Seamless Infotainment UI on i.MX8 with Sparklet
Overview
In-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems are rapidly evolving from simple music players to complex human-machine interfaces (HMIs) integrating navigation, media, telephony, and vehicle control. Delivering smooth, responsive, and visually stunning UIs on automotive-grade hardware while maintaining real-time responsiveness and safety is a growing challenge.
Sparklet, Embien Technologies’ embedded graphics engine, enabled a next-generation infotainment system on NXP’s i.MX8 series SoC, offering the perfect blend of visual richness and runtime efficiency.
Challenge
A global Tier-1 supplier approached Embien Technologies to deliver a modern, feature-rich infotainment UI for their upcoming 4-wheeler platform. The hardware platform chosen was NXP’s i.MX8M Mini SoC, known for its multi-core performance and integrated GPU support. The challenge was to create a sleek, responsive, and customizable user interface that could handle real-time data and multimedia content seamlessly, while maintaining automotive-grade stability.
The project required support for high-resolution displays, touch interactivity, dynamic screen transitions, and integration with navigation, Bluetooth, media, and vehicle status components. Additionally, the UI needed to be multilingual, support night mode switching, and be capable of real-time updates via CAN and Android Auto. The customer expected high responsiveness, low boot time, and efficient usage of the GPU and CPU resources available on the i.MX8 platform. Development timelines were aggressive, and scalability across multiple vehicle models was a key requirement.
Solution
Embien proposed Sparklet, its lightweight and modular graphics engine, as the core rendering platform. Combined with Flint, the intuitive UI design tool, Embien’s team rapidly built the UI components and exported them directly to Sparklet's runtime format. Sparklet leveraged the GPU capabilities of i.MX8 through OpenGL ES to deliver smooth transitions and animations. Using multi-threaded rendering and efficient asset management, Sparklet ensured that system resources were used optimally, providing both performance and stability.
The UI featured a modern layout with multiple tabs for media control, navigation, vehicle diagnostics, and Bluetooth functionality. Album art and playback animations were integrated into the media screen, while the navigation tab displayed route updates in sync with external GPS input. The interface also included animated battery and door status indicators and a responsive touch-based dialer synced with the Bluetooth module. Dynamic theming and real-time language switching enhanced the overall user experience, while Sparklet’s layer-based rendering architecture kept updates lightweight and fast.
Performance metrics exceeded expectations. The UI achieved 60 FPS on animation-intensive screens with low CPU overhead, and the system was fully responsive within 3.5 seconds from cold boot. Sparklet maintained memory efficiency, with the complete UI stack consuming under 100 MB of RAM and minimal GPU load. Localization was implemented for six different languages, allowing deployment in diverse markets without modifying core code.
Conclusion
By leveraging Sparklet, Embien delivered a high-performance infotainment UI that met the customer's requirements ahead of schedule. With Sparklet’s runtime efficiency and Flint’s design flexibility, the customer was able to roll out a scalable, visually rich infotainment system that redefined the in-vehicle digital experience.