[jschwartzi]

A better hardware architecture for running a gui with some real-time requirements is often to move the real-time stuff into a separate microprocessor entirely. I’ve run into some tricky problems trying to do both on the same core, as you have zero control over when the UI will suddenly start consuming more resources, and it becomes a game of whack-a-mole to keep your ui responsive without overtaxing your event loop. I think this is one reason TI put a Cortex M processor on die with the AM335X. It enables you to offload your real-time logic onto a separate processor and dedicate hardware control to that so the main application processor could focus on rendering and responding to user inputs.