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.
Linux supports a whole range of ARM cores.
- 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 got an ARM11JZF-S
The "F" indicates it has hardware floating point.
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?
They're designed to be so cheap you can almost give them away. The other parts you need you'll already have so they in effect cost nothing. It's also done by a charity so they're not intended to make any significant profits.
If you want to equip 100 kids with these boards it's surprisingly cheap. There's quite a difference if you want to do that with the Efika MX.
