12/03/2014

Create compelling UI for embedded devices with the Nucleus Add-on for the Qt Framework
Phil Brumby
Qt is a registered trade mark of Digia Plc and/or its subsidiaries.

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Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Use of this trademark is subject to Google Permissions. Linux is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Qt is a registered trade mark of Digia Plc and/or its subsidiaries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are trademarks of their respective owners.

Agenda

What is Qt? Qt for Embedded Demo - Nucleus Add-on for the Qt Framework Memory Management Performance Matters Demo - Bad Frame rate analysis Summary

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WHAT IS QT?

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What is Qt?

A cross-platform UI framework

Spans traditional to more sophisticated UIs Includes UI development tools Wide range of developers, open governance model Over 450,000 developers in more than 70 industries Medical, white goods, automotive, consumer, industrial UI implementation is portable across many platforms

Open source project

Used extensively in embedded

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What is Qtcontinued

Offers two UI development environments:

Qt Widgets

Ideal for static, traditional 2D UIs buttons, controls Uses Qt Designer a WYSIWYG UI editor Auto code generation Compact UI code memory footprint For more advanced and animated UIs with 3D and OpenGL/ES shader effects UI written in QML (CSS & JavaScript like script) Uses Qt Quick Designer a WYSIWyG UI editor Runs on embedded rendering engine Requires OpenGL/ES GPU
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Qt Quick

QT FOR EMBEDDED

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Embedded - A QWidget or Qt Quick solution?

From engagements experienced in the embedded space significant use cases exist for deployment of both QWidget & Qt Quick solutions. As GPU enablement and memory size continues to increase across a fuller range of hardware, QML based Qt Quick solutions become more viable Substantial embedded device market opportunities for mid-range UIs via QWidget

Resource limited embedded devices requiring smaller memory footprint, No GPU available Non-CE markets, such as medical and white goods requiring static layout and more traditional 2D buttons and controls style UIs Well correlated with the general embedded RTOS market opportunity

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What is the Nucleus Add-on for Qt?

Optional companion product to Nucleus (ReadyStart)

Supports Qt Widgets & Qt Designer UI tooling Execution of Qt run-time on Nucleus RTOS Accessibility of Qt tools / artifacts in ReadyStart IDE

Enables Qt-based UIs on Nucleus applications

Core Qt port licensed under LGPL

Will be contributed to the open source community (Qt Project)

Community availability drives more adoption Enhanced tooling, footprint management, etc.

Nucleus Add-on for Qt is a package of value-adds

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Nucleus Add-on for Qt Product Overview

Qt version supported

5.0.2 Qt GUI, Qt Core, Qt Widgets Qt Widgets Qt GUI Qt Core Windowing System

Qt Library Modules included

Qt Designer UI development tool UI development host platform

Windows QEMU Simulation

Footprint management tool Trace points and agents for performance analysis of Qt-based GUIs Supported platforms

Nucleus RTOS with Process Model Target Embedded Hardware

TI AM3358 EVM (ARM A8) i.MX6 SabreLite (ARM A9) Additional platforms on roadmap
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Qt Config & Build Integration

Plug-ins to the Nucleus IDE provide integration of Qt

Qt appears as a library project within Nucleus Wizard takes care of project creation from Qt + patches Configuration and build via IDE Conceals Qts complex command line build process Qt Creator doesnt help with this stuff Easier to build and configure Qt under Nucleus than under any other OS including desktops

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CodeBench: Application Design & Build Integration

Plug-ins to CodeBench in Nucleus ReadyStart handle Qt project specifics

Project builds, runs and debugs just like any other Nucleus Process Qt presentation layer is enclosed in a sub-folder Qt tool chain is hidden behind the IDE Can right-click or double click to launch Qt GUI design tool

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Qt Designer

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DEMO - NUCLEUS ADD-ON FOR THE QT FRAMEWORK

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MEMORY MANAGEMENT

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Qt Footprint Management

Qt has around 140 optional features

Manual Qt library configuration is a headache! Base options turned on/off in IDE (about 9-10)

Under Nucleus, these are easily customizable

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Qt Footprint Management

Build compacted option strips out other options if unused

One click memory optimization Produces an application-specific library instance, of minimum size Not available with standard Open Source Qt

Qt library footprint for the Washing Machine demo was reduced from ~13MB to ~4MB by compacting
Absolute minimum Qt library footprint is ~3MB

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PERFORMANCE MATTERS!

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Why does UI performance matter to Mentor Embedded?

No matter how good your underlying system is, the users will only remember your user interface. Fail there and you will fail, period. -- Tristan Louis

For Mentor, after enabling a customer with UI technology, OS, Middleware and Dev tools, we have a vested interest in ensuring a quality product is produced!

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Typical Performance Problems

Responsiveness

How quickly a UI responds to an input (e.g. a touch event) Avoiding UIs which are perceived as laggy

Animation smoothness

Typically measured in frames per second

Start-up time

Affected by OS, UI framework, application processing, resource loading and graphics computation

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Performance Metrics

To get to the bottom of Qt performance issues, you must understand system metrics for measuring performance We can then use them to understand the story of just what is happening on the hardware at any given time

Execution profile LISRS, HISRS, Tasks, Events CPU State, utilisation, multi core access Memory Pools, usage, load File system activity

These should be coupled with computational user defined metrics

Frame rate (FPS), pixel load, runtime data requests, % screen redraw, start up time
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What is Sourcery Analyzer?

Sourcery Analyzer is a new and powerful way to debug and analyze the behavior and performance of complex single and multi-core embedded systems.

uses tracing to investigate problems where interactive debuggers fall short provides a variety of out-of-the-box analysis tools to get up and running quickly

enables users to develop application-specific analysis tools tailored to their unique requirements

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Sourcery Analyzer Instrumentation of Qt

Trace points and agents for analysis of Qt-based GUIs

System level analysis visualization view

Focused on analysis of specific common GUI problems

Available agents

UI Smoothness UI Startup UI Latency UI Core Events Resource Loading Profiling Template

Average Framerate Variation Analysis

Visualization time-correlated with Nucleus RTOS, middleware, device drivers, etc.

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DEMO SOURCERY ANALYZER

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Use Case Intermittent frame rate issues

SEP 2.0 Washing Machine UI, Qt Widget, Nucleus RTOS, Qemu

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SUMMARY

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Summary

Integration of Qt QWidgets with an RTOS yields an attractive mid-range embedded UI solution Fully enabling effective embedded UI development requires features beyond those available via the open source Qt project:

Host based UI development and simulation Automated memory footprint management tool Built-in UI performance analysis instrumentation

The users interactive experience of the UI is critical to the success of the device, performance matters!

Performance visualization tools such as Sourcery Analyzer provide deeper and faster insight into difficult UI problems by performing customized analysis across the OS, Qt framework and application layers

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