OpenGL ES Draw Unit¶

Introduction¶

Overview¶

The OpenGL ES Draw Unit provides a hardware-accelerated rendering backend for LVGL that leverages OpenGL ES capabilities.

OpenGL ES (OpenGL for Embedded Systems) is a subset of OpenGL designed for embedded devices, mobile phones, and other resource-constrained platforms. The OpenGL ES Draw Unit brings GPU-accelerated rendering to LVGL applications on these platforms.

Key Features¶

Hardware Acceleration: Direct GPU acceleration via OpenGL ES 2.0+
Texture Caching: Rendered elements are cached as OpenGL textures for efficient reuse
GPU Blending: Hardware-accelerated texture composition and blending
Embedded-Friendly: Optimized for resource-constrained embedded systems
Wide Platform Support: Works on mobile, embedded Linux, and other OpenGL ES-compatible platforms

Performance Characteristics¶

The OpenGL ES Draw Unit provides excellent performance for:

Best Performance: Static UI elements that benefit from texture caching
Good Performance: UIs with moderate animation and dynamic content
Embedded Optimization: Efficient memory usage suitable for embedded systems

Prerequisites¶

OpenGL ES 2.0 or higher support on your platform
A driver which supports OpenGL configured (see OpenGL Overview)

Configuration¶

Enable in lv_conf.h¶

#define LV_USE_OPENGLES 1

#define LV_USE_DRAW_OPENGLES 1

/* Configurable cache count. Bigger cache will improve performance */
#define LV_DRAW_OPENGLES_TEXTURE_CACHE_COUNT 64