TWIN: An Even Smaller Window System for Even Smaller Devices

With embedded systems gaining high resolution displays and powerful CPUs, the desire for sophisticated graphical user interfaces can be realized in even the smallest of systems. While the CPU power available for a given power budget has increased dramatically, these tiny systems remain severely memory constrained. This unique environment presents interesting challenges in graphical system design and implementation. To explore this particular space, a new window system, Twin, has been developed. Using ideas from modern window systems in larger environments, Twin offers overlapping translucent windows, anti-aliased graphics and scalable fonts in a total memory budget of 100 kilobytes.