Free, Open-Source GUI Linux Toolkit for Low and Mid-range Resolution Graphical Displays

Microchip Technology has released a new GUI development toolkit for its portfolio of 32-bit microprocessors (MPUs) running Linux OS. It’s a free and open-source C++ GUI suite for the Microchip’s SAMA5 and SAM9 series of ArmCortex-A5 and ARM926EJ-S processor-based MPUs including the system-in-package and system-on-module products.

The Ensemble Graphics Toolkit is a complete software and tools framework suite. It reduces development cost and time-to-market to help designers in industrial, medical, consumer, and automotive graphical displays. With the underlying hardware acceleration, including graphics controllers and video decoders, the kit provides a high-performance user-experience on low and mid-range graphical displays up to XGA (1024 × 768 pixels) resolution.

This no-cost development suite is an enabler that optimizes processing power and helps developers achieve modern graphic UI with superb user experience, small memory footprint, lower power, the longevity of solution, and low BOM cost. Additionally, Ensemble Graphics Toolkit and Linux can be optimized for fast cold boot, with boot times less than 3 sec from cold reset which is the major requirement for applications like automotive dashboard clusters.

Fully integrated with Linux4SAM, Microchip’s mainline; the toolkit offers Long Term Support (LTS) Linux. Besides supporting Microchip’s MPU families, Linux4SAM contains driver support for a broad range of its components (maXTouch^Ò family of touchscreen controllers, memory devices, power management, and analog devices, and wired and wireless networking components and modules).

For the GUI developers, the Microchip’s Ensemble Graphics Toolkit suite is made available without licensing or royalty fees. The Ensemble Graphics Toolkit is complementary to Microchip’s bare metal/RTOS-focused MPLAB^Ò Harmony Graphics Suite embedded software development framework that also provides a zero-cost, royalty-free graphical user experience. It is based on the permissive Apache 2.0 open-source license.

Features of Ensemble Graphics Toolkit

• Free and open-source C++ GUI suite
• Supports SAMA5 and SAM9 series of Arm Cortex-A5 and ARM926EJ-S
• Low and mid-range graphical displays up to XGA (1024 × 768 pixels) resolution
• Fully integrated with Linux4SAM

Note: More technical information can be found in the Ensemble Graphics Toolkit product page.