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OLPC laptop drops AMD for Via

The One Laptop per Child project's XO laptop will switch to a Via processor as part of a general hardware refresh. Generation 1.5 of the XO machine will have the same industrial design as the original model, but will use a Via C7-M processor, John Watlington, OLPC's vice president of hardware development, wrote in a post on Friday. Currently the XO, which is aimed at educational markets in developing countries, uses an AMD Geode processor.

Watlington said the refresh was separate from the 'Gen 2.0' project, in which OLPC will switch to an ARM-based, instead of x86-based, processor. The first of the XO 2.0 laptops will launch in early 2011, Negroponte said. In the XO Generation 1.5 refresh, the memory of the XO will be boosted from 256MB to 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM. Its flash storage will go up from 1GB to 4GB, with an option for 8GB. The Via processor will have a clock range from 400MHz to 1GHz, resulting in power consumption of 1.5W to 5W, Watlington said. It will be integrated into the XO as part of Via's new VX855 chipset, which will also boost the XO's audio and video performance, he added.

ZDNet

Posted by | Mon, Apr 20, 2009 - 07:45 AM