Intel waves goodbye to OLPC

Intel has announced it is leaving the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

The news, first reported yesterday by The Wall Street Journal in an email alert, comes just six months after Intel and OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte agreed to settle their differences and join forces to bring computing power to emerging nations.

According to Intel, Negroponte asked the chipmaker to stop selling its Classmate PC while it was part of the OLPC, which is currently shipping its XO laptop based on a chip from AMD. The Classmate PC was one of the sources of friction between Negroponte and Intel before they joined forces in July. Negroponte went on 60 Minutes, a US television show, in May and criticised Intel for lowering the cost of Classmate PCs.

Intel and OLPC were working on an Intel-based version of the XO laptop, according to an Intel spokeswoman, but the OLPC insisted Intel end its production of the Classmate PC. And Intel said the OLPC also asked the chipmaker to stop working with any company that produces low-cost laptops, such as ASUS' Eee PC.

The spokeswoman said: "We have said for a long time that we don't believe there will be one single solution [for getting laptops in the hands of poor children]. There are some basic fundamental differences in our approaches."

The OLPC were not available for comment at the time of writing.

Tom Krazit writes for CNET.News.com