Talks under way to put Intel inside OLPC's $100 laptop
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(InfoWorld) - Discussions are under way to put an Intel microprocessor inside a version of theÂ One Laptop Per ChildÂ (OLPC) project's "$100 laptop" for children in developing countries, according to representatives from both parties. "Intel, like a lot of other people, is more than welcome to try to design great silicon for this project and this mission, and we've been working with them to help them do exactly that," said Walter Bender, OLPC's president, in a telephone interview. Despite its nickname, the OLPC's lime-green XO laptop actually costs $175. The first version of the machine runs on Advanced Micro Devices' 433MHz Geode LX-700, an x86-architecture chip that is slow by the standard of mainstream processors but consumes little power and costs less. OLPC is close to starting productionÂ of the XO. The group has already gone through four generations of test systems to refine the laptop's design. A production run of 300 machines was completed in August, a final preparatory step before the XO goes into mass production later this month or in early October. While OLPC has yet to decide whether or not to use Intel processors, Intel confirmed its engineers are developing a motherboard based on one of its chips for an OLPC laptop. That process required the engineers to start from scratch, since the current XO design isn't based on Intel's chips. "It requires a new design, a new product," said Leighton Phillips, the manager of Intel's World Ahead Program in Asia. The design, which Intel plans to submit for OLPC's consideration, will be based on either existing mobile chips, such as modified versions of the Celeron M called A100 and A110, or Silverthorne, an upcoming processor designed for small, mobile computers. The dual-coreÂ Silverthorne processorÂ will be made using a 45-nanometer production process and will be available early next year in different versions. Silverthorne's main advantages are lower power consumption and size. The chips are so small that Intel can fit 2,500 of them on a single 300-millimeter silicon wafer, helping to keep unit production costs low enough for them to be used in handheld devices and low-cost computers. Whether Silverthorne is cheap enough to be used in laptops like the XO remains to be seen. "We're looking at ways to get there," Phillips said. If an Intel chip ends up inside an OLPC laptop, the laptop may be different from the existing XO design. That laptop was designed for use in harsh, rural environments with lots of dust and high humidity, but OLPC wants to develop laptops for use in urban areas where better infrastructure is available. "I can imagine there will be a family of laptops in terms of processor power and maybe there will be a larger form factor for older kids," Bender said. The discussions over an Intel-based laptop are part of wider talks on how Intel and OLPC can cooperate on technology and product development. Those talks started in July after Intel and OLPC signed an agreement that, among other things, gave Intel a seat on the group's board and prevents the two sides from disparaging each others' products. Besides putting an Intel processor inside a future OLPC laptop, the talks could see some of the technology developed by OLPC find its way into Intel's hands. For example, the chip maker is interested in the low-power screen technology developed by OLPC. Offering an OLPC laptop with an Intel processor doesn't mean the group will stop using AMD's chips, Bender said. "The Geode's been very easy to work with and hasn't been a limiting factor whatsoever," he said. As part of OLPC's desire to offer systems based on different processors, the group is looking to work with other vendors, in addition to Intel. One such company is Marvell Technology Group, which could see its Xscale processors, which the company acquired from Intel in 2006, also end up in future OLPC laptops, Bender said. "We want to have lots of choices, lots of people doing this, because there are lots of kids and lots of need," he said.
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At Intel's recent Developer Forum conference in Beijing, quad-core processing to go was at the top of the list for the laptops of the future.
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Intel Corp.  detailed plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek Computer Inc. , the world's largest maker of computer motherboards, to make a notebook PC that would cost as little as $200 aimed at the education market in developing countries.
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Nonprofit and chipmaker have faced off over low-cost laptops in the past, but they're coming together to bring PCs to kids.
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Intel Corp, the world's largest  chipmaker, is on the verge of making its biggest push yet into  mobile consumer electronics, seeking to replicate its success  in mobile personal devices, as well as personal computers long  before that.
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The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost XO laptops: cows.
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Companies plan tools for improving high-end audio for PCs with Intel inside.
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In an effort to encourage hardware vendors to build components for the blade platform they co-develop, Intel Corp. and IBM Corp. on Thursday will open up parts of the BladeCenter design specifications, according to documents obtained by IDG News Service.
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Intel Corp. is betting on a big expansion of "ultra-mobile" computing, an idea that could hinge on how many gadgets people are willing to tote around.
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The&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC)&#160;and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday.&quot;We are working with them very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that&#39;s up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it&#39;s very, very successful. We&#39;re working very hard to do both,&quot; said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC.It&#39;s a brand new development for the XO laptops, as the low-cost notebooks are known, and came about because of Microsoft&#39;s friendlier attitude towards open source software.Microsoft has embraced the open source community over the past few years in a very different way than before, Negroponte said. &quot;And that really helps, because it&#39;s become a little bit less religious than it was a few years ago and that&#39;s really good. In the end, I think, the more people that have software and hardware out there, the better.&quot;The OLPC laptop currently runs a Fedora-based Linux OS, and&#160;Microsoft has offered a version of Windows XP for the laptop project. There had been speculation that OLPC would simply offer two separate laptop PCs, but a dual-boot system could remove the need to offer two separate laptops. Such a device could also reduce the need to have competing low-cost laptops -- running Linux or Windows -- in the marketplace. Taiwan&#39;s Asustek Computer has already launched an ultra-low cost laptop PC capable of running Windows XP, and executives at the company have touted XP compatibility as an advantage over the XO.OLPC is also working with Microsoft and possibly the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation on combining OLPC laptops with some of the educational programs run by Microsoft in developing countries.&quot;There is talk in that direction and it&#39;s directly with Bill and [Microsoft chief research and strategy officer] Craig Mundie , especially this morning, so this is really cooking at the moment,&quot; Negroponte said.Microsoft has launched programs in a number of developing countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, where it works with governments to build computer labs and Microsoft employees donate time to train people on how to use software and write programs.The OLPC Project started as an attempt to build a $100 laptop and work with governments to pass them out to kids in poor nations, but the laptop from the group, the XO, will likely end up costing nearly double that amount at first. The organizers of the effort, led by academics and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), hope high-volume sales of the device will drive down costs.The goal of OLPC is to make sure nobody misses out on the benefits of computing. The fear is that the price of a PC is keeping too many people in developing countries from learning how software, the Internet and communications via computing can improve their economies, job prospects and lives, or that poor countries will fall further behind the modern world due to their inability to access computers.&#160;
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A forthcoming version of the OLPC's XO laptop could have the ability to boot both Linux and Windows, according to the OLPC's founder.
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Intel Corp.  detailed  plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek Computer Inc.  , the world's largest maker of computer motherboards,  to make a notebook PC that would cost as little as $200 aimed  at the education market in developing countries.
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Intel has dropped out of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and OLPC's CEO says that he's disappointed in the chipmaker's contributions.
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Continuing its effort to provide an alternative to the One Laptop Per Child project, Intel announced plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek to produce a notebook for developing countries that could cost as little as $200.
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Short-lived love-in ends The controversial One Laptop Per Child project, which aims to provide children in the developing world with access to $100 laptops, has fallen out with Intel.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. wants to see its low-cost Classmate PC help transform they way students in developing countries are educated. And the company is not alone. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project also hopes its low-cost XO laptop can close the "digital divide" that exists between the developed world and emerging markets. Much has been made of these two efforts, which are often painted as rivals by the media and observers. Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel's sales and marketing group, recently spoke with IDG News Service about the Classmate PC and the challenges Intel hopes to address with the device. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview. IDG News Service: Is there room for both the Classmate PC and OLPC as efforts to close the digital divide in emerging markets? Sean Maloney: I've spent a good deal of my life traveling around emerging markets and the first thing I want to say is that it's a truly humongous problem. It's an enormous, enormous problem you're talking about. No one company is going to solve this, whether it's us or the OLPC guys, or Asustek, or HP. And no one single approach is going to tackle the issue either. It's very diverse what people want. Even if you pick one country, say India, you're not going to get the state governments having the same opinions on how this should be handled. It's a perfect problem that a Taiwanese economy of scale could tackle. What Taiwan has always done in the past -- with stunning success -- is drive down costs for standardization and mass manufacturing. IDGNS: And standardization helps keep costs low... Maloney: Yeah, if they're standardized it makes field repair easier and logistics easier and distribution chains easier and all that stuff. It's not just about the device. It's also about the education software that goes on it, the role of the teacher in the class, and then someone has to maintain the thing locally. Many of these countries actually want to assemble it and someone has to do the integration, and all of that. It's a broader issue than just the device, regardless of whether it's an Asustek device, or a Classmate PC, or an OLPC. IDGNS: Apart from education, will these low-cost computers help to increase PC penetration in developing countries? Maloney: To be determined. I've spent a lot of time in the last year in emerging markets and the striking thing is how many mid-range and high-end notebooks are being sold. If you go to Egypt or Turkey or Ukraine or Poland or Czech Republic or Brazil or Argentina, you're seeing shopping malls everywhere converting over to selling notebooks. You could see it in China a year ago, where you go into shopping malls that used to sell desktops and now they're full of notebooks. You see the same thing all across India. It is amazing how many mainstream, made in Taiwan or made in China, notebooks are sold in emerging markets. People have the same aspirations and brand aspirations. You can't patronize people and say we get the big one with the 14-inch color screen and you get the little one, that's not going to work. My view is that these things, like Classmate PC, are much better targeted at kids, with a much smaller screen, smaller keyboard. IDGNS: Is the aim to give the students in developing countries basic PC skills, or is computer access the key to something larger? Maloney: It's about the Web more than anything. I have young kids and it's almost obscene: my kids have access to it and there are 2 billion kids that don't. The disadvantage for someone who doesn't have access to the Web is overwhelming. Â
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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 rival&#160;AMD.