Talks under way to put Intel inside OLPC’s $100 notebook

Discussions are under way to put an Intel microprocessor inside a version of the One Laptop Per Child (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 US$175. The first version of the machine runs on Advanced Micro Devices’s 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 production 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.

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