Surge in use of Freescale Vybrid for medical applications

18th August 2015

Altia

Siobhan O'Gorman

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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.

The Freescale Vybrid target is a suitable 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 maximise 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. Additionally, the capability to define colour format offers significant advantage to GUI quality and memory requirements. Developers are able to easily set different colour 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 its 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.

Mike Juran, CEO, Altia, 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 bring 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."