Performance issues and screen freeze on STM32

Question

Hello everyone,
I am working with Embedded Wizard version 12 on an STM32F469 LIZARD.

In my project, the GUI works fine in the PC simulator, but when running on the STM32 target hardware, I am experiencing the following issues:

• The GUI feels slow during transitions and animations.

• Sometimes, when switching between screens, application completely freezes.

• These freezes never occur in the simulator.

Some details:

• SDRAM_SIZE_BYTES      0x800000
• EW_USE_DOUBLE_BUFFER            1
• EW_USE_GRAPHICS_ACCELERATOR     1
• EW_MAX_STRING_CACHE_SIZE            0x4000
• EW_MAX_SURFACE_CACHE_SIZE            0x400000
• EW_MAX_GLYPH_SURFACE_WIDTH           256
• EW_MAX_GLYPH_SURFACE_HEIGHT          256
• EW_MAX_NO_OF_GLYPHS                    0
• EW_MAX_ISSUE_TASKS                   256
• EW_INVOCATION_QUEUE_SIZE             512       

Questions:

1. Are there recommended best practices to avoid freezes?

2. Could the slowdown be related to a wrong framebuffer configuration?

3. Are there specific performance optimization guidelines for STM32 targets with Embedded Wizard 12?

Thank you in advance for your support!

Answer 1

Hello,

let me try to answer your questions.

Are there recommended best practices to avoid freezes?

A freeze is a situation that should never happen. I assume there is some error message in advance that indicates the issue. Have you checked the console output during runtime?

Could the slowdown be related to a wrong framebuffer configuration?

I don't think so - I assume the slowdown is related to the GUI design. Maybe you are using effects or transfer modes that are not accelerated by hardware, so that the CPU is doing the operation. In case of STM32F469 any scaling, rotations or perspective transformations in your GUI design are slowing down the performance. But without knowing your design, it is difficult to comment. Maybe the system is also reporting endless errors or warnings or a lot of trace messages, which could slow down the system.

Are there specific performance optimization guidelines for STM32 targets with Embedded Wizard 12?

Let me refer to the article Performance Optimization Guide - which was introduced with V14 - but you can apply most of the knowledge for V12.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Manfred.

Comments

[SOLVED]
The issue was caused by some images with the property Alignment = StretchToFill enabled.