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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 ISA ...
based computers manufactured by Genesi. 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 communic ...
''efika'' means "efficacious, effective, or efficient".


EfikaPPC

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 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 1 ...
, 33/66 MHz PCI port and 128 MB DDR RAM. EFIKA uses an Open Firmware 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/
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 b ...
emulator In computing, an emulator is 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 software or use pe ...
providing support for standard graphics cards 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 daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
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, whi ...
( Gentoo, openSUSE,
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 De ...
and CRUX PPC), MorphOS,
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 t ...
and QNX. 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 a ...
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 accel ...
MBX video.


Efika MX

In August 2009, the Efika MX Open Client was announced which used the Freescale i.MX515 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 waves ...
(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 DDR ...
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 ...
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, cont ...
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 * Open Desktop Workstation * mobileGT


References


External links

* * *
Pegasos Support Forum & Community

EFIKA: First Impressions – Pegasos.org

EFIKA public presentation at EBV Tech Trends 2006 – http://www.ppcnux.de/

Gentoo's EFIKA page

CRUX PPC's EFIKA HowTo

openSUSE's EFIKA page
{{MorphOS PowerPC mainboards