EFIKA
Encyclopedia
Efika are a line of mobile computing Power Architecture
and ARM architecture
based computers manufactured by Genesi
.
In Esperanto
efika means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".
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 system
s including Linux
(Gentoo
, openSUSE
, Debian
and CRUX PPC
), MorphOS
, OpenSolaris
and QNX
. It was sometimes called "Efika 5K2", 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.
515 ARM system-on-a-chip.
The CPU core ran at 800 MHz, WiFi
(802.11 b/g/n) and 512 MB of DDR2
RAM were included.
The Efika MX Smartbook
(small laptop computer) was announced in August 2010.
It featured a 1024x600 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 6W), and came with software based on Ubuntu
Maverick 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
The Open Client product was also renamed the Efika MX Smarttop. In Europe they are marketed as Efika MX Nettop and Netbook due to trademark disputes.
Power Architecture
Power Architecture is a broad term to describe similar RISC instruction sets for microprocessors developed and manufactured by such companies as IBM, Freescale, AMCC, Tundra and P.A. Semi...
and ARM architecture
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
based computers manufactured by Genesi
Genesi
Genesi is computer company focused on building Power Architecture and ARM architecture computers. The organization is split into two units, Genesi USA, Inc. working out of Texas operating as the primary front-end for sales, customers and developers, and bplan GmbH based in Germany as the primary...
.
In Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
efika means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".
Efika 5200B
The Efika 5200B was based on a 400 MHz Freescale MPC5200B System-on-a-ChipSystem-on-a-chip
A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...
and includes 44-pin 2.5" IDE
AT Attachment
Parallel ATA , originally ATA, is an interface standard for the connection of storage devices such as hard disks, solid-state drives, floppy drives, and optical disc drives in computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee...
, USB, serial port
RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 is the traditional name for a series of standards for serial binary single-ended data and control signals connecting between a DTE and a DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
, stereo audio in/out, 100 Mbit/s Ethernet
Ethernet
Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
, 33/66 MHz PCI
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Conventional PCI is a computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer...
port and 128 MB DDR
Double data rate
In computing, a computer bus operating with double data rate transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock signal. This is also known as double pumped, dual-pumped, and double transition....
RAM
Ram
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
. EFIKA uses an Open Firmware
Open Firmware
Open Firmware, or OpenBoot in Sun Microsystems parlance, is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It originated at Sun, and has been used by Sun, Apple, IBM, and most other non-x86 PCI chipset...
based CHRP
Common Hardware Reference Platform
Common Hardware Reference Platform was a standard system architecture for PowerPC based computer systems published jointly by IBM and Apple in 1995. Like its predecessor PReP, it was conceptualized as a design to allow various operating systems to run on an industry standard hardware platform,...
compliant firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
with a special x86
X86 architecture
The term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
/BIOS
BIOS
In IBM PC compatible computers, the basic input/output system , also known as the System BIOS or ROM BIOS , is a de facto standard defining a firmware interface....
emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
providing support for standard graphics cards
Video card
A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
on an AGP
Accelerated Graphics Port
The Accelerated Graphics Port is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Since 2004 AGP has been progressively phased out in favor of PCI Express...
riser slot. The motherboard
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
had a non-standard form factor, 118 mm × 153 mm × 38 mm small.
Due to its small size, Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive
Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive
The Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment 2002/95/EC was adopted in February 2003 by the European Union. The RoHS directive took effect on 1 July 2006, and is required to be enforced and become law in each member state...
(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
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s including Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
(Gentoo
Gentoo Linux
Gentoo Linux is a computer operating system built on top of the Linux kernel and based on the Portage package management system. It is distributed as free and open source software. Unlike a conventional software distribution, the user compiles the source code locally according to their chosen...
, openSUSE
OpenSUSE
openSUSE is a general purpose operating system built on top of the Linux kernel, developed by the community-supported openSUSE Project and sponsored by SUSE...
, Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
and CRUX PPC
CRUX
CRUX is a lightweight, i686-optimized GNU/Linux distribution targeted at experienced GNU/Linux users and delivered by a tar.gz-based package system with BSD-style initscripts. It also utilizes a ports system to install and upgrade applications. The current release is 2.7.1.Although crux is the...
), MorphOS
MorphOS
MorphOS is an Amiga-compatible computer operating system. It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC processor based computer, PowerUP accelerator equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi firmware, including the...
, OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...
and QNX
QNX
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...
. It was sometimes called "Efika 5K2", since it used the PowerPC e300
PowerPC e300
The PowerPC e300 is a family of 32-bit Power Architecture microprocessor cores developed by Freescale for primary use in system-on-a-chip designs with speed ranging up to 800 MHz, thus making them ideal for embedded applications....
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
PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and Direct X, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL acceleration....
MBX video.
Efika MX
In August 2009 the Efika MX Open Client was announced which used the Freescale i.MXI.MX
The i.MX range is a family of Freescale Semiconductor proprietary microprocessors for multimedia applications based on the ARM architecture and focused on low-power consumption. The i.MX application processors are SoCs , that integrate many processing units into one die, like the main CPU, a video...
515 ARM system-on-a-chip.
The CPU core ran at 800 MHz, WiFi
WIFI
WIFI is a radio station broadcasting a brokered format. Licensed to Florence, New Jersey, USA, the station is currently operated by Florence Broadcasting Partners, LLC.This station was previously owned by Real Life Broadcasting...
(802.11 b/g/n) and 512 MB of DDR2
DDR2
DDR2 may refer to:* DDR2 SDRAM, the computer memory technology* Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix, the video game* DDR2 , a human gene...
RAM were included.
The Efika MX Smartbook
Smartbook
A smartbook was a class of mobile device that combined certain features of both a smartphone and netbook computer, promoted in 2009 and 2010....
(small laptop computer) was announced in August 2010.
It featured a 1024x600 resolution screen, 16 GB of SSD and 512 MB of DDR2
DDR2
DDR2 may refer to:* DDR2 SDRAM, the computer memory technology* Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMix, the video game* DDR2 , a human gene...
RAM.
It required a maximum operating power consumption of 12 watts (average power consumption around 6W), and came with software based on Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
Maverick 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
GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. GitHub offers both commercial plans and free accounts for open source projects...
The Open Client product was also renamed the Efika MX Smarttop. In Europe they are marketed as Efika MX Nettop and Netbook due to trademark disputes.