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 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 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. Genesi is an official

Linaro Linaro is an engineering organization that works on free and open-source software such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), QEMU, power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces for the ARM family of instruction sets and im ...

partner and its software development team has been instrumental in moving Linux on the

towards a wider adoption of the hard-float

application binary interface In computer software, an application binary interface (ABI) is an interface between two binary program modules. Often, one of these modules is a library or operating system facility, and the other is a program that is being run by a user. An ' ...

, which is incompatible with most existing applications but provides enormous performance gains for many use cases.

Products

The main products of Genesi are ARM-based computers that were designed to be inexpensive, quiet and highly energy efficient, and a custom

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 ...

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 ...

. All products can run a multitude of operating systems.

Current products include

* Aura - A comprehensive abstraction layer for embedded and desktop devices, with

UEFI UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a set of specifications written by the UEFI Forum. They define the architecture of the platform firmware used for booting and its interface for interaction with the operating system. Examples of f ...

and IEEE1275. Desktop systems with AGP or

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 ...

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

may take advantage of an embedded

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 providing boot functionality 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 ...

. *EFIKA MX53 *EFIKA MX6

Discontinued products include

EFIKA 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". EfikaPPC The EfikaPPC, sometimes also referred to as EFIKA 5200B, was ...

MX Smarttop - A highly energy efficient and compact computing device (complete system) powered by a

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 ...

ARM iMX515 CPU. *

MX Smartbook - A 10"

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 ...

(complete system) powered by the Freescale ARM iMX515 CPU. *High Density Blade - PowerPC based high density blade server. *Home Media Center - PowerPC based

digital video recorder A digital video recorder (DVR) is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes with direct to d ...

. *

5200B - A small Open Firmware based

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 ...

powered by a Freescale MPC5200B SoC processor with 128 MB RAM, a 44-pin ATA connector for a 2.5" hard drive, sound in/out,

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 v ...

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 ...

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. ...

, and a

slot. *Open Client -

Thin Client In computer networking, a thin client is a simple (low-performance) computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as ''network computers'', or in th ...

s available with Freescale's Power Architecture or ARM SoCs. *

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 Macintosh ...

- An Open Firmware

MicroATX In computer design, microATX (sometimes referred to as μATX, uATX or mATX) is a standard motherboard form factor introduced in December 1997. The maximum size of a microATX motherboard is . However, there are examples of motherboards using micr ...

PowerPC G3 The PowerPC 7xx is a family of third generation 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola (spun off as Freescale Semiconductor bought by NXP Semiconductors). This family is called the PowerPC G3 by its well-know ...

/ G4

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

, featuring

slots, AGP,

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 ...

and

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

. *

Open Desktop Workstation 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. It ...

– A Pegasos II based Computer featuring a Freescale

PowerPC 7447 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 (though closely related) processor models from Freescale, a former part of ...

processor. Complete specifications for the hardware are available through Genesi's PowerDeveloper.org website.

Community support

Genesi designed and maintains PowerDeveloper, an online platform for Genesi products and ARM products from other manufacturers. Via the PowerDeveloper Projects programs, hundreds of systems 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 Crux () is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross-shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross. It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way's visible band. The name ''Crux'' is Latin for c ...

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 ...

Raspbian Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian) is a Unix-like operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi family of compact single-board computers. First developed independently in 2012, it has been produced as the primary o ...

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

, 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 ...

and

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 ...

. Genesi once funded the development of the

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 ...

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 ...

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 social platform, which features discussion forums, a digital library, a software repository and a bounty system.

Notes

{{Reflist, 2 ARM architecture Computer companies of the United States Computer hardware companies Amiga companies

Products

Current products include

Discontinued products include

Community support

External links

Notes