| AMD quietly kills the PIC |
Nov. 13, 2006
 AMD has stopped producing the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a low-cost computer intended to help equip 50 percent of the world's population with Internet and computing capabilities by 2015. The news was contained in an obscure paragraph of the company's quarterly SEC 10-Q filing.
"Revenue from sales of PIC products has not been material and in the third quarter of 2006, we decided to stop manufacturing PIC products," states the 10-Q filing. AMD also noted that it had taken a $10 million write-off of prepaid assets related to PIC products in the third quarter of 2006 due to the decision to terminate the PIC's production.
The PIC, introduced with much fanfare about two years ago, ran an "optimized" version of Windows CE on a low-power Geode processor with 128 MB of RAM and a 10 GB disk. The initial target price point of $185 included a keyboard, mouse, and preinstalled software for basic personal computing and internet/email access, but no monitor.
The PIC was intended as a compact, low-cost "consumer appliance"
In May of this year, AMD said that the PIC would not be offered as a retail product, but rather the delivery model would be more that of a set-top box: "loaned equipment" bundled with a service, in this case, Internet access. In that same update, the company offered case studies of PIC use in Brazil and South Africa.
In September, a community project successfully booted Linux on the PIC, according to a primarily Thai-language Wiki devoted to the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) initiative.
The PIC was part of AMD's 50x15 program that aims to provide 50 percent of the world's population with Internet access by 2015. The program itself appears to be ongoing and, interestingly, the PIC currently remains listed on the 50x15 website along with other approaches to low-cost computing, such as the Linux-powered One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop initiative that originally came out of MIT's Media Laboratory.
Had the PIC succeeded, it could have been the highest volume design win ever for Windows CE.
Last July, AMD announced that it was shutting down its Geode embedded processor design center in Longmont, Colo., in an apparent move to focus its resources on the heated competition with Intel over high-performance desktop and server microprocessors.
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