OLPC drops AMD chips for Via

18.04.2009
One Laptop Per Child on Friday refreshed its XO-1 laptop hardware, dumping chips from Advanced Micro Devices in favor of processors from Via Technologies.

The nonprofit will now use Via's C7-M processor instead of AMD's Geode processor to power the laptop, OLPC officials said in a post on the group's . The upgrade is a previously undisclosed part of a laptop update that OLPC announced last year.

The Via processor will operate at clock speeds of between 400MHz and 1GHz, which OLPC considers an upgrade over the Geode LX processor in current XO laptops. The upgraded hardware should improve system performance while drawing similar amounts of power.