Efika is a line of power efficient ARM architecture and Power ISA based computers manufactured by Genesi.
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In Esperanto efika means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".
Efika is a line of power efficient ARM architecture and Power ISA based computers manufactured by Genesi.
In Esperanto efika means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".
The EfikaPPC, sometimes also referred to as EFIKA 5200B, was based on a 400 MHz Freescale MPC5200B System-on-a-Chip and includes 44-pin 2.5" IDE, USB, serial port, stereo audio in/out, 100 Mbit/s Ethernet, 33/66 MHz PCI port and 128 MB DDR RAM. EFIKA uses an Open Firmware based CHRP compliant firmware with a special x86/BIOS emulator providing support for standard graphics cards on an AGP riser slot. The motherboard had a non-standard form factor, 118 mm × 153 mm × 38 mm small.
Due to its small size, Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) compliance and energy efficient nature (drawing less than 20 Watts with a harddrive and a graphics card, typically less than 10 Watts during most usage scenarios), the Efika was marketed as environmentally friendly.
An Efika computer could run a variety of operating systems including Linux (Gentoo, openSUSE, Debian and CRUX PPC), MorphOS, AROS, OpenSolaris and QNX. It was sometimes called EFIKA5K2, since it used the PowerPC e300 based MPC5200B processor.
On September 10, 2007, Genesi announced it discontinued the 5200B and was developing a new product based on the Freescale MPC5121e. It would feature on-board PowerVR MBX video. [1]
 Smartbook running Fedora 13 | |
| Developer | Genesi |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Genesi |
| CPU | Freescale i.MX515 |
| Website | genesi-usa |
In August 2009, the Efika MX Open Client was announced which used the Freescale i.MX515 ARM system-on-a-chip. [2] The CPU core ran at 800 MHz, Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and 512 MB of DDR2 SDRAM were included. [3] The Efika MX Smartbook (small laptop computer) was announced in August 2010. [4] It featured a 1024×600 resolution screen, 16 GB of SSD and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. It required a maximum operating power consumption of 12 watts (average power consumption around 6 W), and came with software based on Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" release of Linux. [5] Other Linux distributions are known to work properly on the platform. The drivers and software developed specifically for the platform is available on the company public git at GitHub [6] The Open Client product was also renamed the Efika MX Smarttop. [3] In Europe, the Efika MX Smartbook is marketed as Efika MX Netbook due to trademark disputes.
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.
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.
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.
PowerPC G4 is a designation formerly used by Apple and Eyetech to describe a fourth generation of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors. Apple has applied this name to various processor models from Freescale, a former part of Motorola. Motorola and Freescale's proper name of this family of processors is PowerPC 74xx.
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a specification that defines the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting the computer hardware and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of firmware that implement the specification are AMI Aptio, Phoenix SecureCore, TianoCore EDK II, InsydeH2O. UEFI replaces the BIOS which was present in the boot ROM of all personal computers that are IBM PC compatible, although it can provide backwards compatibility with the BIOS using CSM booting. Intel developed the original Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) specification. Some of the EFI's practices and data formats mirror those of Microsoft Windows. In 2005, UEFI deprecated EFI 1.10.
Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.
The PowerPC 400 family is a line of 32-bit embedded RISC processor cores based on the PowerPC or Power ISA instruction set architectures. The cores are designed to fit inside specialized applications ranging from system-on-a-chip (SoC) microcontrollers, network appliances, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to set-top boxes, storage devices and supercomputers.
PowerLinux is the combination of a Linux-based operating system (OS) running on PowerPC- or Power ISA-based computers from IBM. It is often used in reference along with Linux on Power, and is also the name of several Linux-only IBM Power Systems.
The NSLU2 is a network-attached storage (NAS) device made by Linksys introduced in 2004 and discontinued in 2008. It makes USB flash memory and hard disks accessible over a network using the SMB protocol. It was superseded mainly by the NAS200 and in another sense by the WRT600N and WRT300N/350N which both combine a Wi-Fi router with a storage link.
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.
Genesi is an international group of technology and consulting companies in the United States, Mexico and Germany. It is most widely known for designing and manufacturing ARM architecture and Power ISA-based computing devices. The Genesi Group consists of Genesi USA Inc., Genesi Americas LLC, Genesi Europe UG, Red Efika, bPlan GmbH and the affiliated non-profit organization Power2People.
The PowerPC e600 is a family of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessor cores developed by Freescale for primary use in high performance system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs with speed ranging over 2 GHz, thus making them ideal for high performance routing and telecommunications applications. The e600 is the continuation of the PowerPC 74xx design.
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".
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.
Sam460ex is a line of modular motherboards produced by the Italian company ACube Systems Srl. The machine was released in October 2010 and can run AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, or Debian GNU/Linux.
The Touch Book is a portable computing device that functions as a netbook, and a tablet computer. Designed by Always Innovating, a company situated in the city of Menlo Park, in California, USA, it was launched at the DEMO conference in March 2009. Its designers stated at launch that it is the first netbook featuring a detachable keyboard with a long battery life. It is based on the ARM TI OMAP3530 processor and features a touchscreen.
Newsbeuter was a text-based news aggregator for Unix-like systems. It was originally written by Andreas Krennmair in 2007 and released under the MIT License. The program is aimed at power users and strives to be "the mutt of rss feed readers." It supports the major feed formats including RSS and Atom and can import and export subscription lists in the OPML format. Newsbeuter (podbeuter) also supports podcasting and synchronization. As of 2017, the project is no longer maintained; the original developers advise users to switch to Newsboat, an actively maintained fork of Newsbeuter.
