Genesi designed and maintains PowerDeveloper, [3] an online platform for Genesi products and ARM products from other manufacturers. Via the PowerDeveloper Projects programs, hundreds of systems [4] have been provided to the PowerDeveloper community so far, thereby supporting open source development in many countries. Linux distributions that directly benefited from the programs include but are not limited to Crux, Debian, Raspbian, Fedora, Gentoo, openSuSE and Ubuntu.
Genesi once funded the development of the MorphOS operating system but shifted its focus towards Linux in 2004. However, Genesi remains the main supporter of the operating system and continues to actively support its user and developer communities via the MorphZone [5] social platform, which features discussion forums, a digital library, a software repository and a bounty system.
A motherboard is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems, such as the central processor, the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for general use.
PowerPC is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM. PowerPC, as an evolving instruction set, has been named Power ISA since 2006, while the old name lives on as a trademark for some implementations of Power Architecture–based processors.
In computing, an expansion card is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot on a computer's motherboard to add functionality to a computer system. Sometimes the design of the computer's case and motherboard involves placing most of these slots onto a separate, removable card. Typically such cards are referred to as a riser card in part because they project upward from the board and allow expansion cards to be placed above and parallel to the motherboard.
AmigaOne is a series of computers intended to run AmigaOS 4 developed by Hyperion Entertainment, as a successor to the Amiga series by Commodore International. Earlier models were produced by Eyetech, and were based on the Teron series of PowerPC POP mainboards. In September 2009, Hyperion Entertainment secured an exclusive licence for the AmigaOne name and subsequently new AmigaOne computers were released by A-Eon Technology and Acube Systems.
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the Efika and mobileGT. Since MorphOS 2.4, Apple's Mac mini G4 is supported as well, and with the release of MorphOS 2.5 and MorphOS 2.6 the eMac and Power Mac G4 models are respectively supported. The release of MorphOS 3.2 added limited support for Power Mac G5. The core, based on the Quark microkernel, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are open source, such as the Ambient desktop.
In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components on one or more ULSI integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the motherboard of computers. Chipsets are usually designed to work with a specific family of microprocessors. Because it controls communications between the processor and external devices, the chipset plays a crucial role in determining system performance.
Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three PCI slots, one AGP slot, two Ethernet ports, USB, DDR, AC'97 sound, and FireWire. Like the PowerPC Macintosh counterparts, it boots via Open Firmware.
The southbridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on older personal computer (PC) motherboards, the other being the northbridge. As of 2023, most personal computer devices no longer use a set of two chips, and instead have a single chip acting as the 'chipset', for example Intel's Z790 chipset.
QEMU is a free and open-source emulator. It emulates a computer's processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest operating systems. It can interoperate with Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to run virtual machines at near-native speed. QEMU can also do emulation for user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one architecture to run on another.
PC/104 is a family of embedded computer standards which define both form factors and computer buses by the PC/104 Consortium. Its name derives from the 104 pins on the interboard connector (ISA) in the original PC/104 specification and has been retained in subsequent revisions, despite changes to connectors. PC/104 is intended for specialized environments where a small, rugged computer system is required. The standard is modular, and allows consumers to stack together boards from a variety of COTS manufacturers to produce a customized embedded system.
The ETRAX CRIS is a RISC ISA and series of CPUs designed and manufactured by Axis Communications for use in embedded systems since 1993. The name is an acronym of the chip's features: Ethernet, Token Ring, AXis - Code Reduced Instruction Set. Token Ring support has been taken out from the latest chips as it has become obsolete.
The Open Desktop Workstation, also referred to as ODW is a PowerPC based computer, by San Antonio-based Genesi. The ODW has an interchangeable CPU card allowing for a wide range of PowerPC microprocessors from IBM and Freescale Semiconductor.
Microprocessors belonging to the PowerPC/Power ISA architecture family have been used in numerous applications.
Efika is a line of power efficient ARM architecture and Power ISA based computers manufactured by Genesi.
The i.MX range is a family of Freescale Semiconductor proprietary microcontrollers for multimedia applications based on the ARM architecture and focused on low-power consumption. The i.MX application processors are SoCs (System-on-Chip) that integrate many processing units into one die, like the main CPU, a video processing unit, and a graphics processing unit for instance. The i.MX products are qualified for automotive, industrial, and consumer markets. Most of them are guaranteed for a production lifetime of 10 to 15 years.
Devices that use i.MX processors include Ford Sync, the Amazon Kindle and Kobo eReader series of e-readers until 2021, Zune, Sony Reader, Onyx Boox readers/tablets, SolidRun SOM's, Purism's Librem 5, some Logitech Harmony remote controls and Squeezebox radio and some Toshiba Gigabeat MP4 players. The i.MX range was previously known as the "DragonBall MX" family, the fifth generation of DragonBall microcontrollers. i.MX originally stood for "innovative Multimedia eXtension".
The Killer NIC, from Killer Gaming, is designed to circumvent the Microsoft Windows TCP/IP stack, and handle processing on the card via a dedicated network processor. Most standard network cards are host based, and make use of the primary CPU. The manufacturer claims that the Killer NIC is capable of reducing network latency and lag. The card was first introduced in 2006.
A smartbook was a class of mobile device that combined certain features of both a smartphone and netbook computer, produced between 2009 and 2010. Smartbooks were advertised with features such as always on, all-day battery life, 3G, or Wi-Fi connectivity and GPS in a laptop or tablet-style body with a screen size of 5 to 10 inches and a physical or soft touchscreen keyboard.
CuBox and CuBox-i are series of small and fanless nettop-class computers manufactured by the Israeli company SolidRun Ltd. They are all cube-shaped and sized at approximately 2 × 2 × 2 inches and weigh 91 grams. CuBox was first announced in December 2011 and began shipping in January 2012, initially being marketed as a cheap open-source developer platform for embedded systems.
SolidRun is an Israeli company producing Embedded systems components, mainly mini computers, Single-board computers and computer-on-module devices. It is specially known for the CuBox family of mini-computers, and for producing motherboards and processing components such as the HummingBoard motherboard.
