the research. About two years ago,
398 Microware realized that if it combined OS-9 modules written for phone
399 switching and telecommunications networking with the modules written for
400 digital audio and video, they had all the parts of an operating system for
401 set-top terminals. Soon after that, DAVID was born.
402
403
404 </para>
405
406 </section>
407 <section>
408 <title>
409
410 Driving a prototype
411 </title>
412 <para>
413
414
415 Recently, the folks from Microware have found themselves at a lot of trade
416 shows to show off DAVID, either on their own or sharing booths with Oracle
417 or set-top terminal manufacturers. If you walked into these booths, you'd
418 see a demonstration of digital video on demand being driven by a DAVID
419 set-top box talking to a video server. Additional DAVID networking protocols
420 on the set-top box and the server would be handling the communications
421 between the server's operating system and the DAVID system in the set-top
422 terminal. Of course, all this is transparent to you. All you see is the
423 interface designed by the set-top box manufacturer and the video delivered
424 by the server.
425
426
427 </para><para>
428
429
430 At a recent demonstration in Des Moines, Microware used a Kyocera prototype
431 set-top terminal. About the size of a standard cable decoder, the box came
432 with one of those massive, 3,000-button multiremotes that are becoming
433 standard in the consumer electronics industry. What wasn't standard were the
434 cursor-control-style keys in one section of the remote. Those were the ones
435 that drove the interactive part of the terminal.
436
437
438 </para><para>
439
440
441 The video was delivered by one of Microware's prototyping servers, through
442 T1 lines to the local phone company offices several miles away in downtown
443 Des Moines. The remote could perform VCR-type functions on the digitized
444 video quickly and with no sync problems. The system responded instantly,
445 much faster than a VCR. The only downside was the control of the "arrow
446 pointer" via the remote: infrared doesn't seem to be the most effective
447 communications channel between controller and terminal, and scrolling up and
448 down a screen is agonizing.
449
450
451 </para>
452
453 </section>
454 <section>
455 <title>
456
457
458 So what about Microsoft?
459 </title>
460
461 <para>
462
463
464 Since January there's been a lot of press about Microsoft's plans for
465 interactive TV. From what's being said, Microsoft's model of a delivery
466 system is similar to Microware's.
467
468
469 </para><para>
470
471
472 "We're looking at a switching broadband network," says Karl Buhl, marketing
473 manager in advanced consumer technology for Microsoft. "We'd have four parts
474 to the system: Tiger [Microsoft's current solution] continuous switching at
475 the head end, coax from the head end to the home, a set-top terminal in the
476 home, and a Microsoft software package running the system."
477
478
479 </para><para>
480
481
482 Conventional wisdom says Tiger will blow everything else away. Ken Kaplan
483 doesn't buy it. "Microsoft is coming into this business from a standing
484 start. No one wants them in this business anyway. They're not welcome."
485
486
487 </para><para>
488
489
490 "If Ken thinks we're not wanted here in the industry he should talk
491 with TCI," Buhl counters. He says TCI's trials with Microsoft's Tiger
492 technology will begin in Seattle at the end of the year. (See
493 <citetitle>Wired</citetitle>'s <ulink url="http://www.wired.com/wired/2.07/features/malone.html">interview
494 with TCI head John Malone</ulink>, <citetitle>Wired</citetitle> 2.07)
495
496
497 </para><para>
498
499
500 Obviously, Kaplan thinks it's not too early to count Microsoft out. "Bill
501 Gates says he's been spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on this
502 business," Kaplan reasons. "Do you know what kind of return he's got to get
503 on that investment? There isn't that much money in set-top-box software,
504 sorry. Microsoft wants to get a piece of everything, probably per
505 transaction. The market can't afford that. It can't afford Microsoft, and
506 those in the industry don't want monopolists dominating their business. Not
507 to mention that Microsoft doesn't have a clue about this business. It's a
508 TV-set business, not a computer business.
509
510
511 </para><para>
512
513
514 "This happened to them once before. They missed the boat totally on
515 networking. That's why Novell took off. Bill didn't figure it out, he didn't
516 see it coming. He didn't approach it right, and Novell came in and ate his
517 lunch."
518
519
520 </para><para>
521
522
523 According to Microware's Orduna, DAVID was not just a lucky acronym
524 choice. While the name's been trademarked, the logo hasn't been
525 finalized. The first version of the DAVID logo followed the biblical
526 metaphor right down to a sling. That got a thumbs down as taking the
527 joke a bit too far. But if Microware <emphasis>really</emphasis> wants to get
528 Microsoft's goat, maybe it'll choose a logo inspired by
529 Novell.
530
531
532 </para>
533 </section>
534 <section>
535 <title>
536 Why OS-9?
537 </title>
538
539 <para>
540
541
542 Why do set-top terminal companies want a robotics operating system for
543 interactive television?
544
545
546 </para><para>
547
548
549 Most personal computing operating systems are large and relatively slow.
550 They still don't effectively multitask or run more than one application at a
551 time. They take up a lot of hard-drive space and memory. The multitasking
552 that systems like Windows and System 7 do is "cooperative." Different
553 applications rarely stop or pause each other; they wait for breaks in CPU
554 usage to have the computer change horses between them without shutting each
555 other down. These systems are almost polite. They have response times of
556 half a second at best.
557
558
559 </para><para>
560
561
562 In robotics or manufacturing systems, operating system needs differ. The
563 scope of the operating system doesn't need to be as broad as that of a
564 computer operating system, and often it must be able to fit into the system
565 memory, right on the circuit board. True multitasking is vital. Different
566 applications, or tasks, need to be able to interrupt each other, and
567 quickly. A response time of half a second is much too slow.
568
569
570 </para><para>
571
572
573 "If a robot arm has reached its position, you probably need to tell it to do
574 something immediately," says Peter Dibble, a research scientist for
575 Microware. "You can't have it just waiting around while another task clears
576 the screen."
577
578
579 </para><para>
580
581
582 Operating systems for set-top terminals must be compact enough not to need a
583 lot of memory or a hard drive, in order to keep the cost of the box down.
584 They must also be fast and multitasking. A half-second response time can
585 give you frozen video or garbled audio.
586
587
588 </para><para>
589
590
591 "There are a lot of things going on in a set-top box at once," says Curt
592 Schwaderer, a principal engineer at Microware. "First, you've got a
593 networking front end that's sending data in at 1.544 Mbits per second. While
594 all this networking stuff is trying to deal with (all this data coming in
595 off the) T1, you've got another piece of the operating system that's taking
596 the data and playing a movie with it. Then there's the third, interactive
597 part, where you press buttons on a remote control. That requires more
598 processing going on inside the box and more networking-type data going back
599 and forth over the serial line so that you can do things like Fast-Forward,
600 Rewind, Stop, Go Back."
601
602
603 </para><para>
604
605
606 OS-9 is modular so that it can fit a wide variety of needs without taking up
607 a lot of system resources. A modular operating system allows designers to
608 pick exactly which parts they will need. The heart of the operating system,
609 called a kernel, fits in only 29 Kbytes of chip memory. DAVID, which is just
610 a specific mix of OS-9, networking, and video modules, will fit all the
611 necessary parts for a set-top terminal OS into about 256 Kbytes of memory
612 while running true multitasking, not cooperative multitasking.
613
614
615 </para><para>
616
617
618 Some set-top box manufacturers are waiting for the development of a video
619 compression scheme more advanced than the current MPEG 1. Not Microware. The
620 first DAVID set-top boxes will use systems that TCI initially passed on.
621
622
623 </para><para>
624
625
626 "I'd rather have something that works this year and see it get better
627 later," says Microware's Dibble. "It would be fun to be able to deliver the
628 set-top box that would start with HDTV and go on from there, the one that
629 wouldn't deliver anything but quadraphonic sound and wouldn't work unless
630 you had broadband fiber. Maybe that will happen. Maybe if we're lucky we
631 will be the people still doing it because we were the ones who delivered the
632 relatively not-so-wonderful
633 stuff."
634
635 </para>
636
637
638 </section>
639 </article>
640