14 DAY TRIAL // The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC for short) program aims at providing low cost mobile computer systems for children across the developing nations as a means of accelerating and improving education systems. The first XO machines, which are the mini laptops designed by the OLPC foundation, are already being shipped and they are mostly built by the Taiwanese contract manufacturing company Quanta. The XOs are built around an Advanced Micro Devices low cost, low power Geode central processing unit and they are known to consume very little power while providing a sturdy platform and an acceptable level of performance.
After naming the OLPC program and its XO mobile computers, the "$100 gadgets", Intel suddenly had a massive change of heart and even managed to get a place on the administrative board of the OLPC foundation. As Intel already produces and ships a competing product with the OLPC XO laptop, this move looked very strange and many questioned the company's real motives. Well, now they are clear: Intel wants to put their own low power, low cost central processing units inside the OLPC machines and to eliminate its rival, AMD from yet another market. According to representatives from both parties, Intel and OLPC, are now conducting a series of talks about the integration of an Intel CPU on a future version of the XO laptop. "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, who was cited by the news site infoworld.
While the OLPC has yet to approve the use of an Intel based solution for their XO machines, according to processor manufacturing company, its engineers already started work on some motherboard and chipset designs, as they have to build a whole new platform for the XO. "It requires a new design, a new product", said Leighton Phillips, the manager of Intel's World Ahead Program in Asia, talking about the new Intel based XO. The new platform will most probably be based on some already existing mobile chips like the A100 or A110, or even the Silverthorne, an upcoming processor designed for small, mobile computers.
The Silverthorne will offer a set of improvements over both the A100 processors and the AMD's Geodes (which are used now), since it will be built on the 45 nanometer scale and will come with a smaller die area and a reduced energy footprint. Unlike most Intel processors, the new mobile unit is said to be quite cheap, but if it can beat the Geode's price tag remains to be seen. While the first OLPC machines are built for use in a harsh environment, the foundation has plans for a later series aimed at urban use and this line of XOs may see an Intel manufactured processor. While the processor part is important to Intel right now, it is only the tip of the iceberg, as the company is interested in a number of technologies developed by the OLPC foundation. Among them, there is the low power LCD screen, which beats all records when it comes to power consumption, as it needs less than 1 watt in black and white mode.