TWIN: A Window System for 'Sub-PDA' Devices

With embedded systems gaining high resolu- tion 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 im- plementation. To explore this particular space, a new window system, TWIN, has been de- veloped. 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 100KB.