June 17, 2025 • 13 mins
Unlocking Graphics Potential: NXP's MCU and MPU Platform
Join hosts Kyle Dando and Bridgette Stone as they delve into the world of graphics enablement across NXP's comprehensive portfolio, including MCUs, crossover i.MX RT devices, and high-performance i.MX MPUs.
Special NXP graphics experts Mike Susen and Prabhu Sandararaj join the conversation to share insights on developing rich, responsive GUIs and leveraging hardware acceleration for heavy lifting. Discover how NXP supports developers with optimized graphics APIs, industry-standard tools, and valuable resources like GUI Guider and the Application Code Hub. Learn how these advancements are shaping the future of graphical human-machine interfaces in various sectors, including automotive, industrial, and IoT.
- https://www.nxp.com/applications/technologies/human-machine-interface
- https://mcuxpresso.nxp.com/appcodehub?category=graphics
- https://www.nxp.com/GUIGUIDER
Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe for more cutting-edge discussions!
00:00 Introduction to EdgeVerse Techcast
00:26 Today's Topic: Graphics Enablement
00:47 Meet the Experts: Mike and Prabhu
01:56 NXP's Graphics Capabilities
03:41 Hardware Acceleration in NXP Devices
06:37 Optimizing Graphics Performance
08:12 Third-Party Software Support
10:48 Getting Started with NXP Graphics Tools
12:02 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:10):
Welcome back to the EdgeVerse TechCast.
This is the podcast where we explorethe tools, software, and processors
that power innovation at the edge.
I'm Kyle Dando, and I'mone of your co-hosts.
And I am Bridgette Stone.
Today's episode is all about graphicsenablement across NXP'S portfolio
(00:31):
from MCUs and Crossover devicesto our higher performance MPUs.
Whether you're building rich,responsive GUIs, or looking for
hardware accelerated performance,we've got a lot to unpack today.
We sure do Bridgette, andthis is going to be unique.
Today's podcast, we actually havetwo guests that are going to help
(00:51):
us unravel this, uh, complexityof, of graphics enablement.
So we have Mike, Susan,uh, who's joining us.
He, uh, many of you may have, uh, engagedwith him on our developer community.
He's very active, uh, supporting allour customers and all our platforms.
And also, uh, we have, uh, Prabu
.Sunda Raj and he leads our graphics technologies team here at NXP.
(01:15):
And so we're really happyto have both of you here.
Thanks Kyle.
Let's start with some intros.
Mike, tell us about your role and I hearyou brought a graphics Titan with you.
Alright, so hey, I'm Mike, Susan andI'm Software Product Manager here
at NXP and I've been part of systemsengineering team for eight years, and now
I'm driving the strategy about graphicsand display for 3 years in our team.
(01:41):
I'm Prabhu Sandararaj, TechnicalDirector at NXP, working on
graphics for about 30 years.
Been involved ever since firstgraphics processor with a GPU
Thank you both for being here.
So let's dive right in.
First question.
When developers ask about rich GUIsupport or want visually compelling
(02:01):
UIs on embedded devices, what can NXPoffer across the MCU and MPU spectrum?
Well our portfolio is pretty wide.
Yeah?
So we're counting with entrylevel of the MCUs over crossovers.
Then to i.MX MPUs, wesupport 2D 3D graphics.
Of course, we can do graphicswithout any acceleration.
(02:23):
So we have the libraries frameworksthat are supporting no acceleration.
So everything is computed over CPU.
Then we have hybrid architecturescombining CPU 2D, 3D so the users
and the customers can easilyscale and use the technology.
Prabhu, did I miss somethingor anything from that?
(02:44):
Or what is your opinion on NXP's HMI?
When we talk about graphics HMI.
Graphics HMI is the efficientway to interact with machines,
next to physical buttons.
Physical multifunctional, buttons has itsown challenge in the industrial designs.
The graphics HMI provides a goodalternative with nicer looking designs.
(03:06):
NXP offers graphics APIs, which isfully optimized for performance, ultra
low power, and also offers rich setof tools with Gui Guider and working
with various industry partners.
All right.
Well you bring up a great point, Prabhuabout how graphics is the way most of
us interact with products nowadays.
In the past it was all about the buttons,but they always would age and break.
(03:30):
Now with our mobile devices,and a lot of the things we
interact with, it's graphics.
So thanks for bringing that up.
And now why don't we dive into howdoes NXP help the customer with that?
And we will start withhardware acceleration.
So NXP has a largeportfolio as you brought up.
What are some of the hardwareengines offered by NXP inside
(03:51):
of those device families?
How does NXP provide a competitivemicrocontroller or MPU as
far as hardware is concerned.
Alright, so in case of hardwareacceleration I can talk about
Crossovers and i.MX devices.
So in case of Crossovers, we havePXP, which is Pixel Pipeline.
It can help you rotate image,uh, do a bit, um, scale,
(04:14):
image, rotate, and uh, crop.
Then, uh, we have accelerator,which is for, for vector graphics.
That we are offering, uh,uh, in case of crossovers.
Then on the MPUs on the big i.MX devices,we are talking about 3D of course,
with combination with 2D graphics.
And regarding 3D we can talkabout OpenGL and all of the
(04:37):
framework connected to OpenGL.
All right, Mike, so you brought thePXP, the VG lite, the OpenGL a lot
of assistance for the customers.
What's the biggest advantage thatthose engines provide customers?
Where do the customers see thebiggest performance improvement?
Yeah.
So hardware accelerators arehelping to offload the CPU.
(05:00):
So the customers have more CPUtime for their application.
So everything regarding graphics iscomputed on this graphics accelerators,
and then on the CPU, they can use,uh, CPU time for their application.
All right.
Have you seen any recent cooldemonstrations using graphics on the
NXP devices that you talked about?
Anything unique that customers have done?
(05:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, well, every time I'm really impressedto see any game running on our hardware.
And it doesn't matter if it's on the MCUwithout acceleration and also the MPUs.
So be serious, uh, regarding customers.
, I like to see, uh, smart appliancesbecause, uh, you know, , how many
time we spent to set up any Smartappliance like oven or washer?
(05:44):
5, 10 seconds, something like that?
For the short time, we need to beimpressed with the graphics and the
animations and stuff around that.
So every time I'm using thistype of appliance, I'm thinking
about how they did that.
What type of acceleration are they using?
So this is very interesting to me.
All right.
Well, I think you justskimmed the surface.
(06:05):
Bridgette, I think you and Ihave to step back and let the
two graphics oracles take over.
That was a great introduction.
So you talked about the platform, youtalked a little bit about, some of the
software, that great application of games,but more importantly consumer products.
So why don't you and Prabhu talk alittle bit more about the advantages
and get into more of the detailsabout the NXP advantages that you
(06:30):
guys have put together for Graphics?
Yeah.
So Prabhu, I know that your team islaser focused on the performance.
What kind of work goes into optimizinggraphics acceleration on our platforms?
When we talk about graphics on embeddeddevices, the resources are limited.
For example, the environment which weare working is a limited memory footprint
(06:53):
and limited memory bandwidth, and alsoit needs to be extremely efficient to
work under ultra low poor conditions,GPUs and Accelerator, its significance
can be leveraged when we run in theparallel That means you run the GPU,
and you run the CPU, so that many ofthe accelerators can run in parallel.
That's where you bring theexperience human machine interfaces.
(07:18):
Okay.
That's where we are more focused on.
Yeah.
Any recent wins or popularfeatures your team helped to
enable that customers are loving?
You know, i.MX and RT processors arebeing used in variety of Automotive,
Industrial, and Iot use cases.
Recently for the AR/VR use cases theGPU optimized for Ultra Low-Power
(07:39):
best suits that specific use case.
It helps to stay powered for many days.
Okay, this has been proven in thesmartwatches where you can see the designs
with RT products stays for over 10 days.
Similarly, we are bringing thesame thing for the AR/VR use cases,
where it can stay for many days.
(08:01):
Well, thank you both for giving us someinsider scoop on how we're optimizing
graphics acceleration on our platformand some of your, your most recent,
uh, features that we've enabled.
Now, pivoting a little bit, I knowmany of our developers rely on
third parties enablement software.
How does NXB supportthose frameworks today?
(08:22):
So NXP delivers index threestandard APIs and NXP promotes the
in industry standard APIs for itsdocumentation and specification.
This helps NXP MPU / MCU to integrateinto the rich graphics tools, which
provides seamless development Butalso, we provide development tools and
libraries across MCUs and MPUs, whichmakes the HMI development much faster
(08:47):
and seamless for any given use cases.
Yes, as Prabhu mentionedwe are chip makers.
We deliver hardware, but we needto deliver software enablement.
On the top of that, our partners are ableto build up and run their frameworks.
And Mike, does our software toolinghelp customers using external graphics
engines get the most from our silicon?
(09:08):
Uh, yes, of course.
Uh, I have one, one great example, uh,here around this hybrid architectures.
Just, just rememberwhen you start your car.
Just push the button in the same secondyou see graphics, animations, and welcome
screen and everything on the dashboard.
It looks pretty simple, but imaginethat there is complex operating
systems starting few seconds.
(09:30):
So how we did it, uh, the dashboardLCD is driven by real time small
core in first few seconds until thehigher operating system will start.
And after that, it'll take thedriving of the LCD and show
all the catchy and fancy stuff.
And more complex widgetsare on the screen.
So next time I will drive your caryou'll know how this magic works.
(09:54):
Uh, it's getting pretty magical.
Mike.
I went to a dealershipa couple months ago.
I. And when that car powers up,it's like you're in a movie theater.
There's so much.
It used to be you'd have that littlecenter console, which was like an iPad,
and now they've got the full console.
It's from window to window.
How does that seamlessly occur?
You just talked about it.
(10:14):
There's multi-cores and all ofthose have to be working with the
graphic support that NXP provides.
All right, so let's moveon to another question.
Try to wrap up.
So, imagine that I'm a customer, Mikeand my management team is beating down on
me to come up with the best new product.
Our competition just came out with thatnew dashboard and, uh, he's told our
(10:36):
team that we have to do equivalent.
So where, where does thecustomer get started?
So, what would they do if they wanna startdeveloping high-end graphics with the
leading products from NXP'S portfolio?
Yeah, we have the solution.
The name is GUI Guider.
This is the one tool wecan offer to our customers.
They can easily start without anyknowledge about graphics so they
(10:58):
can build a graphics applicationin a minute or in a few minutes.
Also we are offering Application Code Hub.
So actually we have two starting points.
It depends where you want to focusthat to build something from the
scratch or use our prepared example.
Prabhu, anything you'd wanna add?
What else can our listenersdo to get started?
(11:20):
GUI Guider is indeed agreat place to start.
There are a lot of examples and referencecode from the Application Code Hub.
The Smartwatch Examples and theFull Appliance demo are indeed
great examples to get startedand modify based on their needs.
Do we have GUI Guider examplesin the Application Code Hub?
(11:41):
Application Code Hub indeedhas the examples, which works
great with the GUI Guider.
So these examples can be importedinto the GUI Guider and customers
can modify based on their needs.
It's a great place to start.
Great.
So Kyle, I think we'll wannamake sure to add some of those
examples to the show notes.
Sure.
(12:01):
All right.
Well, Prabhu and Mike, Thank You.
I think we scratched the surface.
This is such a huge topic.
It's where NXP shinesagainst the competition.
Prabhu, you mentioned the portabledevices, the smart watches is where
we have a strong, strong presence.
Now we're seeing the wearable glasses,we're seeing other graphics opportunities
(12:23):
in the two wheel devices with theconsoles that Mike talked about.
We're in lots of applications wherewe have these complex systems that
have to power up using our i.MXdevices or our Crossover devices.
I hope that the listeners todayunderstand that NXP provides the
chips as, Mike mentioned, but we'redeveloping the software to support those.
(12:46):
Prabhu, with his team on thegraphics, they are integrating
the best GPUs available.
Not only standard, butalso NXP driven GPUs.
This is going to help ourcustomers deliver satisfaction
for Next-gen graphics.
Thank you very much today guysfor coming on our show and
explaining a lot about graphics.
(13:08):
Thank you for having me.
Sure.
We talked a lot about the GUIGuider, Mike, which I think you
have a lot of training available.
We talked about the Application CodeHub, and there are over 14 examples
in the Application Code Hub that willhelp you as a customer evaluate all the
graphics that Mike and Prabhu mentioned.
Thanks again to Mike and Prabhufor being on the show today.
(13:30):
And for our listeners, be sureto like, follow and subscribe so
you don't miss future episodes.
And if you have a topic youwould like us to explore, please
drop us a note and let us know.
And until next time, check out thelatest in graphics and we'll see
you on the next EdgeVerse Techcast.
Welcome back to the EdgeVerse TechCast.
This is the podcast where we explorethe tools, software, and processors
that power innovation at the edge.
I'm Kyle Dando, and I'mone of your co-hosts.
And I am Bridgette Stone.
Today's episode is all about graphicsenablement across NXP'S portfolio
(00:31):
from MCUs and Crossover devicesto our higher performance MPUs.
Whether you're building rich,responsive GUIs, or looking for
hardware accelerated performance,we've got a lot to unpack today.
We sure do Bridgette, andthis is going to be unique.
Today's podcast, we actually havetwo guests that are going to help
(00:51):
us unravel this, uh, complexityof, of graphics enablement.
So we have Mike, Susan,uh, who's joining us.
He, uh, many of you may have, uh, engagedwith him on our developer community.
He's very active, uh, supporting allour customers and all our platforms.
And also, uh, we have, uh, Prabu
.Sunda Raj and he leads our graphics technologies team here at NXP.
(01:15):
And so we're really happyto have both of you here.
Thanks Kyle.
Let's start with some intros.
Mike, tell us about your role and I hearyou brought a graphics Titan with you.
Alright, so hey, I'm Mike, Susan andI'm Software Product Manager here
at NXP and I've been part of systemsengineering team for eight years, and now
I'm driving the strategy about graphicsand display for 3 years in our team.
(01:41):
I'm Prabhu Sandararaj, TechnicalDirector at NXP, working on
graphics for about 30 years.
Been involved ever since firstgraphics processor with a GPU
Thank you both for being here.
So let's dive right in.
First question.
When developers ask about rich GUIsupport or want visually compelling
(02:01):
UIs on embedded devices, what can NXPoffer across the MCU and MPU spectrum?
Well our portfolio is pretty wide.
Yeah?
So we're counting with entrylevel of the MCUs over crossovers.
Then to i.MX MPUs, wesupport 2D 3D graphics.
Of course, we can do graphicswithout any acceleration.
(02:23):
So we have the libraries frameworksthat are supporting no acceleration.
So everything is computed over CPU.
Then we have hybrid architecturescombining CPU 2D, 3D so the users
and the customers can easilyscale and use the technology.
Prabhu, did I miss somethingor anything from that?
(02:44):
Or what is your opinion on NXP's HMI?
When we talk about graphics HMI.
Graphics HMI is the efficientway to interact with machines,
next to physical buttons.
Physical multifunctional, buttons has itsown challenge in the industrial designs.
The graphics HMI provides a goodalternative with nicer looking designs.
(03:06):
NXP offers graphics APIs, which isfully optimized for performance, ultra
low power, and also offers rich setof tools with Gui Guider and working
with various industry partners.
All right.
Well you bring up a great point, Prabhuabout how graphics is the way most of
us interact with products nowadays.
In the past it was all about the buttons,but they always would age and break.
(03:30):
Now with our mobile devices,and a lot of the things we
interact with, it's graphics.
So thanks for bringing that up.
And now why don't we dive into howdoes NXP help the customer with that?
And we will start withhardware acceleration.
So NXP has a largeportfolio as you brought up.
What are some of the hardwareengines offered by NXP inside
(03:51):
of those device families?
How does NXP provide a competitivemicrocontroller or MPU as
far as hardware is concerned.
Alright, so in case of hardwareacceleration I can talk about
Crossovers and i.MX devices.
So in case of Crossovers, we havePXP, which is Pixel Pipeline.
It can help you rotate image,uh, do a bit, um, scale,
(04:14):
image, rotate, and uh, crop.
Then, uh, we have accelerator,which is for, for vector graphics.
That we are offering, uh,uh, in case of crossovers.
Then on the MPUs on the big i.MX devices,we are talking about 3D of course,
with combination with 2D graphics.
And regarding 3D we can talkabout OpenGL and all of the
(04:37):
framework connected to OpenGL.
All right, Mike, so you brought thePXP, the VG lite, the OpenGL a lot
of assistance for the customers.
What's the biggest advantage thatthose engines provide customers?
Where do the customers see thebiggest performance improvement?
Yeah.
So hardware accelerators arehelping to offload the CPU.
(05:00):
So the customers have more CPUtime for their application.
So everything regarding graphics iscomputed on this graphics accelerators,
and then on the CPU, they can use,uh, CPU time for their application.
All right.
Have you seen any recent cooldemonstrations using graphics on the
NXP devices that you talked about?
Anything unique that customers have done?
(05:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, well, every time I'm really impressedto see any game running on our hardware.
And it doesn't matter if it's on the MCUwithout acceleration and also the MPUs.
So be serious, uh, regarding customers.
, I like to see, uh, smart appliancesbecause, uh, you know, , how many
time we spent to set up any Smartappliance like oven or washer?
(05:44):
5, 10 seconds, something like that?
For the short time, we need to beimpressed with the graphics and the
animations and stuff around that.
So every time I'm using thistype of appliance, I'm thinking
about how they did that.
What type of acceleration are they using?
So this is very interesting to me.
All right.
Well, I think you justskimmed the surface.
(06:05):
Bridgette, I think you and Ihave to step back and let the
two graphics oracles take over.
That was a great introduction.
So you talked about the platform, youtalked a little bit about, some of the
software, that great application of games,but more importantly consumer products.
So why don't you and Prabhu talk alittle bit more about the advantages
and get into more of the detailsabout the NXP advantages that you
(06:30):
guys have put together for Graphics?
Yeah.
So Prabhu, I know that your team islaser focused on the performance.
What kind of work goes into optimizinggraphics acceleration on our platforms?
When we talk about graphics on embeddeddevices, the resources are limited.
For example, the environment which weare working is a limited memory footprint
(06:53):
and limited memory bandwidth, and alsoit needs to be extremely efficient to
work under ultra low poor conditions,GPUs and Accelerator, its significance
can be leveraged when we run in theparallel That means you run the GPU,
and you run the CPU, so that many ofthe accelerators can run in parallel.
That's where you bring theexperience human machine interfaces.
(07:18):
Okay.
That's where we are more focused on.
Yeah.
Any recent wins or popularfeatures your team helped to
enable that customers are loving?
You know, i.MX and RT processors arebeing used in variety of Automotive,
Industrial, and Iot use cases.
Recently for the AR/VR use cases theGPU optimized for Ultra Low-Power
(07:39):
best suits that specific use case.
It helps to stay powered for many days.
Okay, this has been proven in thesmartwatches where you can see the designs
with RT products stays for over 10 days.
Similarly, we are bringing thesame thing for the AR/VR use cases,
where it can stay for many days.
(08:01):
Well, thank you both for giving us someinsider scoop on how we're optimizing
graphics acceleration on our platformand some of your, your most recent,
uh, features that we've enabled.
Now, pivoting a little bit, I knowmany of our developers rely on
third parties enablement software.
How does NXB supportthose frameworks today?
(08:22):
So NXP delivers index threestandard APIs and NXP promotes the
in industry standard APIs for itsdocumentation and specification.
This helps NXP MPU / MCU to integrateinto the rich graphics tools, which
provides seamless development Butalso, we provide development tools and
libraries across MCUs and MPUs, whichmakes the HMI development much faster
(08:47):
and seamless for any given use cases.
Yes, as Prabhu mentionedwe are chip makers.
We deliver hardware, but we needto deliver software enablement.
On the top of that, our partners are ableto build up and run their frameworks.
And Mike, does our software toolinghelp customers using external graphics
engines get the most from our silicon?
(09:08):
Uh, yes, of course.
Uh, I have one, one great example, uh,here around this hybrid architectures.
Just, just rememberwhen you start your car.
Just push the button in the same secondyou see graphics, animations, and welcome
screen and everything on the dashboard.
It looks pretty simple, but imaginethat there is complex operating
systems starting few seconds.
(09:30):
So how we did it, uh, the dashboardLCD is driven by real time small
core in first few seconds until thehigher operating system will start.
And after that, it'll take thedriving of the LCD and show
all the catchy and fancy stuff.
And more complex widgetsare on the screen.
So next time I will drive your caryou'll know how this magic works.
(09:54):
Uh, it's getting pretty magical.
Mike.
I went to a dealershipa couple months ago.
I. And when that car powers up,it's like you're in a movie theater.
There's so much.
It used to be you'd have that littlecenter console, which was like an iPad,
and now they've got the full console.
It's from window to window.
How does that seamlessly occur?
You just talked about it.
(10:14):
There's multi-cores and all ofthose have to be working with the
graphic support that NXP provides.
All right, so let's moveon to another question.
Try to wrap up.
So, imagine that I'm a customer, Mikeand my management team is beating down on
me to come up with the best new product.
Our competition just came out with thatnew dashboard and, uh, he's told our
(10:36):
team that we have to do equivalent.
So where, where does thecustomer get started?
So, what would they do if they wanna startdeveloping high-end graphics with the
leading products from NXP'S portfolio?
Yeah, we have the solution.
The name is GUI Guider.
This is the one tool wecan offer to our customers.
They can easily start without anyknowledge about graphics so they
(10:58):
can build a graphics applicationin a minute or in a few minutes.
Also we are offering Application Code Hub.
So actually we have two starting points.
It depends where you want to focusthat to build something from the
scratch or use our prepared example.
Prabhu, anything you'd wanna add?
What else can our listenersdo to get started?
(11:20):
GUI Guider is indeed agreat place to start.
There are a lot of examples and referencecode from the Application Code Hub.
The Smartwatch Examples and theFull Appliance demo are indeed
great examples to get startedand modify based on their needs.
Do we have GUI Guider examplesin the Application Code Hub?
(11:41):
Application Code Hub indeedhas the examples, which works
great with the GUI Guider.
So these examples can be importedinto the GUI Guider and customers
can modify based on their needs.
It's a great place to start.
Great.
So Kyle, I think we'll wannamake sure to add some of those
examples to the show notes.
Sure.
(12:01):
All right.
Well, Prabhu and Mike, Thank You.
I think we scratched the surface.
This is such a huge topic.
It's where NXP shinesagainst the competition.
Prabhu, you mentioned the portabledevices, the smart watches is where
we have a strong, strong presence.
Now we're seeing the wearable glasses,we're seeing other graphics opportunities
(12:23):
in the two wheel devices with theconsoles that Mike talked about.
We're in lots of applications wherewe have these complex systems that
have to power up using our i.MXdevices or our Crossover devices.
I hope that the listeners todayunderstand that NXP provides the
chips as, Mike mentioned, but we'redeveloping the software to support those.
(12:46):
Prabhu, with his team on thegraphics, they are integrating
the best GPUs available.
Not only standard, butalso NXP driven GPUs.
This is going to help ourcustomers deliver satisfaction
for Next-gen graphics.
Thank you very much today guysfor coming on our show and
explaining a lot about graphics.
(13:08):
Thank you for having me.
Sure.
We talked a lot about the GUIGuider, Mike, which I think you
have a lot of training available.
We talked about the Application CodeHub, and there are over 14 examples
in the Application Code Hub that willhelp you as a customer evaluate all the
graphics that Mike and Prabhu mentioned.
Thanks again to Mike and Prabhufor being on the show today.
(13:30):
And for our listeners, be sureto like, follow and subscribe so
you don't miss future episodes.
And if you have a topic youwould like us to explore, please
drop us a note and let us know.
And until next time, check out thelatest in graphics and we'll see
you on the next EdgeVerse Techcast.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com