VIA Lands OLPC Contract, AMD Left Behind

OLPC is a project that is focused on providing the world with a low-power, low-cost portable computer system that can be used for educational purposes. The XO laptop is the project's first attempt in its efforts to develop a computing solution that can be used for learning and enhancing the educational experience. This system is powered by AMD's old Geode processor but, according to the latest details, an updated version of the XO laptop will be built on a VIA platform, consequently replacing AMD's solution.

“OLPC is excited to announce that a refresh of the XO-1 laptop is in progress. In our continued effort to maintain a low price point, OLPC is refreshing the hardware to take advantage of the latest component technologies,” wrote John Watlington, OLPC vice president of hardware. “We're excited to be finally able to make this news public. While members of the technical team have been working on this for several months, it was not until last week that we could with any certainty say that we were going to refresh the hardware and what that refresh was likely to be.”

The refreshed XO laptop, which will be introduced as the XO generation 1.5, will be built using a VIA C7-M processor supporting a maximum core speed of 1GHz, coupled with the recently introduced VX855 media system processor. This low-chipset solution is ready to provide the XO laptop with support for up to 1GB of memory and a built-in storage space of 4GB of NAND Flash. The design of the XO laptop will not be changed with the release of the XO 1.5 version, but it will provide an improved performance.

OLPC's XO 1.5 will come as a bridge between the project's first XO laptop and the highly anticipated XO 2 design, which is supposed to come as a dual-screen laptop.