A firmware with MPEG abilities! Now that's too much! :shock:

gotta love those RTAS, eh?

take that, EFI! : )

Actually it will be a variant of UEFI.. which does provide certain runtime services directly equivalent to traditional RTAS.

Aura expands on that with far more functionality. At it's simplest level, in a way you'd understand, it's like bundling
CGX inside the firmware, with calls for setting up screens, finding out display information, and doing accelerated graphics calls entirely in the OS context (rather than in the firmware context, which is why RTAS and the OF CIF are not often used).

There's more to it than graphics, but the most exciting part is the graphics functionality planned. Adding video overlay (even if it's a 3D texture :) and an interface to push demuxed video streams to available decoder hardware is something that's implemented in a lot of operating systems all with very, very similar interfaces - most hardware is designed around the very same restrictions (alignment etc.)

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Matt Sealey

Like the BeBox which displayed a rotating 3D cube from the 2nd cpu when booting ? :lol:

Something like that :)

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Matt Sealey

Gentlemen, it's clear that technology has gone too far!

watch out, genesi, sharp is after you! : )

Is that bad news for the EfikaMX Open Client also?

No, because that is not what the injunction says.

All this means is we - or Sharp - can't do a production run inside the USA because we can't take delivery of a tape reel or tray of chips of certain kinds (like the iMX515 and the power management controller) inside the USA.

I would expect Sharp does all it's production in Japan or Taiwan, as do we right now (and in any case, bplan is in Germany) :)

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Matt Sealey

Ah, cant trust all news articles then. It read different to me then your explanation. Good news then.

@BBRV

Have you considered announcing the Efika MX to the RISC OS community? I'm sure someone would love to port RISC OS to this. The Efika MX is way cheaper than the A9Home, and more powerful/complete than the Beagle Board.

http://www.drobe.co.uk/ is probably the best place to submit an announcement.

Yes, it's been discussed already, we're looking for the best way to do this, and the best people to send boards to so they can go and do it.

RISCOS is really popular in the UK and the last dedicated RISCOS box (Iyonix) has been discontinued for 6 months.

If you want to post a news article that's fine. We are currently questioning the relevant companies in the UK (including Castle) about collaboration and marketing efforts, and the support they'd need to make it a reality.

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Matt Sealey

Really, really cool!

I see someone's already posted an announcement on Drobe, so I won't bother.

Yep and from that stuff seems to be moving on a little bit too :)

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Matt Sealey

...and those RiscOS guys are more active than us, both here and in MorphZone? I know the later is not actually related to Efika MX, but...