NoTA World

One of the primary goals of the open architecture initiative is to agree on a unified way to integrate, communicate and define module interfaces in embedded devices. This enables different developers to independently innovate, develop, optimize and verify modules that are interoperable. The model resembles the logic behind Internet protocols. We define a set of common communication protocols and certain rules on how nodes can utilize these protocols. The result is a platform that fosters new independent innovations and provides a basis where innovations can grow and evolve.

NoTA Benefits

• Faster-time-to-market is possible for multiple reasons. Product vendors can purchase already productized NoTA Subsystems removing the time needed for vendor specific requirements definition, implementation and integration phases. In case there are no ready-made products on the market, NoTA-type system-level modularity allows technology vendors to do the implementation and testing independently.
• Cost reduction in product development can be achieved in two dimensions. Firstly, system-level modularity allows free and fair competition between different technology vendors reducing Subsystem costs. Secondly, in many cases product vendors do not have to bear the costs incurring from Subsystem adaptation work specific to their technologies and operating systems.
• Performance and features meeting end-user needs. Product companies are more agile to adopt new technology or technology that better meets users' needs in digital convergence devices.

History

The NoTA concept and the first solution were the result of Nokia Research Center internal activities, started in 2003. The objective of this work was to develop a new embedded device architecture that could solve the existing R&D challenges, as well as prepare the company for the expected horizontalization and digital convergence. The NoTA basic framework was strongly influenced by Network-on-Chip (NoC) and Web Services research.

NoTA Interconnect Release 1 was released in December 2005. Release 1 was very basic, consisting only of Service communication, activation/deactivation, discovery and access. Release 2 added efficient data communication means, with a handle-based stream referencing approach. This functionality, Direct Object Access (DOA), allows direct memory-to-memory streaming between different NoTA subsystems. Release 2 came out during the second half of 2006 and is the first version used in product R&D.

2007 saw the decision to open the NoTA architecture to industry and developer communities. The opened technology is based on Release 3, which has improvements to the APIs and adds support for several concurrent physical interfaces within the device and between devices. The software you can find here is this Release 3.