Gumstix Verdex Pro (XScale™)
ICS used Verdex Pro as a performance test bed for a client that was developing a custom board with the Marvell® PXA270 processor. This project called for ICS to port Qt 4.5 to the embedded platform, validate the port, and assess its CPU performance and memory footprint. This project allowed our client to determine weeks in advance whether the custom board was going to provide sufficient performance. As a follow-on to this effort, ICS developed a set of custom user interface graphics that would be used in the final product. Developing these UI graphics with the existing Verdex Pro board allowed our client to create their software in parallel with the hardware, which resulted in faster time to market.
Texas Instruments DaVinci™ 6446/6467 (ARM-9)
ICS developed an embedded video player for a personal health product family. The video player had a two chip architecture – DaVinci chip was used to decode video while an OMAP35xx was used for an embedded Qt-generated, highly kinetic user interface. These two sources were blended to provide a unified user experience.
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (ARM-11) and Nokia N97 (ARM-11)
ICS helped our client port an application from the iPhone to the Qt "Tower" pre-release on the S60. This effort required recoding large segments of Objective C as well as rewriting other segments to leverage the benefits of Qt and S60. The resulting application was a hybrid, using Qt for the user interface portions and application infrastructure and S60 APIs for the networking and communication aspects.
Gumstix Overo Earth (OMAP 3503)
ICS used Overo Earth (OMAP3503) from Gumstix to develop a proof of concept multi-media device. This effort included a port of Qt 4.5 to the embedded platform with video and sound processed via the Qt Phonon subsystem.
Beagleboard (OMAP 3530)
The Beagleboard (OMAP 3530) provides a highly functional development platform for devices that use the OMAP processor from Texas Instruments. ICS developed an embedded Qt application that delivered video at 30 fps, ICS ported a pre-release of Qt 4.6 to this board and successfully connected the Qt paint engine to the hardware graphics acceleration device.
ARM-based Research and Development Activites
By using the most recent desktop and embedded technology in internal research and development projects, ICS is prepared to work with any client system. Examples from the ARM family include:
- iPhone (ARM-11) The iPhone was used by ICS engineering as part of an internal effort to assess the feasibility of developing a port of Qt to the iPhone. Parties interested in more details of this effort are encouraged to contact ICS.
- Trolltech Greenphone (Intel XScale) The Greenphone is a smart phone platform developed by Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks (then Trolltech) to support the first releases of the embedded version of Qt, Qtopia, and the Qtopia Phone Edition.
- Openmoko Neo family of smart phones (Openmoko Neo 1973 ARM-9 and Openmoko Neo Freerunner ARM-9) ICS used these devices as general test beds for evaluating new releases of embedded Qt, testing frameworks for cross-development tools, and as a reference for performance measurements on embedded systems.
- Embedian 711x (ARM-9) ICS used this board to help quantify the performance characteristics of ARM-9 platforms. As part of this effort, ICS gave back to the community by providing detailed instructions for building embedded Qt on this platform.
MIPS
The Jz4740 is a MIPS XBurst CPU chip made by the Chinese company Ingenic Semiconductor that is a popular choice for MP4 players. Our client had used this chipset in a point of sale, touch screen device for the selection of fast foods. ICS became involved with this effort when our client asked us to debug failures generated by the quick selection of multiple options via the touch screen. We successfully isolated and eliminated the problem by rewriting the handling of serial I/O communication using the open source QextSerialPort class. Subsequently, we have expanded the functionality of this device to include field updates.
Beagleboard (OMAP 3530)
The Beagleboard (OMAP 3530) provides a highly functional development platform for devices that use the OMAP processor from Texas Instruments. ICS developed an embedded Qt application that delivered video at 30 fps, ICS ported a pre-release of Qt 4.6 to this board and successfully connected the Qt paint engine to the hardware graphics acceleration device.
Atom
Intel D945GCLF2 (Intel® Atom™ processor 330)
One of ICS's clients chose the mini-ITX board D945GCLF2 as the embedded processor for their line of office equipment. They selected QNX as the operating system, and requested that ICS port Qt 4.5 to this embedded platform. This effort included the port of the latest version of x.org's X11 to QNX and the addition of supporting libraries to replace standard Linux libraries that were not provided. This successful port of Qt benefited our client by allowing them to develop their applications once and deploy them on a range of systems with differing price/performance.
PPC
Our client had selected VxWorks and X-Windows for their multi-screen helicopter control system. As part of this project, ICS ported the latest version of a GUI toolkit to VxWorks.
Hitachi SuperH/SH
ICS's client had selected STMicroelectronics STi7109 as the foundation for their HDTV set-top box decoder. ICS jumpstarted our client's development by setting up the cross-platform development environment, porting Qt to their target hardware, and tuning their system environment.
