Altia’s GUI Development Software Offers Unique Capabilities to Leverage On-Chip Resources
From laboratory instruments to personal medical devices to hospital equipment, use of Freescale Vybrid has surged onto the embedded medical device landscape lately. Altia has had a solution for Vybrid since before the target was publicly available, so it’s a natural choice for those looking to put GUIs into a Vybrid-based product. However, recent activity has been far greater than in previous years.
Altia CEO, Mike Juran, comments, “Vybrid has always been a strong part for us. Over the past months, it seems that medical device developers have caught on to its unique capabilities and are using it to get some incredible devices to market. For many, Freescale’s Vybrid platform strikes the right balance between power and value – and Altia’s software tools allow GUI developers to wring every last bit of performance from the hardware.”
The Freescale Vybrid target is a sure choice for embedded GUI deployment as it offers a bevy of key benefits. First is its low power consumption, which is critical for many medical devices. Second, the Vybrid target uses less memory while offering better graphics due to its plentiful hardware layers. With the use of the Altia Layer Manager, development teams are able to take full advantage of the Vybrid’s layered architecture.
The Altia Layer Manager allows users to maximize Vybrid’s sixty-four hardware layers by graphically creating virtually unlimited layer combinations that are implemented on-the-fly. With Altia’s code generation solution for Freescale Vybrid, animations like moving objects and dynamic opacity can be executed with no CPU – just using the capabilities of the layers. Additionally, the capability to define color format offers significant advantage to GUI quality and memory requirements. Developers are able to easily set different color formats on each layer – drastically reducing ROM requirements and improving image appearance.
One North American medical device manufacturer, which is nearing production with Altia code running on Vybrid has seen more than 50% reduction in overall expected ROM size for their production GUI code. This company also expects to easily pass FDA approval because – from day one – they have had all of the C source code for the user interface available for inspection, testing and documentation.
Some of the recent interest can be attributed to Altia’s long time proven support of other Freescale silicon. Many users are choosing to try out Vybrid as they move to new programs. They want to see how it compares to other Freescale platforms such as MPC5605S (Spectrum), MPC5645S (Rainbow) and even the i.MX family.
Altia has a strong legacy for success in medical, automotive, industrial and consumer markets – and its graphical user interface development software is used by companies worldwide to get first class displays onto the lowest cost, best performing hardware. With Altia Design, the GUI editor and centerpiece of Altia’s tool chain, users create custom graphics from scratch or use assets from tools like Adobe Photoshop to draw their GUIs, create animation, define behavior and optimize user experience. Once complete, Altia DeepScreen generates pure C source code for the Altia design model that can be deployed onto a wide array of low- to high-power processors from industry-leading silicon providers including Freescale, STMicroelectronics, Renesas, NXP, Spansion, Texas Instruments and more.
To learn more about Altia’s support for Vybrid, please visit our target-specific page at www.altia.com/vybrid.
About Altia
Altia, Inc. is a software company that provides graphical user interface design and development tools that can be used from concept to final product code. Altia was founded in 1991 and its customers include Continental Automotive, Smiths Medical, Renault, Fiat, Medtronic, MTA, Johnson Controls, Rolls-Royce, DAF Trucks, Frazer-Nash, Diehl AKO Stiftung & Co. and hundreds of other leading manufacturers.
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