OLPC will feature VIA processors

After Intel quit the "One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)" project last year, and AMD announced its plans to discontinue the production of its old Geode line of processors, OLPC had to search for a new chip to use in its notebooks. The project has decided to use VIA C7 processors instead. The OLPC XO 1.5, as the updated version of the notebook is called, will no longer feature an AMD Geode processor, but the mentioned VIA C7. This CPU has a clock frequency of 400 MHz to 1 GHz. Combined with the processor change, the chipset will also be replaced to one made by VIA; the VX855. This combination allows the XO notebook to be faster, more up-to-date and feature support for DirectX 9 and hardware-based decoding of H.264, MPEG-2/4, VC-1 and WMV9 video, while the 1.5 to 5 Watt power consumption remains mostly the same. 

Apart from the new processor and chipset, the amount of DDR2-memory in the XO 1.5 is quadrupled from 256 MB to 1 GB. The standard capacity of the integrated solid-state drive (SSD) is also four times as big: the standard version will now feature 4 GB with an option to choose an 8 GB model. The soundchip, wireless network card and software will also be upgraded. It's expected that the OLPC XO 1.5 will become available in August. 

The XO 1.5 is only an improvement of the existing design. OLPC's plans for the XO 2.0 notebook are to develop a so-called ARM-based System-on-Chip. These chips will not only add new functionality, but also significantly decrease the total power consumption. One of the most prominent problems with these chips is that they do not feature the x86-instruction set, which is required to run a Windows-based operating system. OLPC has already contacted Microsoft for a solution to this problem, but no results have been booked so far.