Efika is a line of power efficient
ARM architecture
ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...
and
Power ISA
Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...
based computers manufactured by
Genesi
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 cons ...
.
In
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
''efika'' means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".
EfikaPPC
The EfikaPPC, sometimes also referred to as EFIKA 5200B, was based on a 400 MHz
Freescale
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embed ...
MPC5200B System-on-a-Chip
A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...
and includes 44-pin 2.5"
IDE,
USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
,
serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...
, stereo audio in/out, 100 Mbit/s
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...
, 33/66 MHz
PCI
PCI may refer to:
Business and economics
* Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards
** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors
* Pro ...
port and 128 MB
DDR
DDR or ddr may refer to:
*ddr, ISO 639-3 code for the Dhudhuroa language
*DDr., title for a double doctorate in Germany
*DDR, station code for Dadar railway station, Mumbai, India
*' (German Democratic Republic), official name of the former East ...
RAM
Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to:
Animals
* A male sheep
* Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish
People
* Ram (given name)
* Ram (surname)
* Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director
* RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch
* ...
. EFIKA uses an
Open Firmware
Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems, where it was known as OpenBoot, and has bee ...
based
CHRP compliant
firmware
In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...
with a special
x86
x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...
/
BIOS
In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...
emulator
In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run so ...
providing support for standard
graphics cards
A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer moni ...
on an
AGP riser slot. The
motherboard
A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...
had a non-standard
form factor, 118 mm × 153 mm × 38 mm small.
Due to its small size,
Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive
The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive 2002/95/EC (RoHS 1), short for Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, was adopted in February 2003 by the European Unio ...
(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 system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
s including
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
(
Gentoo,
openSUSE
openSUSE () is a free and open-source software, free and open source RPM Package Manager, RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project.
The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0.
Addi ...
,
Debian
Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...
and
CRUX PPC),
MorphOS
MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like computer operating system (OS). It is a mixed Proprietary software, proprietary and Open-source software, open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC (PPC) processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amig ...
,
AROS Aros may refer to:
*Aros (Middle-earth), a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
* Aros, Mull, the location of Aros Castle, a ruined 13th-century castle on the Isle of Mull, Scotland
*AROS Research Operating System, a free software i ...
,
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around th ...
and
QNX
QNX ( or ) is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. QNX was one of the first commercially successful microkernel operating systems.
The product was originally developed in the early ...
. It was sometimes called EFIKA5K2, since it used the
PowerPC e300
The PowerPC e300 is a family of 32-bit PowerPC microprocessor cores developed by Freescale for primary use in system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs with speed ranging up to 800 MHz, thus making them ideal for embedded applications.
The e300 is ...
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
PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic) that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL accelera ...
MBX video.
Efika MX
In August 2009, the Efika MX Open Client was announced which used the Freescale
i.MX
The i.MX range is a family of Freescale Semiconductor (now part of NXP) proprietary microcontrollers for multimedia applications based on the ARM architecture and focused on low-power consumption. The i.MX application processors are SoCs (Sys ...
515 ARM system-on-a-chip.
The CPU core ran at 800 MHz,
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...
(802.11 b/g/n) and 512 MB of
DDR2 SDRAM
Double Data Rate 2 Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR2 SDRAM) is a double data rate (DDR) synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) interface. It superseded the original DDR SDRAM specification, and was itself superseded by DDR3 ...
were included.
The Efika MX
Smartbook
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 conn ...
(small laptop computer) was announced in August 2010.
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
Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...
10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" release of Linux.
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
GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...
The Open Client product was also renamed the Efika MX Smarttop.
In Europe, the Efika MX Smartbook is marketed as Efika MX Netbook due to trademark disputes.
See also
*
Pegasos
Pegasos is a MicroATX motherboard powered by a PowerPC 750CXe or PowerPC 7447 microprocessor, featuring three PCI slots, one AGP slot, two Ethernet ports (10/100/1000 & 10/100), USB, DDR, AC'97 sound, and FireWire. Like the PowerPC Macint ...
*
Open Desktop Workstation
*
mobileGT
The mobileGT name refers to both a computing platform and an alliance of vendors in the navigation, infotainment and telematics industries. It focuses on automotive, industrial and consumer electronics based on PowerPC and Power ISA processors. Th ...
References
External links
*
*
*
Pegasos Support Forum & CommunityEFIKA: First Impressions – Pegasos.orgEFIKA public presentation at EBV Tech Trends 2006 – http://www.ppcnux.de/Gentoo's EFIKA pageCRUX PPC's EFIKA HowToopenSUSE's EFIKA page
{{MorphOS
PowerPC mainboards