New Funded Project: Porting Efika

The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that Aleksandr Rybalko has been awarded a grant to port FreeBSD to the Genesi Efika MX SmartBook laptop and SmartTop nettop devices.

Both use the Freescale i.MX515, an ARM Cortex-A8 System-on-Chip (SoC). These low power devices will provide convenient reference platforms for FreeBSD on ARM, as they are low-cost complete systems. The Smartbook includes a 10″ display, 3G connectivity and a battery life of 6 to 8 hours for $199.

When this project is completed, it will be possible to run X11 applications on FreeBSD on the Efika, with full support for sound and networking.It will also make it much easier to support other devices, such as some Android tablets, that ship with the i.MX515 SoC.

This project will be completed by the end of 2012.