High-End UI on Low-Power Devices: PHYTEC & Embedded Wizard

Modern products are expected to look and feel like smartphones - smooth animations, crisp graphics, responsive touch - even when they run on energy-efficient, cost-sensitive hardware. That expectation creates a real challenge for engineers: many low-power application processors keep power draw and bill of materials low precisely by leaving out a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU). Without a GPU, rendering falls back on the CPU, which has traditionally limited how rich an embedded user interface could be. The collaboration between Embedded Wizard and PHYTEC shows that a premium look and a low power footprint are not mutually exclusive.

In a recent webinar, Nick Froidl (PHYTEC) and Manuel Melic (TARA Systems) demonstrated exactly how to achieve this on the PHYTEC phyCORE®-i.MX 93, running on the phyBOARD®-Nash. The i.MX 93 is a power-efficient NXP application processor with no dedicated GPU, making it a perfect example of the low-power, cost-optimized hardware found in many products. In this article, we’ll share the key takeaways.

To see the complete workflow in action, we invite you to watch the full webinar:

High-End UIs on Low-Power Hardware with Embedded Wizard

Embedded Wizard is an award-winning solution from TARA Systems for creating advanced GUIs on embedded systems. Rather than acting as a pure graphics library, it follows a code-generation model. Your UI design is turned into lean, optimized native code tailored to the target, so you get a rich, fluid interface without paying for it in memory, CPU load, or energy. Key features of Embedded Wizard include:

• Pure ANSI C Code: Generates efficient ANSI C source code tailored to the target hardware, keeping CPU cycles, and therefore power draw, to a minimum.
• Minimal Memory Footprint: GUIs can run with as little as 16 kilobytes of RAM, making Embedded Wizard a fit for even highly constrained, low-power designs.
• Software Rendering: On platforms without a GPU, Embedded Wizard renders efficiently on the CPU and takes advantage of available 2D accelerators to achieve high frame rates at low CPU load.
• Bare Metal or Any (RT)OS: With no external dependencies, Embedded Wizard GUIs run on bare metal or on any operating system.
• Scalability: The same UI project scales from constrained MCUs up to powerful MPUs, so it can move across hardware as requirements change.
• Smartphone-Like Experience: High-performance animations and transitions deliver the responsive, polished UX users now expect.
• Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Instant prototyping and debugging make it easy to fine-tune UI performance against a tight power and resource budget.

Power-Efficient Hardware: PHYTEC phyCORE®-i.MX 93

PHYTEC is a trusted provider of embedded components and solutions, with 40 years of experience in embedded design. The webinar centered on the phyCORE®-i.MX 93 System on Module and the phyBOARD®-Nash single board computer - a combination well suited to low-power, GUI-driven products:

• Power-Efficient NXP i.MX 93: A dual-core Arm Cortex-A55 application processor with up to 2 GB LPDDR4, driving RGB or LVDS displays, without a dedicated GPU, keeping both power consumption and cost down.
• Compact, Production-Ready Module: At just 36 × 36 × 3 mm, the phyCORE®-i.MX 93 packs a full application processor into a tiny footprint, backed by PHYTEC’s long-term availability and lifecycle support.
• Out-of-the-Box Development with phyBOARD®-Nash: The carrier board exposes all i.MX 93 interfaces and ships ready to start, with an optional 10.1” LVDS display and audio expansion kit for immediate GUI evaluation.
• Scalable SOM Portfolio: The phyCORE® family scales from the i.MX 91/93 up to higher-end SoCs, so developers can choose the right balance of performance and power, and move up or down without leaving the ecosystem.

Benefits of a Finely-Tuned Combination of Hard- and Software

• Premium UX on a Tight Budget: Deliver smooth, visually appealing GUIs that feel like modern consumer devices on hardware chosen for its low cost.
• One UI, Many Targets: Because Embedded Wizard is hardware-agnostic and PHYTEC offers a scalable module family, a single UI project can move across different platforms with minimal effort.
• CPU Rendering Without a GPU: The i.MX 93 has no dedicated GPU. Embedded Wizard’s Graphics Engine utilizes the ARM NEON instruction set on the Cortex-A55 core using its own optimized software pixel driver, so no graphics accelerator is required to reach smooth frame rates.
• Faster Time to Market: A ready-to-use Embedded Wizard Build Environment for PHYTEC SoMs and a step-by-step getting-started guide get developers from design to a running application on the target quickly.
• Optimized Performance and Efficiency: Code generated specifically for the target maximizes both responsiveness and energy efficiency.
• Comprehensive Support: Engineers have access to extensive resources, including documentation, tutorials, and technical assistance from both teams.

In conclusion, the collaboration proves that “high-end” and “low-power” belong in the same sentence. By combining Embedded Wizard’s efficient, hardware-agnostic UI technology with PHYTEC’s power-efficient, long-term-available hardware, developers can build intuitive, beautiful interfaces on devices where every milliwatt - and every cent of BOM cost - counts.

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