This project contains NoTA project wiki entries and the protocol specifications for NoTA Rel3. For BSD-licensed software, go to http://www.gitorious.org/nota

NoTA

NoTA is a framework for communication between software and/or hardware modules, designed specifically for the communications within and between embedded devices. An example of this could be the communication between the storage subsystem and the audio subsystem in an embedded device.

NoTA is a modular service-based architecture framework for embedded devices - the basic paradigm is the same as in Web Services. NoTA is an interconnect-centric architecture. The core of the solution is the NoTA Device Interconnect Protocol (DIP). DIP is a device level communication protocol that can be implemented for various physical interfaces ranging from MIPI high speed serial interfaces to wireless transports like Bluetooth.

NoTA core technology, DIP and related system services, is now opened and available to all interested parties. The goal is to drive open innovation on top of open architecture and related open solutions.

Open Architecture Overview

NoTA is an operating system agnostic architecture for embedded devices ranging from high volume mobile devices to rapid development of new concepts and technology prototypes.

NoTA architecture solutions have been developed during the last few years at the Nokia Research Center. From the beginning the goal has been to develop an open architecture to be used throughout the industry (also see history).

The technical solutions have been verified and matured and now the technology is ready to be opened to the industry and developer communities. The NoTA architecture and DIP protocol opening were announced in the first open NoTA Conference held in Helsinki, Finland on the 11th of June 2008.

The Open NoTA architecture can be seen as an innovation platform that in itself does not include any differentiating technology, but can be seen as an enabler for others. There is a common interest to have open solutions throughout the industry, academia and developer community that facilitate open innovation on top of neutral, non-differentiating architecture solutions.

Licensed technology

The licensed technology is explained in more detail here. Included are reference implementations and specifications of

Device Interconnect Protocol DIP

• DIP L_IN: Low Interconnect (L_IN) provides network socket interface with uniform addressing mechanism
• DIP H_IN: High Interconnect (H_IN) provides service activation and deactivation as well as service and stream accesses

Resource Manager

• Allocates Service Identifiers (SID) for Service Nodes

Stub generator

• Automated tool for service interface message encoding and decoding for DIP protocol. Service interface is described in the WSDL-format

The reference implementations are portable C code that have been verified in Linux. The following diagram describes the licensed technology in a device context.

Reference implementation is available under BSD license (htpp://gitorious.org/nota) and protocol specifications are available from here. We hope that a lively ecosystem would grow around NoTA architecture and DIP technology including developer communities, academia, R&D service companies and semiconductor and product industry. We are looking also for a new collaborative R&D based on open, non-differentiation device architecture.