Efika MX Smartbook Information For Interested Parties

bbrv posted some information on the Efika MX Smartbook and we got a few questions we feel we have to answer just to point out. Let's start with the specifications (update 2010-02-28):

• 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 CPU with OpenGL and OpenVG GPU
• 1024x600 10.1" laptop panel
• 512MB RAM
• 2x USB ports
• 8GB to 32GB of SSD storage
• 1x SD card slot (side) and 1x MicroSD slot (behind battery)
• Built-in Stereo Speakers, Microphone, external headphone port
• Ralink RT3070 Wireless, same as the Efika MX, and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR
• 3G Cell modem option (SIM card is behind battery slot)
• GPS module
• 3-cell removable battery giving ~6 hours battery life.
• There will be a larger battery available in the near future, if you think 6 hours isn't long enough. The units we have peter out at just over 5 hours and 50 minutes of actual use.
• >92% full size, low-travel keyboard (like Sony or Apple's)
• Buttonless Touchpad
• Webcam (1.3 Megapixel)
• Light weight (around 2 lbs, or 1 Kg)

You will have seen the photo and thought to yourself "what on earth? there are no mouse buttons!!" and you'll be right. There was some objection to initial designs where the touchpad buttons were off to the left and right of the touchpad. This is the usual Netbook Cop-Out you see on Acer devices for example and it really makes the whole thing less easy to use.

The touchpad we have is something of a novel experience. While it supports single touch tap and the usual touchpad features, it also has two integrated mouse buttons; hold down the left hand side of the pad and it will click. That's a left mouse button. The same for the right. The keyboard "Menu" key finally has a use, and doubles as a right mouse button for most common application where you need a right click context menu or have to hold it down and drag.

In terms of size, it's about 1/3 the lid-closed height and weight of an Acer Aspire One Netbook, but about the same width/height dimensions (Acer's netbook is an 8" panel with a large bezel) - a little wider to support the widescreen panel and the bigger, more comfortable keyboard. It's very portable!

The nearest "PC" equivalent is the Asus Eee 1008 series (standard, $399.99), with the keyboard of the 1008P (Karim Rasheed Edition) (a designer edition netbook) which hasn't got a hope in matching the battery life even if it says it can get 6 hours (the battery is a 6-cell standard and is three times the power rating), and doesn't have any HD playback capability - retail price, $499.99.

Yes, the Efika MX Smartbook comes with a "designer edition" keyboard, awesome trackpad and HD video playback and 6 hours battery life as standard and we're hoping you will like the price too (hint: cheaper than those two Asus netbooks :)

Kernel Development Status

Some bugs in the last release:

• Some poking around with the DMFC made codecs and accelerated X11 not work. 3D would probably have been hosed too. Since we've not released the codecs yet it's not a huge problem but, the next release should be more sound and allow us to do a release
• Enabling "Improved Transaction Translator Scheduling" broke the build - a patch I fixed for Ubuntu a long while ago but didn't seem to drag it into the new kernel

There are some other things but those were the most annoying. Freescale released a new BSP snapshot for February so we are rebasing on that. The result:

• Efika MX: Integrates RT3070 Wireless properly
• Efika MX: CompCache (ramzswap) working
• A REAL patchset against 2.6.31 mainline (to bring up to BSP level) and then Efika patches on top, a special present for distro maintainers
• More stable
• Finally, HW accelerated codecs!
• Finally, 2D Acceleration for X11 (but not OpenVG, sorry)
• Finally, OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0!
• steev@gentoo requested devtmpfs which should speed up boot and be much nicer to work with. We have to thank Canonical for backporting that to 2.6.31 :)

Those are the goals anyway. We will keep you posted. This is going to be kernel version 2.6.31.12-ER2-efikamx to differentiate between the ER1 releases (ER means "Engineering Release" for the curious). We're working our way up to PR (Production Release) which should square everything away for non-Aura kernels.

Secondly: we may release a kernel build based on Con Kolivas' "BFS" Scheduler to go with it, and for everyone who got (or still wants) a "1.0" Efika MX Developer Edition (the one with no case, flakey PATA and flakey ethernet) to make clusters, compile farms and generally do cool things with a lot of Cortex-A8s connected together, a custom kernel build that will Just Work (tm).

Long Term: Aura release (developer preview) and a kernel to go with it (2.6.32 or 2.6.33).

Wireless: RT3070 Driver Status

Looks like two things are evident from the RT3070 drivers in the 2.6.31 kernels we shipped:

• The Mainline rt2x00 (rt2800usb etc.) driver is completely broken
• The Staging rt2870sta (and rt3070sta) driver has been trashed beyond working by the kernel devs who "cleaned it up"

In essence, we recommend going back to building an external module (not an in-kernel one) for RT3070 Wireless support on the Efika MX. A configuration file for this has been posted to PD EfikaMX Kernel page for your convenience. There are a few caveats to this, again...

• When it installs the module it installs it to /tftpboot. Just ignore this, delete it, and copy it from "os/linux/rt3070sta.ko" to "/lib/modules/`uname -r`/extra" and make sure to "depmod -a".
• It will whine about a missing config file. Just copy the RT2870STA.dat in the source archive to /etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat and it'll not complain.

It should pick up in NetworkManager on Ubuntu just fine after this. It's set up for 802.11h, 802.11e, cfg80211 (regulatory compliance using the kernel) and WPA Supplicant. You may need to reboot (NM hates being restarted) and there may need to be some finesse required putting it into a /etc/modprobe.d config file, but don't pay attention to the hundred forum posts out there that say you should be managing the config using /etc/network/interfaces - they're wrong :)

Genesi will be releasing a new kernel plus an accelerated 2D driver for Xorg and we'll endeavour to include the Ralink driver properly at the same time and disable the other Ralink 3070 drivers at the same time.

In the meantime, grab the Ralink RT3070USB driver from here (second link down, we're talking about version 2.1.2.0 here) and the config.mk file from here (it goes in the source archive in the os/linux directory). You do NOT need the firmware archive.