Although this is more expensive by $100 or so, I don't see why it didn't sell that well to the Geeks: https://www.genesi-usa.com/store/details/11
Well, not enough memory (only 512MB).
A slow A8 processor.
What else don't you understand?
:lol:
Memory:OK, much memory is pleasant to have, but in these applications it's a trade-off with cost, and 512MB memory is actually *enough* for most cases (often more than enough), at least I haven't run into any problems or disturbing slowdowns due to this.
And the Raspberry has *half* of this (and on "Model B" (which everyone will be buying) half of that is reserved for the GPU), so your point is rather strange...
Processor: The Raspberry's BCM2835:
- is ARM11, in other words ARMv6, which due to its age is no longer supported by several popular versions of Linux, including Ubuntu.
- Level 2 Cache is 128 KB, used primarily by the GPU, *not* the CPU
- Doesn't have Hardware Floating Point? (Note the question mark: This is feature is optional in ARM11, and AFAICT only cores with a trailing "-S" have this feature, like "ARM1176JZF-S". The BCM2835 appears to be ARM1176JZF)
- It's only 1.25 DMIPS/MHz
- It's only clocked at 700MHz.
The "slow" (as you put it) A8/i.MX51 in the Efika MX:
- is ARMv7 (what everyone uses today, including Apple, Android and the Linux distros)
- Has 256KB L2 cache
- Has NEON SIMD (think Altivec, but not quite as powerful)
- Has Hardware Floating Point (with hardfloat support implemented in Linux through Linaro, much thanks to Genesi)
- 2.0 DMIPS/MHz
- is clocked at 800MHz.
General differencies:The Efika MX:
- Has WiFI (and also Ethernet of course)
- Has a 8GB Internal SSD, with a pretty decent performance actually
- Audio jacks for headset (yes, including audio *IN*)
- Has a built-in speaker
- Comes built in to a real case
The Raspberry:
- Nope!
While I actually understands that a price tag at a quarter of the Efika MX would seem cool at a first glance, it's also worth noting that the Raspberry only reaches a quarter to the Efika's level of specification and functionality. In fact, I think this could be too limited to actually be useful for real. The final version of
this could possibly be sold as a naked PCB at a similar price (and it would offer a lot more than the Raspberry). But the question is - Why?
