AMD is discontinuing the PIC, a line of inexpensive PCs designed to help consumers in developing countries gain Internet access, according to the chip maker’s latest regulatory filing. The PIC was part of AMD’s global “50×15” initiative, which aimed to bring Internet and computing capabilities to half the world’s population by 2015. The unit was marketed in Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia. Ironically, the PIC won a recent BusinessWeek award and was recognized for its design by the Industrial Design Society of America just months ago.
There is more to the story than the $16 million loss. The Geode processors have historically been very expensive to manufacture, and AMD actually risked additional losses with each sale. The Geode plan would only be successful with advances in manufacturing. (Read AMD's 10-K reports for the last few years for more info.) Also, I'm not entirely sure why this shows up in Linux Insider - the only Linux involved was the software update infrastructure. The PIC operating system was a Windows CE implementation, and the firmware precluded booting other system - it required a specific boot sector flag. (See the General Software documentation for more info.)
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AMD Mothballs Low-End Personal Internet Communicator
Posted by: Jennifer LeClaire November 14, 2006 02:31 PMAMD is discontinuing the PIC, a line of inexpensive PCs designed to help consumers in developing countries gain Internet access, according to the chip maker’s latest regulatory filing. The PIC was part of AMD’s global “50×15” initiative, which aimed to bring Internet and computing capabilities to half the world’s population by 2015. The unit was marketed in Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia. Ironically, the PIC won a recent BusinessWeek award and was recognized for its design by the Industrial Design Society of America just months ago.
Also, I'm not entirely sure why this shows up in Linux Insider - the only Linux involved was the software update infrastructure. The PIC operating system was a Windows CE implementation, and the firmware precluded booting other system - it required a specific boot sector flag. (See the General Software documentation for more info.)