One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
50x15 Partner Description: Non-Government Organization (NGO)
Digital Inclusion Ecosystem Classifications:
OLPC and AMD
AMD’s relationship with OLPC began in January, 2005, when OLPC founder, Nicholas Negroponte, sketched out his idea for a $100 laptop for poor children and communicated his vision to AMD’s CEO, Hector Ruiz. Ruiz replied six hours later, telling Negroponte that he could count on AMD to take a lead role in the project. That May, the first meeting of the OLPC technology partners took place at the MIT Media Lab. Founding members included AMD, News Corp., Google and Red Hat.
AMD is a valued technical partner of OLPC. The AMD Geode™ processor used in the XO laptop helps enable the device’s many innovative features such as its resistance to dust, its ability to operate in extreme environments, and its long battery life. All these features make the XO attractive and useful to governments in emerging markets. Products evolving from this project and similar initiatives will eventually serve as additional affordable, innovative tools that will help bring us closer to realizing our 50x15 vision of connecting 50 percent of the world’s people to the Internet by 2015.
OLPC Mission
OLPC’s goal is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.
OLPC is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of one laptop per child. These machines will be rugged, Linux-based, and so energy efficient that hand-cranking alone will generate sufficient power for operation. Mesh networking will give many machines Internet access from one connection.
Devices
The OLPC XO Laptop
- Linux® OS – Red Hat derivative
- Dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a black and white, reflective and sunlight-readable
- AMD Geode LX 700@.8W 433MHz processor
- 512MB of DRAM
- 1MB of Flash memory (No HDD)
- 3 USB ports/1 SD card slot
- Wireless broadband that allows the devices to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network.
- Sugar User Interface
- Alternative power supply
Content
Software and Activities
XO is built from free and open-source software. OLPC’s commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. While they do not expect every child to become a programmer, they do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. They are using open-document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.
There are no software applications in the traditional sense on the laptop. The laptop focuses children around “activities.” This is more than a new naming convention; it represents an intrinsic quality of the learning experience we hope the children will have when using the laptop. Activities are distinct from applications in their foci—collaboration and expression—and their implementation—journaling and iteration.
OLPC Offices
P.O. Box 425087
Cambridge, MA 02142
U.S.A.
tel: 617-452-5660
information@laptop.org