Intel decides to leave OLPC project
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Citing "philosophical differences," the chipmaker has abruptly announced its departure from the One Laptop Per Child organization.
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Company is considering a gradual exit from processor sales.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Wednesday ended their 10-year partnership
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Intel withdraws from a project that aimed to put cheap laptops in the hands of children in developing nations.
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Intel&#39;s resignation from the One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s board of directors will have &quot;no impact&quot; on the group&#39;s operations, since the chip maker contributed little to the project since joining last year, OLPC President Walter Bender said in an interview.&quot;We never really got much going with Intel to have an impact,&quot; Bender said.Intel joined OLPC&#39;s board of directors&#160;in July as part of an agreement that seemed to bury the hatchet between OLPC and&#160;Intel&#39;s competing Classmate PC&#160;project. In addition to ending a war of words between Intel and OLPC, the two sides agreed to cooperate on technology development. Work also began on the development of a version of&#160;OLPC&#39;s XO laptop&#160;using an Intel processor instead of the AMD chip found in the current version.But the partnership agreement ultimately yielded little, and Intel made a &quot;seemingly half-hearted effort&quot; to build a version of the XO based on one of its microprocessors, Bender said.The development of&#160;an XO laptop based on an Intel processor&#160;was widely believed to rely on a version of Intel&#39;s upcoming Silverthorne processor, due out early this year. But the use of Silverthorne, billed by Intel as an inexpensive and power-efficient processor, was never confirmed by either Intel or OLPC, although Intel employees privately hinted at its use.Regardless of which chip was actually used in Intel&#39;s development efforts, the prototype laptop didn&#39;t live up to OLPC&#39;s expectations. &quot;They developed something that, as far as I know, is more expensive and more power-hungry than our current offering, so I&#39;m not quite sure what the point is,&quot; Bender said.Bender&#39;s comments underscore the mutual nature of Intel&#39;s decision to quit OLPC, but he also hinted at missed opportunities.&quot;My expectation was that there&#39;s lots of room for cooperation, particularly on software ... [but] I couldn&#39;t get Intel interested in helping me with any of those problems,&quot; Bender said, adding Intel executives seemed most interested in using the agreement with OLPC for marketing purposes and public relations.&quot;The only thing they were interested in was ... helping them make marketing statements about how Intel&#39;s approach to learning was different from OLPC&#39;s approach to learning,&quot; Bender said. &quot;They weren&#39;t interested in how we can learn together and make something better for kids.&quot;For Intel&#39;s part, a source familiar with the company&#39;s decision to resign from the OLPC board said repeated requests to abandon the Classmate PC in favor of support for the OLPC&#39;s XO played a major role. Intel has invested heavily in Classmate PC, which is currently being tested in several countries, and the company did not want to walk away from those efforts, the source said.During the six months that Intel belonged to OLPC, the chip maker contributed around $6 million to the project, the source said, estimating that Intel spent around $100 million on education-related projects last year.Bender declined to comment on Intel&#39;s financial contributions to the project.&#160;
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Hewlett-Packard Co.  and Intel Corp.  on Wednesday ended their 10-year partnership to co-develop the Itanium chip for server computers, following disappointing sales of the product.
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(InfoWorld) - In an unexpected development, chip giant Intel has joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel rivalÂ AMD. Previously, Intel's efforts in the education market appeared at odds with those of OLPC. While OLPC expects toÂ finally begin delayed volume shipments of its XO laptopÂ in September,Â priced at $175, Intel has been selling itsÂ Classmate PC laptopÂ in bulk since March. Classmate currently costs around $225, but Intel hopes to lower that price to $200 by year-end. Intel has been selling Classmate primarily in Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan, while OLPC has beta copies of its laptops in use by schoolchildren in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, and Uruguay. The governments of those seven nations have pledged to purchase the XO laptops in bulk when volume shipments begin. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of OLPC, has previously said publicly that Intel's Classmate efforts have been adversely affecting his project, given the well-funded nature of the chip maker's initiative. Intel and OLPC had engaged in conversations on and off for a while but nailed down an agreement to work together in the last month, according to Will Swope, vice president and director of corporate affairs at Intel. "Our role here is one of how do we have the biggest impact on education and on children around the world?" he said. The chip maker has spent more than $1 billion in education initiatives since its founding and over the last five to six years has been investing annually around $100 million on such projects. "How could we make that more impactful and reach more children?" Swope asked. The answer, he said, was to join OLPC. "Collaboration with Intel means that the maximum number of laptops will reach children,â Negroponte agreed in a statement. Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will look into collaborating on both the technology and educational fronts. Intel will also join the OLPC board. In the short term, Intel will effectively be supporting two different laptop programs -- OLPC and Classmate -- which will sometimes overlap, while retaining some unique capabilities, according to Swope. It will be up to governments to decide which machine they want to buy for their schools. Over time, the two lines will become "more complementary" and Intel and OLPC will partner a lot more, he said. As yet, it's too early for Intel to provide specifics on that area of the relationship between the two organizations and product lines, Swope added. The agreement doesn't have anything to do with Intel making chips for the XO laptop, although should the contract to provide silicon for the device be up for grabs, Intel would naturally be interested, Swope said. AMD, an OLPC board member, is supplying its Geode processors for the machine. "We're definitely excited by this change of heart [by Intel] and welcome their contributions," said Rebecca Gonzales, director of marketing communications at AMD. "We're happy to have them as part of the group." AMD has long said that the technology divide that OLPC is trying to bridge with its XO laptop can't be achieved by a single entity, Gonzales added. AMD has worked closely with the other corporate members of OLPC, which include Brightstar, eBay, Google, News, Nortel Networks, Quanta Computer, and Red Hat. The vendor is looking forward to Intel joining the board and providing a fresh take on the project, Gonzales said. Intel isn't disclosing all the conditions of its membership in OLPC. Swope noted that a number of other IT vendors are lining up to join the project under the same terms as Intel, and OLPC doesn't want to disclose those specifics until those other companies have also become members. Intel also isn't revealing how much it's investing in OLPC and that figure may remain undisclosed, Swope said. OLPC has struggled to bring its ambitious project to fruition. Initially, the organization had hoped to begin selling its laptop at $100, but that's proved impossible given spiraling production costs. The laptop is being manufactured by Quanta with the Taiwanese vendor hoping to produce 1 million computers by year-end. Negroponte continues to vacillate on whether OLPC will also make the notebooks available outside of the developing world, for instance, to U.S. states.
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Intel and Hewlett-Packard will end their 10-year long development partnership for Itanium server chips, according to a report from Reuters.
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Citing disagreements with the organization, Intel Corp. said Thursday it has abandoned the One Laptop Per Child program, dealing a big blow to the ambitious project seeking to bring millions of low-cost laptops to children in developing countries.
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Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is getting out of the chip-making business. The Palo Alto, California, company on Thursday announced that it reached an agreement with Intel Corp.
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Intel resigned from the One Laptop Per Child Project's board of directors after refusing a request to abandon its Classmate PC program, according to a source familiar with the situation.
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Just half a year after throwing its support behind Nicholas Negroponte's nonprofit, One Laptop Per Child, Intel says it's dropping out of the project. This latest in a series of blows to OLPC suggests the organization is having difficulties accomplishing its goals.
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Blog: Intel and the One Laptop Per Child Program have ironed our their differences and agreed to collaborate on future projects.
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Intel has abandoned plans to develop a Pentium 4 chip that would have processed computer instructions at speeds of up to 4 GHz per second.
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Intel Corp.  on Thursday said it has canceled its plan to enter the digital television chip business, marking a major retreat from an initiative that was intended to broaden the computer chip maker's market focus.
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Move is the latest setback for the chip Intel once billed as an industry standard.
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Hewlett-Packard has decided to end their efforts on active development of the Itanium chip, which is in the making for a decade now.