Tao Group
Encyclopedia
Tao Group was a software company headquartered in Reading, Berkshire
, UK
. It developed intent, a software platform. intent enabled content portability by delivering services in a platform independent format called Virtual Processor
(VP). Its business was sold in May 2007.
s and multimedia
entertainment to be delivered on mobiles
and other digital devices. It simplified content management
by delivering code in an efficient hardware independent format. Hardware independence is important to suppliers of mobiles, PDAs, set top boxes and other devices that can run multimedia or need software updating as it both reduces the support cost of older equipment and also ensures older content can be used on new equipment.
The intent platform could be run either as the native operating system
or as an application under another OS. Service code was delivered in a format called Virtual Processor
(VP) which was translated on the device to the particular native machine code
.
The intent portfolio included support for:
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
, UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. It developed intent, a software platform. intent enabled content portability by delivering services in a platform independent format called Virtual Processor
Virtual processor
Tao Virtual Processor is a virtual machine from Tao Group.The first version, VP1, was the basis of its parallel processing multimedia OS and platform, TAOS...
(VP). Its business was sold in May 2007.
History
- Tao Group was set up by Francis CharigFrancis CharigFrancis Charig is the British Chief Executive Officer and founder of Antix Labs and is also a board director of Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon plc, a Japan-focussed investment trust. He was educated at Whitgift School in Croydon and subsequently at the University of Exeter where he read Political...
and Chris Hinsley in 1992. - In 1992, Tao Group released the first generation of its virtual machineVirtual machineA virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
called Virtual ProcessorVirtual processorTao Virtual Processor is a virtual machine from Tao Group.The first version, VP1, was the basis of its parallel processing multimedia OS and platform, TAOS...
(VP). - In 1998, Tao Group released the second generation of its virtual machine called VP2.
- In 2002, Tao acquired SSEYO, a British audio company specializing in generative music technologies, and creators of the KoanKoan (program)Koan is a generative music engine that was created by a company called SSEYO, a company founded by Pete Cole and Tim Cole. It was founded specifically to create and market Koan. The technology is now owned by a company called , which was co-founded by the Cole brothers in 2007.Koan was actually an...
generative music engine. - SSEYO won a BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award in 2001.
- Tao won a BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award in 2005 for the miniMIXA product.
- Tao licensed more than 20 million copies of intent to clients, working with companies over the years such as SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, NECNEC, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
, JVCJVC, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
, KyoceraKyocerais a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. The company has diversified its founding technology in ceramic materials through internal development as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions...
, HTC, Philips Electronics, Kodak, SharpSharp Corporationis a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...
and PanasonicPanasonicPanasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...
. - The Open Contents Platform Association, headquartered in Tokyo and chaired by Yasuo NishiguchiYasuo NishiguchiYasuo Nishiguchi is a Japanese businessman and former CEO of Kyocera Corporation.Originally from Sakai city, Osaka prefecture, he earned a master degree from Osaka Kyoiku University in 1972...
, the then President of KyoceraKyocerais a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. The company has diversified its founding technology in ceramic materials through internal development as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions...
, followed by Francis CharigFrancis CharigFrancis Charig is the British Chief Executive Officer and founder of Antix Labs and is also a board director of Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon plc, a Japan-focussed investment trust. He was educated at Whitgift School in Croydon and subsequently at the University of Exeter where he read Political...
, the Chief Executive of Tao spent three years from 2001 looking at networked device standardization using intent. More than 50 companies were members, mostly JapaneseJapanese peopleThe are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
. - Red HerringRed Herring (magazine)Red Herring was a technology business magazine, which flourished during the dot com boom, with global distribution and bureaus in Bangalore, Beijing, and Paris. It also sponsored conferences designed to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technologists together. But the magazine went into...
included Tao in its top 100 European privately held companies in both 2005 and 2006. - In 2006 Francis CharigFrancis CharigFrancis Charig is the British Chief Executive Officer and founder of Antix Labs and is also a board director of Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon plc, a Japan-focussed investment trust. He was educated at Whitgift School in Croydon and subsequently at the University of Exeter where he read Political...
, Chief Executive of Tao was named a World Economic ForumWorld Economic ForumThe World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
Technology Pioneer. - Tao ranked 26th in the Fast TrackFast TrackFast Track is an informal English phrase meaning "the quickest and most direct route to achievement of a goal, as in competing for professional advancement".Fast Track may also refer to:* Fast Track, a FoxBusiness.com show hosted by Anna Gilligan...
2006 Tech Track 100 in association with the Sunday Times. - Investors in Tao Group included MotorolaMotorolaMotorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, Freescale SemiconductorFreescale SemiconductorFreescale Semiconductor, Inc. is a producer and designer of embedded hardware, with 17 billion semiconductor chips in use around the world. The company focuses on the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets with its product portfolio including microprocessors, microcontrollers,...
, SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
, NECNEC, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
, SharpSharp Corporationis a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...
, KyoceraKyocerais a multinational manufacturer based in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori and renamed in 1982. The company has diversified its founding technology in ceramic materials through internal development as well as strategic mergers and acquisitions...
, and MitsubishiMitsubishiThe Mitsubishi Group , Mitsubishi Group of Companies, or Mitsubishi Companies is a Japanese multinational conglomerate company that consists of a range of autonomous businesses which share the Mitsubishi brand, trademark and legacy...
. - In June 2007 Cross Atlantic Licensing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cross Atlantic Capital Partners LLC acquired the business.
- Antix Labs Ltd was founded in mid-2007 by Francis CharigFrancis CharigFrancis Charig is the British Chief Executive Officer and founder of Antix Labs and is also a board director of Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon plc, a Japan-focussed investment trust. He was educated at Whitgift School in Croydon and subsequently at the University of Exeter where he read Political...
and headquartered in Reading, England employing many of the team previously working at Tao. Antix has built a software games player. - In 2008, Intermorphic Ltd, a generative tools company established by the founders of SSEYO, acquired from Cross Atlantic Licensing the entire intellectual property base of the intent Sound System (iSS) technology (including Koan and miniMIXA). The technology is now rebranded as the Intermorphic Sound System, part of Intermorphic's "tikl tech" platform. Koan has been superseded by Intermorphic's Noatikl music engine, and miniMIXA has been rebranded and further developed into Mixtikl.
Products
The company's main product was:- intent: An award winning hardware independent software platform
intent
Tao Group's intent was a software platform which was licensed to third party hardware or service providers. It enabled gameGame
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
s and multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
entertainment to be delivered on mobiles
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
and other digital devices. It simplified content management
Content management
Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
by delivering code in an efficient hardware independent format. Hardware independence is important to suppliers of mobiles, PDAs, set top boxes and other devices that can run multimedia or need software updating as it both reduces the support cost of older equipment and also ensures older content can be used on new equipment.
The intent platform could be run either as the native operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
or as an application under another OS. Service code was delivered in a format called Virtual Processor
Virtual processor
Tao Virtual Processor is a virtual machine from Tao Group.The first version, VP1, was the basis of its parallel processing multimedia OS and platform, TAOS...
(VP) which was translated on the device to the particular native machine code
Machine code
Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions executed directly by a computer's central processing unit. Each instruction performs a very specific task, typically either an operation on a unit of data Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions...
.
The intent portfolio included support for:
- CC (programming language)C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
/C++C++C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
games with OpenGL ESOpenGL ESOpenGL for Embedded Systems is a subset of the OpenGL 3D graphics application programming interface designed for embedded systems such as mobile phones, PDAs, and video game consoles. OpenGL ES is managed by the not-for-profit technology consortium, the Khronos Group, Inc.- Versions :Several...
3D rendering - A JavaJava (programming language)Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
virtual machine which translated to native code. - An internet browser optimised for small screens
- A music and multimedia mixerMixing consoleIn professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...
called "miniMIXA" - A MIDI ringtone engine called the APRE (Advanced Polyphone Ringtone Engine)
External links
- Tao Intent Os An earlier version of intent described on WikiWikiWIki
- Interview with the developers of intent 2001
- Intermorphic Limited